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"What's up, niggaz?"

"You crazy nigga, you buggin'!"

"See you later, niggaz!"

That's the way my older brother and his friends used to talk to each other.

I think I was around 7 when my older brother became the center of my attention. He and his friends sounded so cool, and that strange, interesting word "nigger" would come up in their conversations so much.

So to be like my older brother and his friends, the word I made "nigger" (or today's preferred spelling "nigga") a part of my vocabulary. It was how my family and friends addressed each other-seriously, humorously, and otherwise. My brothers, sisters, and I used it freely, and I never thought twice about it.

Even though I used it all the time, the word had no real meaning for me. I just substituted it for phrases such as "What's up?" and "Hey, you."

It wasn't until fourth grade that I learned the racist meaning of the word. A chubby, naive kid named Al asked his teacher, "Is there still prejudice in the South?"

My teacher looked at me, perplexed, and said, "Prejudice is everywhere." That's when I started to take Black History Month seriously and learned about the struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and all those other prominent figures in the civil rights movement. I saw all those movies and documentaries that showed Blacks being whipped, beaten, attacked by dogs and having fire hoses opened on them during sit-ins and demonstrations.

It shocked me so, so much that it would take me too long to go into how. And then, in the midst of all the racist violence, I heard that word uttered. It was a White racist speaking down to a Black, or talking about Blacks, I don't even remember exactly.

But I remember how it sounded. "You nigger" or "those niggers." Even though it was on TV and not directed at me personally, it sounded horrible. I could hear the evil in the word. That's when I understood what it meant. It was a word used to make Blacks feel inhuman and worthless.

Still, it wasn't until I was in my mid-teens that I tried to make myself stop saying it. I decided it was wrong for me to use it when it meant such a terrible thing. I didn't try to stop others, I just stopped myself. No one even noticed.

Once, when I was a freshman in high school, we discussed the word in class. The only conclusion we came to was that it was OK for Blacks to call other Blacks "niggas" but if a White person was unfortunate enough to utter this word to a Black person, that White person would be very sorry.

By this point I was very confused about the whole matter. I talked to family and some friends about the situation, but it always came back to the same thing. Black on Black was OK, but White on Black was a no-no. Gradually, I started using it again.

Maybe peer pressure or everyone else using the word is what brought me back, but I feel that is just an excuse. On some level, I had accepted the word. It was part of me. For better or for worse, using the word "nigga" has become a part of black culture, or at least some segments of it. Now that I don't actively try to stop using the word, it just comes out naturally.

I do still watch who I use it around. I think everyone has a set of rules on when to use the word and when not to, the way many people do with curse words. I use it in my neighborhood and around people I know. I don't use it around people I don't know or who I think might take offense at it, and I try not to use it in professional places. Like I wouldn't come up to my editor at New Youth Connections and say, "You know, a funny thing happened to me on the train over here, me and my niggas..."

At least that's what I thought. But then one day at the NYC office, I was talking to my friend Frank. Frank is heavily into hip-hop music like me, and wears the latest hip-hop clothing. He also happens to be white. I was talking to him about my neighborhood and I let the N-word slip out. Right away, I looked around to see if anyone had heard because I did not want to offend anyone.

What really shocked me was the fact that I had used that Blacks-only term in conversation with a White person. I don't know if Frank noticed; if he did, he didn't say so. But I sure felt funny about it.

I had gotten so relaxed talking with a friend about our favorite music that I didn't see his color. Maybe because I didn't want to or maybe because it just wasn't important to me at the time. I was talking with my friend, not my White friend. Did that make me a sellout to the race? What the hell was wrong with me?

After that, I was more confused than ever.

It's funny to me that a White calling a Black "nigga" is a crime, but sometimes the reverse is accepted. On the single "Award Tour" by A Tribe Called Quest, there is a bonus track called "The Chase, Part II" featuring a rapper named Consequence who says in a verse that he's "been through more growing pains than that nigga Michael Seaver."

I've also heard some Puerto Ricans at my school use the term-I remember distinctly a Puerto Rican girl referring to her man as "my nigga." And at least some Puerto Ricans I know don't seem to get offended when they are called niggas. Still, part of me continues to think it isn't proper for someone outside the race to use the word. But then I think I may be a hypocrite since I used it so casually when talking to a White person.

And there's still the question of why Black people use it to begin with. I wish I knew. Maybe we have decided to take control of this otherwise bad word to use for our own purposes. Maybe we want to give it a new meaning. Or maybe we cling to the word so as to never forget what the Black race went through. Maybe it makes us feel good to have become the users of the word and not the victims of it.

As for me I still go on, monitoring my mouth, hoping for an end to my mixed feelings towards the word, wishing I could either feel completely comfortable using it or banish it totally from my vocabulary. I feel like the rapper Q-tip in the song "Sucka Nigga": "Yo, I start to flinch as I try not to say it, but my lips is like the ooh-wap as I start to spray it."

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youth communication (content / design) and codeHorse.com (programming)

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The 'N' Word: It Just Slips Out - Allen Francis

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"What's up, niggaz?" "You crazy nigga, you buggin'!" "See you later, niggaz!" That's the way my older brother and his friends used to talk to each other. I think I was around 7 when my older brother became the center of my attention.

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Watch 2-3 videos from The Washington Post's "The N-Word" Interactive Conversation

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Explore perspectives.
Select three to see a custom video.

Start your own conversation

Add a question or use one of the submitted questions to start a conversation with your social network. (Note: The n-word has not been filtered from submissions.)

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n-word; donte stallworth; neal brennan; dave chappelle show; nfl; national football leagues bans nword; nfl bans the nword; nigger; nigga; nigger vs nigga; kkk; ku klux klan; jay z; oprah;

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The n-word: An interactive project exploring a singular word

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After the National Football League made the controversial decision to ban the n-word on the field this year, a team of Washington Post journalists explored the history of the word, its evolution and its place in American vernacular today.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates Has an Incredibly Clear Explanation for Why White People Shouldn’t Use the N-Word

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Ta-Nehisi Coates Has an Incredibly Clear Explanation for Why White People Shouldn’t Use the N-Word

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It's a question that comes up again and again in discussions of race: Why can't white people use the n-word, even as many black people use it, particularly in rap songs and other media?

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer at the Atlantic and author of We Were Eight Years in Power, has perhaps the best explanation I have ever heard on the topic, given during an event last month at Evanston Township High School in Illinois.

Coates first pointed out that it is normal in our culture for some people or groups to use certain words that others can't. For example, his wife calls him "honey"; it would not be acceptable, he said, for strange women to do the same. Similarly, his dad was known by his family back home as Billy - but it would be awkward for Coates to try to use that nickname for his father.

