Our enemy is not the “N-word” itself; it’s whatever propels people to use it. We need healers, not language nannies.

The NAACP’s Mock Burial of Its Relevance
By Mark Reynolds

It was grand sociopolitical theater, kick-ass agitprop for the digital age. They played the funeral motif up to the hilt, they left no stone unturned. The somber procession culminated in a ceremony attended by numerous dignitaries. A bevy of speakers gave moving eulogies. And everyone went away satisfied once the symbolic shovels of dirt were heaped upon the casket.

And thus did the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pat itself on the back on 9 July, having buried the word “nigger” on the first day of its annual convention, held this year in Detroit. It took, apparently, the transgressions of Michael Richards last fall for some black people to discover – “I’m shocked, shocked!” they must have said – that black folks have been using the word, or offshoots like “nigga”, for years as terms of endearment. The infamous sartorial judgments issued in the spring by Don Imus, while not “nigger”-centric, served to fan the flames, especially when he attempted to justify his choice of words by saying that black rappers talk like that all the time, therefore it’s okay for him, too.

The ensuing debate kept pundits, race observers, hip-hop artists and activists, and a linguist or two busy for a week or so. Some argued that when blacks use “nigger” or “nigga”, it’s a deliberate attempt to declaw a word from its toxic history and all that it symbolizes. Others held that any use at all was a symbol of ongoing black self-loathing, the ultimate remnant of internalized degradation. Everyone blamed black standup comics and rappers for the modern dissemination of “nigger” into pop culture; some of them promptly got religion and swore off their wayward habits (though none to the dramatic effect of the Africa-inspired epiphany Richard Pryor related in his 1982 concert film Live on the Sunset Strip).

In the aftermath of the mock funeral, many applauded the NAACP for doing a mighty good thing by burying “nigger” and proclaiming that black people should no longer use the word or any permutation of it, however collegial or subversive the intent. And the world seemed awfully receptive, judging by the massive amount of favorable news coverage the event received. It was also an effective media moment on at least two other tactical levels. It showed that the venerable organization, not often linked with the cutting-edge of black culture, has been paying attention to the year’s hottest black pop brouhaha. And it distracted people from asking the musical question, “What are you going to do now that your most recent president, former Verizon executive Bruce Gordon, bailed after only 19 months on the job, and now that money’s so tight you’ve had to lay off a third of your headquarters staff?”

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