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I am confused.... I didn't say white people owned the word, 'nigger.' I said it was ridiculous that anyone thinks they 'own' words.
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If you feel that Blacks do not own the word, go out amoungst them and use it freely.
If you want to start an auntomatic collective response, a riot, or whatever reference you may want to employ, in any of the larger cities in the nation, conscript several volunteers to use it in a collective campaign, freely, directly, and often, and see the consequences. Its very utterance will stop the room, whatever the room.
First, the White man coined it and used it, and since it was always directed at Blacks from White lips and not reciprocally from Blacks about Whites, it means that the White man owned it. In a total market control, the word can be construed as being 'owned,' or having''ownership.'
Blacks own the word now because they confiscated it, and employ it now in ironic reversal, and are universally trigger-quick to enforce penalties against any Whites who use it.
It has become, to the Blacks, a mutually if tacitly agreed upon toe in the sand against racism. Itr is the very demarkation of the boundaries that they have set up and cannot be crossed (without penalty.) In the miasmic muddle of American racism, it is a clear and precise entity.
Its use is carefully monitored, and most Whites use it--outside of the pure hate aspect of trash Whites, its place of origin--with trepidation and wise consideration, and at risk of retalitory peril to themselves.
This 'ownership' is understood mutually and commonly amoung Blacks, and in large measure, they have successfully enlightened Whites as to its permissability of use and its consequences, should it be used in the same condescending text in which it was created.
We have been inculcated in this nation to accept the word to signify the worst of what the Blacks represent; it has become standard metaphor in our minds to use the word when denigrating them. If a nigger is lynched, it is the last word from the Whites that he hears.
In Richards' case, he chose the one word he knew would hurt the most.
He did so at his own risk.
And, as you can see, he is paying for it.
Mere utterance of the word, by a White, can be a career-ender, but Blacks, up and down the line, may utter it freely, without consequence, from Blacks or Whites.
Its power is almost without equal in terms of sheer power potential, and that power in the hands of the Blacks, not the Whites.
And, again, I love the irony of its origin and its final, to date, evolution.