"That's because the relationship between myself and my dad is not the same as the relationship between my dad and his mother and his sisters who he grew up with," Coates said. "We understand that."

The same concept applies to different groups and their words. "My wife, with her girl friend, will use the word 'bitch,'" Coates said. "I do not join in. You know what I'm saying? I don't do that. I don't do that. And perhaps more importantly, I don't have a desire to do it."

Coates pointed to another example - of a white friend who used to have a cabin in upstate New York that he called "the white trash cabin." "I would never refer to that cabin" in that way, Coates said. "I would never tell him, 'I'm coming to your white trash cabin.'"

Coates added, "The question one must ask is why so many white people have difficulty extending things that are basic laws of how human beings interact to black people."

He gave a potential answer: "When you're white in this country, you're taught that everything belongs to you. You think you have a right to everything. ... You're conditioned this way. It's not because your hair is a texture or your skin is light. It's the fact that the laws and the culture tell you this. You have a right to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, be however - and people just got to accommodate themselves to you."

"So here comes this word that you feel like you invented," Coates said. "And now somebody will tell you how to use the word that you invented. 'Why can't I use it? Everyone else gets to use it. You know what? That's racism that I don't get to use it. You know, that's racist against me. You know, I have to inconvenience myself and hear this song and I can't sing along. How come I can't sing along?'"

Coates concluded that white people should use this sense as a lesson: "The experience of being a hip-hop fan and not being able to use the word 'ni**er' is actually very, very insightful. It will give you just a little peek into the world of what it means to be black. Because to be black is to walk through the world and watch people doing things that you cannot do, that you can't join in and do. So I think there's actually a lot to be learned from refraining."
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Ta-Nehisi Coates has an incredibly clear explanation for why white people shouldn't use the n-word

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He said that white people could learn something from not being able to use the word.

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WARNING: Explicit language in this video

"When I hear my homies say it, it don't sound like venom. When I hear a white person say it, it sounds like venom."

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Ice Cube and Symone Sanders on White Privilege | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

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Why So Many TV Shows are Talking About the N-Word Right Now

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Why So Many TV Shows are Talking About the N-Word Right Now

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On tonight's episode of NBC's The Carmichael Show, the Carmichael family goes to an upscale restaurant owned by a white friend of Jerrod's to celebrate his mother, Cynthia's, birthday. When they arrive, Jerrod (Jerrod Carmichael, the co-creator and star of the series) thanks his friend, who responds, "Anything for you my nigga, you know that." Jerrod doesn't skip a beat, but his entire family views it as a racial slur.

A more heated exchange takes place between friends in the fifth episode of Netflix's Dear White People. The star of the episode, Reggie (Marque Richardson) responds very differently when his white friend, Addison, raps along to Future's "Trap Niggas" at a party and says the N-word in the lyrics. Calmly, Reggie asks his friend not to repeat it, but Addison becomes defensive and doesn't respect Reggie's point of view: that a white person should never utter the word.

Jerrod and Reggie represent the opposing sides of a debate within the black community about who's allowed to use the N-word, an issue that reverberated on the national stage recently when Bill Maher used it in a tone-deaf joke, referring to himself as a "house nigger" on his HBO talk show. In the following week's episode, he was schooled by guests Ice Cube, pundit Symone D. Sanders, and author Michael Eric Dyson about the pain the epithet evokes.

It's a conversation that's been popping up on scripted TV more and more, as the medium's exponential growth has made room for more diverse voices in front of and behind the camera. Nearly two years ago, ABC's Black-ish aired an episode about the Johnson family's reaction to their youngest son (Miles Brown) getting suspended from school for using the N-word while singing Kanye West's "Gold Digger" in a talent competition; also in the episode, Dre (Anthony Anderson) is stunned to learn that his eldest daughter's white classmates use the word in text conversations with her. Last fall, Atlanta dealt with the question of boundaries in its pilot when a white character appropriating black culture feels comfortable using the slur in front of Earn (Donald Glover), but not in front of an older janitor or Earn's rapper cousin. And in the eighth episode of Netflix's 1970s-set The Get Down, released this year, a jerky, white frat boy uses the epithet and another racial slur to insult the show's protagonist, Zeke ( Justice Smith).

On Dear White People, the incident at the party escalates, a fight breaks out, and Reggie winds up with a cop's gun pointed at his head. "There was a lot of discussion about the tone and the transition of the show and, 'Are we saying something that hasn't been said already?'," said show creator Justin Simien. When he originally explained the story for the Reggie episode to Netflix - and noted that he wanted to spend the rest of the season exploring "the reality of being black and having that be fatal in this country" - the executives hesitated, even though the streaming giant has a reputation for allowing producers unprecedented creative freedom. "There was a lot of convincing and a lot of versions of it that had to come into place to make everybody feel comfortable with what we're doing, but once we had the story fleshed out and once we had the script, everybody got it," he continued. "This is something that's being talked about all the time, so for us, as artists, not to talk about it would feel irresponsible. We are in an age where television is willing to take more risks. A lot of us are having an opportunity, for perhaps the first time in our lives, to put in our art what we have been talking about in private for a long time."

The TV boom has coincided with the country's tense and divisive political climate, which Simien believes has only helped storytellers like him. "I think the post-racial veneer is completely gone," he said. "Every few years, America has to come to terms that it is still deeply racist. The fact that racism can be blatant now because of our president has helped, ironically, because people see the conversation needs to happen. What I am seeing amongst my liberal friends, especially, white, male, straight friends who never had to consider these things before, is that they are getting it now."

A lot of us are having an opportunity, for perhaps the first time in our lives, to put in our art what we have been talking about in private for a long time. Justin Simien

Because there is no consensus in the black community about the use of the word by black people among themselves or in mixed company - let alone the use of the word by non-black people - the topic is ripe for the kind of multigenerational and contextual analysis used on shows like Black-ish. The Carmichaels take a similar approach in tonight's episode, "Cynthia's Birthday." While on Black-ish, creator Kenya Barris bleeped the word every time it was used ("The bleep in a weird way makes you hear it even louder," he told Vulture in an interview at the time), on The Carmichael Show, there is no barrier between the word and the audience - it is used six times in three distinct ways. NBC would only allow the full use of the word if a unique point of view was presented in the episode, according to showrunner Danielle Sanchez-Witzel.

"It's our instinct to go directly into the fire," said co-creator Ari Katcher, who co-wrote the episode with Carmichael. "You want to be direct as possible because in life you don't have to deal with someone almost saying the word. You deal with what happens when somebody says the word. Jerrod and I talked a lot about the different points of view. His is, if we can't control people saying it, we can only control our reaction to the word, so if we're going to be hurt by it, we're just giving them a weapon to be used on us whenever they want. That's legitimate, but I also see the other point of view - this is a word that represents everything bad that happened to the black community, it's meant to be said in hate, and we should react accordingly."

