(ThyBlackMan.com) White privilege has granted the white American with an advantage over the rest of the nation. White teens are able to dress in demonic Goth clothing, satanic heavy metal t-shirts, and a whole assortment of “offensive” garb without societal retribution that tells them to pull their pants up. White men can sport a “plumber’s crack” from here to Albuquerque and actually be proud of showing the world their ass crack without any legislature attempting to pass a law telling them to pull their pants up. A rich and privileged white man who was a “C” student can become The President of the United States of America and never face one single derogatory comment in regards to his race, but an outstanding and brilliant former President of the Harvard Law Review is constantly mocked as a nigger, a spear-chucker with a bone through his nose, and a preemptively shot chimpanzee who was trying to pass health care reform. White privilege is so ingrained into the American psyche that many white-Americans are letting their perceived loss of privilege drive them to 
distraction. I witnessed it in a business meeting just yesterday as a cohort invoked the term “affirmative action” in regards to a limited global redistribution of my company’s Information Technology resources.
Dr. Laura Schlesinger is one such privileged white woman. Her fatal flaw proved to be her crossing of the boundary of the one privilege that a white person no longer has in America. She demonstrated her emotional reaction to a perceived loss of power, just as my cohort did, by clumsily utilizing the one word that white Americans are not allowed to say; nigger. Dr. Laura’s rant was not about making a political statement in regards to the African-American community; it was about reasserting her privilege to say the word “nigger” based on the usage of the word “nigga” in black popular culture.
Hip-Hop is often demonized for using the word “nigga” and as with all words; the meaning of the usage of the word is contextual. In Hip-Hop culture, it is not used to degrade; it is not used to insult; it is meant to say brother. Hip-Hop realized that no matter what the African-American people achieved in this country, we would still be seen as “niggers” by others and so Hip-Hop decided to reverse the power of the word. It is akin to a Sumo wrestler using his opponent’s weight against him. Hip-Hop decided to own it and to reverse its power by putting in the face of white America every day as if to say, this is your litmus test and you are going to face your history every time you hear this word. You are going to know what it is to be denied a privilege for the first time in your history and you are going to know the sting of racism and discrimination because if you say it, then I will kick your ass. If you say it, then you will be the one who is lynched.
I am a 38 year old professional African-American man with BS and a MBA in progress. I am not a stereotypical African-American man and many of my peers would be stunned to hear me take this position, but I am a staunch liberationist and this is my perspective. I believe that the reason that the African-American community is even having this debate is to earn the approval of the white Americans and to relieve their discomfort at having their lost privilege waived in their faces. It is further supported by the notion of “reverse-racism” which is a term that I find racist in and of itself. Racism is racism in either direction and with any combination of people. It’s another example of the historical separate-but-equal treatment that African-Americans have received over the past 100 or so years in America. We can’t even have the term “racism” in common. And, neither can we have the word “nigger”. African-Americans don’t call each other “niggers”, we call each other “niggas”. I believe that the usage of the word “nigga” is therapeutic in the right conditions.
As a liberationist, I believe that the African-American community needs to stop trying to appease and please the white American community. We need to stop trying to ease their suffering at the loss of this one privilege. It is not that I wish for separation of the races, but it is that I wish for African-Americans to stop trying to fit into the white man’s box. American integration does not equal being a white person. I wish for African-Americans to stop reacting to how white America wants us to be. We have yet to define ourselves as a people so the word “nigga” has been used in that vacuum as a form of open African-American cultural rebellion. Again, we have an African-American President who would fit in any box that they deemed well enough for themselves, yet for many white Americans, he will never be white-like enough to relieve their sense of lost privilege. The word “nigger” is a white American’s litmus test and personally I like knowing who is who. We all know that many of them use the word liberally when we are not around and that they never ever need us to validate their usage of the word. All of Dr. Laura’s African-American listeners now know who she is thanks to our popular usage of the word “nigga”. Her hood has been lifted from her head and she can no longer enrich herself at the hands of “niggers” as she would put it.
Staff Writer; Blackfrankluntz
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