Carmichael, like his namesake character, believes that the more the word is used by everyone, the less power it has. The comedian was not available for an interview, but as a recent guest on Norman Lear's podcast All of the Above, he explained why he sees no point to attempting to ban it. "People think it's stopping hatred," he said. "It doesn't stop hatred, and it doesn't stop painful language. What it does is preserve a word and make it more dangerous. If it's free, if we free the word, then perhaps it will be less dangerous and you won't feel the need to fight the person who says it."

In the episode, Jerrod's girlfriend, Maxine (Amber Stevens West), asks him, "How can you be so nonchalant about that word? It has such a history of hate. It's the last word that so many black people heard as they were hung from trees." He retorts: "I don't think the problem in that scenario is the word - it's the hanging. If you ask me, the black community gets way too caught up on that word. It's just a distraction. We should focus on things that matter, like voter suppression."

During the course of his daily life and in his stand-up, Carmichael, 30, freely uses the word. That means if you work with him, you're going to hear it. So Sanchez-Witzel says she finds it necessary to warn prospective job candidates so they are not caught off guard. "He does use it as a term of familiarity, and sometimes I think he uses it to get a rise out of people," she said. "That's who he is and what his brand of comedy is. He is somebody who challenges people, period, about everything, and so this is one topic that he certainly challenged the writers room about a lot. Even with everyone knowing this about Jerrod, it's not comfortable. It just isn't. It never should be a comfortable word for people. Nobody in the writer's room will just use it, but he will."

Like Anthony Anderson's character on Black-ish, Barris, 42, told Vulture he uses the word, too, but not usually in front of people who aren't black. "I came from the generation where we took it and made it our tribal call, our brotherhood, our global patch of saying we've been through this together," he said.

Simien, 34, prefers not to use the word in his personal life, but sees it as necessary to his art. "White people didn't exist before the 17th century as a race class in this country," he said. "The invention of the nigger was the alternative to white. It represented everyone that was dark-skinned and from Africa. They were subhuman. That word is not just a hard word or a negative word. It has a direct link to systemic racism in this country, so it is a hard word for me to hear. As an artist, I think it's important to use it because I have to reflect people and how they speak and because I want to talk about the word. But it's not an easy word to use and it always hits me some kind of way no matter who says it."

On The Carmichael Show, when Maxine herself ends up using the word to angrily defend the family, everyone agrees her way of expressing it is more hateful than the white friend's version. "I think that's the true thing about harsh words," Katcher said. "A lot of times, you look at this as black and white or what's right or wrong. But what it comes down to is intention. Did it feel wrong? Which is a hard thing to quantify."

Ultimately, the Carmichael writers wanted to use the N-word to explore the rules and limitations that cultures impose on themselves. "In all our stories we're presenting discussions that we find interesting and that don't end with an answer," Sanchez-Witzel said. "There is no answer as to who can use the word."

To attempt to set strict rules around the use of the word flies in the face of freedom of speech, Simien agrees. But he still can't ignore the pain he feels when he hears white people laughing in a theater at scenes of Jamie Foxx repeatedly being called the slur in Django Unchained, or when it casually spilled out of Maher's mouth. "It was so obvious that Bill was uninformed about all sorts of histories in the way he used the word," Simien said. "It's just hard for me to imagine that a white person who intimately understands the history of the word would use it so flippantly. And that's exactly why it being such a charged word is important right now. So many people, black or white, have the luxury of never considering the origin of the word and the origins of slavery."

When he's been in Reggie's shoes in his own life, Simien says he's usually at a loss as to how to react. "I certainly have had friends who use it around me in either an ironic way or to be funny and it's always very awkward because these are people I love very much, and in the meta sense, they're like, 'well, why can't we use every word in the human language?'," Simien said. "There have been times I've been silent; there are times I've been complicit; and there are times when I've had an argument about it. But it has absolutely come up in my life a lot, and I think any black person who hangs out with all kinds of groups of people is going to experience that many times. What transpired in this country toward people of color and black people in particular is so horrible, it breaks my heart. I can't separate the word from its history, especially when the country refuses to deal with that history in a straightforward way."

On his show, Simien used the N-word to explore racism as a system instead of an attitude. Even though the white men who argue with Reggie are not racist, their defensiveness leads them to unwittingly support the system of racism.

"For me it wasn't so much about the rules, like can you or can't you, it was more about what happens when you," he said. "That story was really important to me because this is the thing that comes up all the time in pop culture. We all listen to this music, we all watch the same comedians, and we watch the same TV shows. Logically, why aren't we allowed to say the word? To me, that's beside the point. What's more interesting is, what are the systems that made this word so powerful in the first place, and do they still exist, and are they still in the undercurrents of our lives? I would say from my own experience, they certainly are."

Tonight's Carmichael episode ends with a surprise N-word utterance from the birthday girl herself, who has been arguing against anyone using the slur for the entire episode. The moment is shocking from the character's perspective, but it's Loretta Devine's colloquial delivery that makes the joke soar. Even Katcher, who co-wrote it, was floored. "It had a lot of power," he said. "Hearing it is a little more jarring than you'd expect. It was an interesting acting choice she made." The audience on tape night laughed so loudly, producers had to lower the volume of the reaction in editing. And as soon as you are finished laughing, you can't help but wonder if you should be laughing.

Bill Maher Says the N-Word on Real Time

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Why So Many TV Shows Are Talking About the N-Word Right Now

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On tonight's episode of NBC's The Carmichael Show, the Carmichael family goes to an upscale restaurant owned by a white friend of Jerrod's to celebrate his mother, Cynthia's, birthday. When they arrive, Jerrod (Jerrod Carmichael, the co-creator and star of the series) thanks his friend, who responds, "Anything for you my nigga, you know that."

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Investment in women-founded companies is declining. But why?

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If You Truly Knew What the N-Word Meant to Our Ancestors, You'd NEVER Use it

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If You Truly Knew What the N-Word Meant to Our Ancestors, You'd NEVER Use it

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A few years ago, I read slave narratives to explore the lives of black agricultural workers after the end of the Civil War. The narratives came from the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration, a program that employed researchers from 1936 to 1938 to interview former enslaved people, producing more than 2,300 narratives that, thankfully, reside online and are fully searchable.

Those whom the law defined as property recounted various unique human experiences - their daily horrors and monotonies, how they freed themselves or learned of their emancipation, the surge of exhilaration upon securing freedom, and how they endured life on the edges of a white supremacist society in the decades thereafter.

As I pored over the narratives, I was struck less by their experiences, as heartrending as they were, than by how their experiences sculpted their self-perceptions. The best explanation of what I gleaned, what social scientists called internalized oppression, describes the psychological trauma that ensues when a person from a stigmatized group believes those negative stigmas.

White folk indoctrinated them into accepting their supposed inferiority. These narratives illustrate the success of this campaign of mental terrorism, and no word conveyed the depth of this internalized oppression more than "nigger." Now, whenever I hear the epithet, a visual and emotional representation of the heinous process by which a people - my people - were induced to think they were less than trespasses into my thoughts. After years of habitual use of "nigger," I banished it from my speech to honor the humanity that many never saw in themselves.

The internalized oppression revealed itself in various ways. Sometimes the former enslaved people clearly, perhaps subconsciously, considered themselves subhuman, just like how their former owners regarded them. Jim Allen, for example, dubbed himself his master's "pet nigger boy" and a "stray" and thought himself privileged because he could sleep on the floor beside his master's bed. That he likened himself to a fortunate mangy mutt or frisky feline crushed me. The word laid bare a worldview that held black folk as a lower order of being, as when Irene Robertson claimed her former master Mr. Sanders was mean, in part, because "he beat his wife like he beat a nigger woman."

"Nigger" also signaled antipathy toward fellow black folk. After the end of slavery, Mattie Mooreman went north to Wisconsin with a white family for whom she worked. Members of the family wanted her to go to the circus to watch a black boy's performance. She told her interviewer, "Guess they thought it would be a treat to me to see another niggah. I told 'em, 'Law, don't you think I see lots, lots more than I wants, every day when I is at home?' " But read how she talks about the family's baby, whom she constantly watched over, fearing, irrationally, someone would kidnap him: "No matter what time they come home they'd find me there. 'Why don't you go in your bedroom and lie down?' they'd ask me. 'No,' I'd tell 'em, 'somebody might come in, and they would have to get that baby over my dead body." Her eyes fixated on the white baby, but she saw too many niggers.

A barrage of dispiriting uses of the word bloodied me as I combed through the narratives. "The Ku Klux kept the niggers scared." "The Ku Klux did a whole lot to keep the niggers away from the polls. ..." Slaves owned by "nice" masters are repeatedly called "free niggers." "Niggers ain't got no sense. Put 'em in authority and they gits so uppity." "I'se just a poor old nigger waitin' for Jesus to come and take me to heaven." Slave traders are called "nigger traders." Defiant enslaved people required the service of a "niggerbreaker." "Nigger dogs" aided the recapture of those who escaped.

Perhaps more depressing, ironically, was that circumstances sometimes led them to opt against calling a black person a nigger. William Porter stated that "some of the Tennessee niggers was called free niggers. There was a colored man in Pulaski, Tennessee, who owned slaves." A black man who kept others in bondage - he's a "colored man," yet those who were owned were "niggers." I instantly thought of a moment from the O.J.: Made in America documentary when a white woman who saw black people talking to Simpson uttered, "Look at those niggers sitting with O.J." Simpson delights in hearing this because she "knew I wasn't black. She saw me as O.J." Porter's outlook matched that of both the racist white woman and the unspeakably racially deranged O.J.

Since reading those narratives, I've noticed this mindset when perusing the remarks of freed people in other contexts. For example, before the trial of Rufus Martin, a black man who stood accused of the 1903 murder of Charles Swackhammer, a woman whom the Fort Worth Star-Telegram referred to as an "old negress who occupied a front seat in the court room" bellowed:

It's the white people that is to blame. They know that they got to make niggahs work or they ain't no good and they know as long as they 'low niggah men to loaf aroun' low down saloons they ain't goin' to work. This man come from a good niggah fam'ly - one of the best I knows of, but the p'lice 'lowed him to loaf aroun' without workin', and to drink and gamble, till he just got to be no good and thought he didn't have to work. The p'lice ought to raid them low down niggah saloons every day and every night till they make every blessed one of the niggah toughs go to work or else send 'em all to the county road. Them saloons is what makes bad niggahs and the white folks is to blame for it, 'cause they let 'em run.

That Martin sported a reddish mustache, light hair and skin so bright he could pass for white almost certainly colored her perception that Martin came from a "good niggah fam'ly."

Black folk rescued the word from the smoldering debris of a virulently racist land, reclaimed it and renovated the slur into a celebration of black comradery - defenders of contemporary usage of "nigger" repeat this. When this tale collides with reality, however, it shatters as a misreading of history - the current use of the word is owed less to white folk calling black folk "nigger" and more to black folk who thought they were niggers and said so. Black people have hurled the infamous word for nearly as long as white folk have. It exists within black speech now because it existed within black speech then. The uncomfortable truth must be confronted: Absent the internalized oppression of those who called white men and women their masters, "nigger" would probably not be a part of black folk's lexicon. We black folk are reclaiming it not from bigoted white folk but from our ancestors, who, sadly, deemed their blackness a badge of inferiority.

I seek not to usher the word to the gallows. I harbor no aims to kill it. I can still bump a Young Thug track or chortle at a Dave Chappelle routine. "Nigger" does not bar my enjoyment of popular culture. My soul, though, winces whenever I hear it. The decision for black people to include it in their vocabulary, nonetheless, remains personal, and I reject the criticism of black folk who continue to wield it.

I write only to summon the words of former enslaved people from beyond the grave to express that "nigger" is haunted by the ghosts of hate and the more spiritually chilling ghosts of self-hate.

Liner Notes

Brando Simeo Starkey is an associate editor at Andscape and the author of In Defense of Uncle Tom: Why Blacks Must Police Racial Loyalty. He crawled through a river of books and came out brilliant on the other side.

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If you truly knew what the N-word meant to our ancestors, you'd NEVER use it

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A few years ago, I read slave narratives to explore the lives of black agricultural workers after the end of the Civil War. The narratives came from the Federal...

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White People Should Never Rap the N-Word

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White People Should Never Rap the N-Word

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Last month social media erupted after a video of white sorority girls singing along to Kanye West's mega hit Gold Digger went viral. The lyrics include the word n-gga. The students promptly apologized and were absolved of racism by their university and by commentators and journalists - most notably Piers Morgan.

Morgan, writing in the Daily Mail, insisted that white listeners of rap music cannot be reproached for using the n-word. Rather, he said, they are targeted and exploited by Kanye and other Black celebrities, who send mixed messages about whether the n-word is offensive. Morgan wrote: "The only way to stop its use is for everyone to stop using it, including Black people."

Though Morgan's take on the n-word was widely derided, it went viral, and a few commentators endorsed it in whole or in part. As a white fan of rap music and as a linguist who writes and teaches about hip-hop language, I feel compelled to add my voice to others who have countered his poorly informed arguments.

Hip-hop as counterculture

Though hip-hop is now consumed by mainstream pop audiences, it is traditionally made for, and by, working-class Black youth whose "in-group" acceptance depends in large part on their fluent use of Black vernacular English. "There is no question that Black talk provides hip-hop's linguistic underpinnings," write linguist John Rickford and his son, journalist Russell Rickford, in Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. They go on to explain:

Nothing thumbs its nose at conformity like the unrestrained African American vernacular. Although white suburban youngsters eat up hip-hop's edgy tales of money, sexual adventure, ghetto life, and racial injustice (and keep ghetto rhymes atop the pop charts), Black urban youngsters are the genre's target audience.

Now the n-word looms large in the vernacular of many Black youth. In a new linguistic study of "Black Twitter," the n-word stands out as the most frequent distinctively Black form, being used 6.6 million times by Black American Twitter users in a single month. The study notes that the n-word has various uses but defines it simply as "guy."

Black emcees, too, generally use the n-word as "guy," with diverse connotations, none of them truly offensive. In Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap, Grandmaster Caz, a hip-hop elder, explores the word in a 300-word freestyle that includes 46 instances of the term. Caz shows that it has dozens of meanings, ranging from peaceful to aggressive, from camaraderie to competition, and from boasting to "dissing."

I'm that top n-gga, ... I won't stop, n-gga ... I'm that sweet n-gga, that never off-beat n-gga ... I'm that cool n-gga, ran my whole high school n-gga ... I'm that proud n-gga, that stand out in the crowd n-gga ... I'm that smart n-gga, always first to start n-gga. I think with my head, but I feel with my heart, n-gga!

(©Joe Conzo and Cornell University Library)

A Black man from the Bronx, Caz's use of the n-word in these lines is in direct opposition to "out-group" racist uses of the term. According to a philosopher of language, Adam Croom, the racial slur describes "a constellation of prototypical attributes," the most derogatory being "subservient," "prone to laziness," "prone to violence," "simple-minded," and "emotionally shallow." Croom explains that slurs are used in non-derogatory ways within countercultures such as hip-hop, to oppose and to subvert entrenched sociocultural norms.

Surviving racism and the evolution of language

Black youth appear to strengthen their solidarity and identity by using the n-word as an in-group term. Linguist Jacquelyn Rahman argues the term may help Black males identify as "resourceful, pragmatic survivors" of racial injustice. "During the period of slavery, n-gga became a term that Africans used to refer to themselves and companions in the struggle to survive," explains Rahman. "Using the term highlighted the identity of a speaker as participating in the culture of survival." This is apparent when Jay-Z tells himself in Holy Grail, "you still alive, still that n-gga. N-gga, you survived, you still gettin' bigger."

The survivor meaning of the n-word has a long history. But African Americans have also developed new meanings and uses of the word in the last few decades. For instance, its use has expanded from noun to noun modifier. An iconic example is New Orleans's MC T. Tucker who described himself as "the n-gga, the n-gga n-gga, ... the n-gga n-gga n-gga you love to hate." The n-word has also grown from an expression of solidarity among survivors to a term of endearment (as in, "that's my n-gga").

The n-word has even evolved into a meaning-neutral pronoun in the first or third person, similar to "I/me," "we/us," "he/him," and "they/them." So for instance, KAAN simply refers to himself when he raps, "I'm still rolling by myself, a n-gga [I] never had a crew ... you lookin for a n-gga [me], you know where to find me ... Lawd knows that a n-gga [I'm] feelin hopeless."

Altogether, then, the use of the n-word in hip-hop is about identity and survival. When a Black emcee says the n-word, it is intended without derogation. So can white hip-hop heads - like me - and other non-Black people rap along without being offensive?

It is never OK: Eminem

In my rap linguistics course a few years ago, a student of South Asian heritage made a memorable class presentation titled, "The meaning of n-gga." He'd asked a Black childhood friend to join him in class that day, to stand beside him, and to say each instance of the n-word in his stead. My student said that though he is a person of colour and an emcee immersed in hip-hop culture, from a "hood area" in Northeast Calgary, he makes a point of never saying this word, even with Black friends who encourage him to use it. One of his idols, white rapper Eminem, never does either.

(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Indeed, Eminem and the Black culture of hip-hop famously adopted each other. Much of Eminem's accent, grammar and vocabulary are drawn from Black vernacular English, but he avoids saying the n-word. ( He admitted he said it on occasion in his teens but he has been mostly excused for this - as Nas wrote, he's "not mad 'cause Eminem said n-gga, 'cause he my n-gga.") In 'Till I Collapse, Eminem even avoids a euphemism for the n-word - by substituting "wizzle" for "nizzle" in Snoop Dogg's well-known expression "fo' shizzle, my nizzle."

This song (like many others by Eminem, such as and ) is about being a "survivor." Because the n-word is deeply rooted in African-American history, Eminem cannot use it to mean "survivor," no matter how integrated he is in the Black culture that is hip-hop. More generally, because Eminem is white, he cannot subvert the n-word as non-derogatory, as Black hip-hoppers can with each other. Only the in-group members that the slur was originally intended to target can perform this "normative reversal."

So for Eminem, the n-word must remain the racist slur that white America has always used and sadly, some continue to use.

The bottom line is this: if a renegade rap god, who is one of the most unrestrained artists in hip-hop, won't rap the n-word, then what might possess mere white listeners of rap music to do so?

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White people should never rap the n-word: A linguist breaks it down

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Last month social media erupted after a video of white sorority girls singing along to Kanye West's mega hit Gold Digger went viral. The lyrics include the word n-gga. The students promptly apologized and were absolved of racism by their university and by commentators and journalists - most notably Piers Morgan.

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Why Explaining ‘The N-Word’ To Non-Black People Is So Damn Exhausting

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Why Explaining ‘The N-Word’ To Non-Black People Is So Damn Exhausting

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Every black person who lives in the United States at some point or another comes to accept one thing: the "N-word" is not going away. Whether you use it or not, whether you are OK with it or deeply offended by it, it's a word weighted down with so much history and so much pain that is impossible to avoid. (We have left the word uncensored in the discussion that follows.)

The general consensus among most black people is that "nigger" is a word best left for us to grapple with. In other words: non-black people - and especially white people - shouldn't use it. That means colloquially or derogatorily, in context or out. And honestly, we know you're going to use it anyway, but don't use it around us.

It would take too long to unpack all the arguments and counterarguments about why white people should avoid the word altogether. Countless people have explained why there are no special excuses or circumstances for white people saying nigga, and have outlined why this is not a double standard.

What's rarely unpacked, though, is the emotional and spiritual labor that goes into trying to explain to non-black people why they shouldn't say it. Netflix's "Dear White People" illustrates this frustration beautifully.

Episode five of Netflix's new series "Dear White People" is the most talked about episode of the show, for good reason. The episode, directed by Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins, follows a day in the life of Reggie (Marque Richardson) ― a "woke" leader of the fictional Winchester University's Black Student Union who pines after student activist Sam (Logan Browning).

In one scene, the scene of the episode, Reggie, who is black, ends up at a frat party with mostly white students. The vibe is chill, he's dancing and having a good time, until a white friend named Addison drops n-bombs while singing along to a hip-hop song. Reggie asks him not to say it anymore. Addison explains that he doesn't "really" use that word, he's just singing along.

"It's not like I'm a racist," he insists.

And there it is. That moment when you're asking another person to respect you by not using a word that you find demeaning and offensive, and that person makes it all about them, suddenly focusing more on the perceived jab at their character than on how they're making you feel.

Reggie puts it perfectly when he says: "Just don't say 'nigga.' Like, you didn't have to say it just then... I mean, how would you feel if I started rapping songs that say 'honky' and 'cracker'?"

"I wouldn't care at all."

"Exactly. That's the difference. Like, that you don't care. And I do. Like, you get it?"

Of course, Addison doesn't get it, and the conversation quickly escalates as he insists that he's "not some redneck," he points out that he's been good to Reggie by allowing him to party in his house, and he laments the fact that political correctness has made it so that we "can't have fun anymore."

Part of what makes this experience emotionally draining, what makes every instance like this so exhausting for many black people, is that often interactions like these take place in public, in real life or online, and a lot of mental energy just goes in to quelling one's anger, lest we get dismissed as angry or emotional or aggressive.

Like Reggie, we have to compromise our humanity in order for it be more visible to the white person who doesn't get "what the big deal is." That reality becomes crystal clear in the scene, as we watch him stare down the barrel of a police officer's gun, after his argument with Addison results in someone at the party calling the cops.

It's exhausting to have to explain that the more colloquial "nigga" isn't a fancy club that only black people are allowed to join. It's exhausting to explain that one's use of the word isn't based on how nice you are or how many black friends you have or how many hip-hop songs you know. It's exhausting to have to explain that using "nigga" comes as a response to all the real-world ramifications of being black. It's exhausting to do all of this and know, in most cases, that the person you're explaining this to will remain incredulous.

BEFORE YOU GO

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Why Explaining 'The N-Word' To Non-Black People Is So Damn Exhausting

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Every black person who lives in the United States at some point or another comes to accept one thing: the "N-word" is not going away. Whether you use it or not, whether you are OK with it or deeply offended by it, it's a word weighted down with so much history and so much pain that is impossible to avoid.

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Read about both sides of the issue!

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Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

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Charles Barkley on the N-Word -  Inside The NBA

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I Find the N-Word Hurtful, but Piers Morgan is Right: It's Kanye's Fault Those White Sorority Sisters Sang It

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I Find the N-Word Hurtful, but Piers Morgan is Right: It's Kanye's Fault Those White Sorority Sisters Sang It

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I'll probably receive a lot of abuse after writing this piece but this is something I need to get off my chest and it is an opinion I have held for a very long time.

On Thursday, TV personality and Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan published a column about the latest race row on Twitter relating to an Instagram story video. The video depicted white female members of the Alpha Phi Sorority at the University of New Hampshire singing the n-word during Kanye West's "Gold Digger" at a party.

The song in question features the word "niggas" throughout and was one of Kanye West's biggest hits 12 years ago. The lyrics include the chorus: "Now I ain't saying she's a gold-digger, but she ain't messing with no broke niggas."

After Morgan published his article, Twitter erupted with users claiming he's obsessed with using the n-word and even went so far as calling him a racist. Moreover, Munroe Bergdorf - the transgender model who was famously fired by L'Oreal for making comments about systemic racism and who has publicly clashed with Morgan in the past - branded Morgan a "violent racist" and accused him of encouraging trolls and racists to sing racial slurs.

Let's get one thing straight though. The n-word, whether spelt "nigga" or "nigger", is offensive. It is categorically and historically a racist slur. The word derives from pre-Jim Crow America where black Americans were branded "niggers" to belittle and abuse them while lynching them in the streets. It's no secret that the word is now used by violent anti-racists and neo-Nazis at rallies and on sickeningly racist internet forums.

But in Morgan's defence, he knows the n-word is racist - he admits that. There seems to be a blur between what can be said and what can't. It is a word that lies firmly in a grey area. One six-letter word has become the world's greatest taboo. We daren't speak it from our mouths yet silently think it while the stench of its history looms over our heads.

Yet fantastically, the word has become the property of rap artists like Nas, Future and Jay-Z, who employ it in the most nuanced of ways, and at times it seems that there are few people in the public sphere who have not added their two cents to the ongoing debate over its use.

Queen Bey herself consistently uses the n-word, most notably in "Sorry" whereby she sings: "Sorry, I ain't sorry. Sorry, I ain't sorry. I ain't sorry, nigga, nah", alongside American singer-songwriter Kehlani who even titled a song 'Niggas': "Niggas gon' always be niggas. Can't afford to give my heart to these niggas. Ain't got time to lose my mind to these niggas."

I don't enjoy hearing it in songs but I've learnt to accept it, the same way that I do when I hear Samuel L Jackson recite the word in films. And should we be policing the word when it is consistently used in a different context of which it was created?

In the current climate following Charlottesville, the rise of the far-right and neo-Nazis along with the continuing police brutality against black men and women, it's important now more than ever to unite. The one thing that drives a wedge between us all is the ambiguity of semantics.

If the word is so offensive to the black community, why are we still using it as if the word means nothing at all? If white people listen to and enjoy these songs, are you insinuating that they should avoid singing the word altogether even though we do? Why?

I am playing devil's advocate here. I am black and I loathe the n-word in all contexts. I am offended when anyone uses it, whether it is spelled "nigga" or "nigger". I cringe listening to Kehlani's song where it is sung over and over again. During the song my question was and always is: why? Why is this word being used? Is there no other word you can use in its place?

It's imperative for all of us to respect, understand and educate ourselves on our history. This applies to everyone. Yes, we as black people have endured pain and suffering and our history proves that. But if we want and need change from our neighbours, we need to make the change too. If we, as black people, are still suffering in the hands of that word, then why are we still using it?

So: no, Twitter; no, Munroe Bergdorf; Piers is right. We shouldn't be angry at the white girls - we should be angry at rappers normalising the n-word. We should be angry at politicians who continue to use racial slurs in conversation.

We should continue to protest against the use of the word while adhering to what we are asking from our peers. We need to stop being hypocritical and others need to listen. How can we champion change if we are all not willing to make the change ourselves?

Reuse content

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I'm black, but I agree with Piers Morgan: it's Kanye West's fault those white sorority girls sang the n-word

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I'll probably receive a lot of abuse after writing this piece but this is something I need to get off my chest and it is an opinion I have held for a very long time. On Thursday, TV personality and Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan published a column about the latest race row on Twitter relating to an Instagram story video.

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where did the n-word come from?  - cnn video

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CNN's Don Lemon explains the origins of the N-word in relation to black people.

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Huck Finn Teachers Guide: Huck Finn in Context: The Curriculum: Section 1: The "N" Word

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The feelings and reaction of students may depend on the demographics of the student population. In schools that are predominantly African American, students may feel more comfortable with the word, although not necessarily with its repeated use by white characters in a "classic" text.

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It's long been accepted that the slur shouldn't be used by white people to refer to black people. What about referring to the word itself?

Laurie Sheck is a professor of creative writing at the New School in New York, a decades-long veteran of the classroom, a widely published novelist and essayist, and a Pulitzer nominee. She's also spent the summer in trouble with her bosses for possibly being a racist.

Her offense? You may not have known that despite the resonance of the title of the renowned 2016 documentary on James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin's actual statement, during a 1963 appearance on public television, was "I'm not a nigger." Early last spring semester, Sheck, who is white, was teaching a graduate seminar on Baldwin, and one of the questions she posed for discussion was why the documentary title had substituted "Negro" for "nigger."

That's good teaching. She was evoking a word with one of the richest, nastiest, and most complex ranges of meaning in the English language. What did Baldwin mean by summoning it in 1963? Why, today, did the creators of that documentary substitute "Negro"? And having answered those questions, then we might examine the particular resonances of that word. The indifferent teacher asks things like "What did you think of the essay?" or "Does the essay reflect any of your personal experiences?" A special one tries to get the students into the head of the creator, into his times.

Sheck was doing that-but in posing her question, she indeed used the word as Baldwin had, rather than euphemizing it as "the N-word."

A white student in the class objected to Sheck's having uttered the word. And administrators were apparently dissatisfied with Sheck's attempt to defend herself, because the school put her under investigation, while directing her to reacquaint herself with the school's rules about discrimination. This month the school determined that Sheck had committed no offense. But the fact that smart, busy people felt it necessary to investigate Sheck for mouthing the word when referring to it-not using it independently, much less directing it at someone-suggests a preoccupation less with matters of morality than with matters of taboo. Nor is Sheck's story one of a kind.
John McWhorter: 'Racist' is a tough little word
It's one thing to ban a word because it is a pitiless slur often used amid physical violence. That black people use it-and have forever-as a term of endearment among one another complicates matters somewhat, but whites who ask "Why can't we use it if they do?" have always struck me as disingenuous. It isn't rocket science to understand that words can have more than one meaning, and a sensible rule is that blacks can use the word but whites can't.

However, since the 1990s this rule has undergone mission creep, under which whites are not only not supposed to level the word as a slur, but are also not supposed to even refer to it. That idea has been entrenched for long enough now that it is coming to feel normal, but then normal is not always normal. It borders, as I suggested above, on taboo.

There are societies -such as many in Australia-in which it is forbidden to use ordinary language with in-laws, and this taboo is often extended even to referring to in-laws in conversation. Upon marrying, one must master a whole different vocabulary for talking to and/or about, for example, one's mother-in-law. Many are familiar with the click sounds in Xhosa. However, clicks didn't originate in Xhosa, but in lesser-known languages spoken by hunter-gatherers. Xhosa speakers, it is thought, adopted clicks from these other communities as part of an effort to create avoidance language, substituting them for ordinary sounds in Xhosa.

Practices like this sound neat to Americans-but also arbitrary. We understand that the practice is rooted in respect, but can't help thinking that the official practice has drifted somewhat beyond what logic would dictate. The idea that nonblacks cannot even soberly refer to the N-word verges on this kind of thing. Note the word verges: The N-word is a slur and loaded in a way that, say, asking your mother-in-law what she'd like for dinner is not; sparing usage and serious caution are warranted. Respect, nevertheless, has morphed into a kind of genuflection that an outsider might find difficult to understand.

That outsider could be an American time-traveler from as recently as the 1990s. Many of us still harbor a small collection of cassettes we just can't bear to chuck-mixtapes, toddlers telling stories, etc. One of mine is the first media interview I ever did, a radio talk-show episode on the N-word, in 1995. The host was white, the other guest was as well, and we had a discussion about the origins and current usage of that word, except that we used the real one.

The idea that we would euphemize the word as "the N-word" when we were talking about it rather than using it would not have occurred to any of us. It was a perfectly ordinary interview of the period. Sheck, who is in her 60s, was mature and working during this time and thus must remember when we were not so peculiarly uptight.

There are matters of art involved, of course. Even when discussing rather than wielding the word, people-including black ones-might avoid barking out the word any more than necessary. (Or avoid writing it more than necessary, as in this very essay.) Surely, its history means that it provokes negative associations; it doesn't sound good. Perhaps even the weird word niggardly ought to be let go. Accidentally, it just sounds too much like that other word to pass muster, especially when synonyms like stingy are so readily available. Those who use it should not be made to feel unfit for employment, as has actually happened. But it ought to be retired; in the same way, a German immigrant to America named Fahrt would discreetly change the name with all deliberate speed.
Read: Can educators ever teach the N-word?
But a white student so horrified at Sheck's uttering the N-word within the context of its usage by a black, crusading anti-racist figure such as James Baldwin that the student reports her to the authorities? It surely felt like Doing the Right Thing-but the problem is that when Spike Lee's film of (more or less) that title was playing in theaters, graduate students would have done no such thing.

Some will object that we moderns are more advanced than those '80s troglodytes, or at least that the discussion has progressed, enrichened, that justice is being better served. And I am under no illusion that this is merely a matter of a certain kind of white performative wokeness. Quite a few black people, including authors of whole books on the word, would agree that Sheck should never utter that word at all for any reason.

We might ask, though, what the reason for a diktat like that is. It conveys, certainly, a kind of power. Inevitably, here and there a nonblack person will either use the word in an unsanctioned way or, just as often, be revealed to have done so in the past. If the word is sinful even when referred to, then the ground is especially fertile for black Americans or white allies to express outrage. Enter the Teaching Moment, when we are reminded of black people's plight in a racist nation, our history in savagery and dismissal, the power of even subliminal racist bias.

The question, though, is whether this is a healthy or even productive way of wielding strength. The air of grim aggrievement exhibits a certain superficial brand of gravity. Ultimately, however, it proposes a cry of weakness as strength: The properly black position is supposed to be, "If you even utter this word to refer to it, even in doing so to criticize it, you have gravely injured me." And white allies look on and commit themselves to decrying the supposedly wounding act. But I wonder how many black people, if given a bit of pause to examine that proposition, can truly say that they see this as a sign of a healthy racial self-image. Why not strength in achievements? After all, we have quite a few to point to.

Baldwin told America, "I'm not a nigger." I suspect that in Sheck's seminar it came out that the slur referred to someone inferior, and even exploitable. I am someone susceptible to having that word leveled at him. If I were angry with Sheck for uttering the word in a sympathetic and sensitive discussion, that would make me seem, in being so hypersensitive to injury so abstract, inferior indeed. Furthermore, if nonblacks embrace this hypersensitivity as a way of showing that they are good people, they make me feel exploited.

But I am not their, well, you know, either.

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The Idea That Whites Can't Refer to the N-Word

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It's long been accepted that the slur shouldn't be used by white people to refer to black people. What about referring to the word itself? Laurie Sheck is a professor of creative writing at the New School in New York, a decades-long veteran of the classroom, a widely published novelist and essayist, and a Pulitzer nominee.

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Many of us assume our proximity to black people makes it O.K. for us to say the word. It's not.

By

Mr. Suarez is a music critic and writer.

Gina Rodriguez posted (and quickly deleted) a video of herself singing the N-word. Credit Axelle/Bauer-Griffin, via FilmMagic

On Tuesday, the actress Gina Rodriguez found herself the subject of social media shaming after posting a short clip of herself using the N-word while singing along to a Lauryn Hill rap verse. The "Jane the Virgin" star quickly deleted the clip and responded with a pat "sorry if you were offended" video, followed by another apology, this time as a note on Instagram, sharing vague promises of near-future self-reflection.

The flap was surely amplified by Ms. Rodriguez's checkered track record when it comes to the black community; on multiple occasions in the past couple of years she has been rightly called out for espousing anti-black sentiments and pitting Latinx women and black women against one another.

But even ignoring Ms. Rodriguez's history, the incident sheds light on an ugly truth about the unsettling comfort many Latinx people have with saying the N-word and the right they claim to have in using it. It also underscores a complicated dynamic between two marginalized groups, and what it means for them to experience both solidarity with and division from one another.

In urban neighborhoods across the country - from Corona, Queens, where I grew up, to Compton, Calif. - African-Americans and Latinx people live in close quarters, often segregated from whites through institutionalized or historically racist practices. As such, a cultural exchange has emerged naturally over decades, one that exists across local business cooperation, community organizing, cuisines and, notably, lexicon. African-American Vernacular English and Spanish-language slang come together outside the bodega or at the park.

In these multiracial neighborhoods, concerns and anxieties about discrimination and racism - especially when it comes to policing and policymaking - are inevitably shared by both groups. Because they are often targeted by the same forces as African-Americans, Latinx people can feel similarly aggrieved to the point of identifying their mistreatment as racist in nature.

But there are points at which the divide becomes more visible, or at least more complicated. In some cases, Afro-Latinx people make up a large part of the community - early in her career, the rapper Cardi B, who identifies as black and Latinx, found herself defending her blackness and her right to use the N-word after facing criticism.

And there are large portions of the Latinx population who do not identify as black (and may even identify as white). While it is arguably permissible for those who present as and identify as Afro-Latinx people to use the N-word without facing scrutiny (the criticism against Cardi B, for instance, has quieted as her star has risen), those who'd mark themselves as both white and Hispanic on a census form are a different category altogether.

Complicating this further is the ubiquity of American hip-hop as the prevailing youth culture. What once chiefly served as the sounds of urban artists speaking to their peers and neighbors has turned into the premier genre of choice for young Americans across races, dominating streaming platforms and heavily populating the Billboard charts. Given that the word's appearance in songs serves as part of a reclamation of the word by black artists and isn't intended to be used maliciously, many young people, regardless of skin color and including Latinx people, don't see repeating the word in rap lyrics as problematic.

One of the summer's biggest stateside smashes, " Otro Trago" by the Panamanian reggaeton singer Sech, features two distinct utterances of the word by the Puerto Rican rapper Darell. Some 19 weeks into its run on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the bad optics of a nonblack Latinx artist using the word on a song led by an Afro-Latinx artist evidently haven't harmed its popularity.

These factors have led to a mind-set among Latinx people that they get a pass in using the word. Yet when defending themselves, they rarely address the bleak history of the word. In a recent Buzzfeedinterview, the SoundCloud rapper Lil Pump pretended the controversy didn't exist, and freely used the word throughout the conversation.

And during a recent appearance on the New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97, the Puerto Rican and Cuban-American rapper Fat Joe equated Latinx people with African-Americans, adding that they "may even identify themselves with African and black culture more than black people." The comment prompted debate online, in part because his own long history of casual N-word usage fundamentally overlooked how the slur is weaponized against blacks in ways it cannot be against nonblack Latinx people such as himself.

The same can be said for Ms. Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez, another Latinx performer, who faced similar backlash nearly 20 years ago for using the word in the remix to her 2001 song "I'm Real."

Ms. Lopez, a Puerto Rican raised in the Bronx, had assumed that her background would shield her from objection. As a Puerto Rican raised in Chicago, Ms. Rodriguez assuredly assumed that singing along uncensored with one of her favorite hip-hop songs was a harmless act, one that millions of Americans do every week in their homes, out together with friends or en masse at rap concerts.

Perhaps within their inner circles and among their black friends they are able to use the word without consequence - the rapper Ja Rule, Ms. Lopez's featured guest on "I'm Real," defended her. (She also claimed in the midst of protests and opposition from major radio personalities over the single that it was he who wrote the lyric for her.) But as public figures whose language choices affect a greater number of people with different experiences and perspectives, it reflects poorly. And each star failed to understand the gravity of the word and its relationship to black pain, responding in tone-deaf, defensive non-apologies.

There is no justification for any white or white-presenting Latinx person to continue dropping the N-word knowing how hurtful it still is to Afro-Latinx and black peers, among whom a wider and arguably more contentious debate over its use as colloquial reclamation remains.

Only the eradication of the N-word from the Latinx vocabulary can truly rectify things going forward. Latinx people suffer our share of prejudice and demonization, and we ought to take an empathetic position in our own circles to end our role in adding to the suffering of our neighbors.

Gary Suarez is a music critic and writer born, raised and based in Queens, NY.
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Opinion | When Latinx People Use the N-Word

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Many of us assume our proximity to black people makes it O.K. for us to say the word. It's not. By Mr. Suarez is a music critic and writer. On Tuesday, the actress Gina Rodriguez found herself the subject of social media shaming after posting a short clip of herself using the N-word while singing along to a Lauryn Hill rap verse.

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