I don't want to start a war here, but here is my problem:

I really don't know when black people started to use the word "nigger" amongst themselves, but I do know that they use it to take whatever power the word had away from it. I agree with this as a principal, but as I spent more time considering, and watching how the word is used and what it's effects are, I have changed my mind.

Since hip-hop went mainstream, and the black pioneers spoke with their "street" accents, the word seems to have transformed from "Nigger" to "Nigga", and I would like to know if black people see a difference. Is there a difference? Has the word become two with two different meanings?

If the word has become two words, with two meanings, then isn't the whole thing for nothing? How does the word "nigger" lose its power if it really isn't "nigger" that blacks use as salutation amongst each other?

One more thing on the first subject...if the word is used to take the power out of it, why then does it still have the same effect when a white person says it? If I call a black man a Nigger today, he will react the same way he would have 30 years ago.

And on the other end of that, should the word (either of them) be used at all? I don't believe so. I think that the use of the word "nigger" in any way shape or form only keeps the word in circulation, when society should have long since forgotten it. By saying it all the time, it stays on people's minds, and the morons who are racist have ammunition.

Any thoughts?

Since hip-hop went mainstream, and the black pioneers spoke with their "street" accents, the word seems to have transformed from "Nigger" to "Nigga", and I would like to know if black people see a difference. Is there a difference? Has the word become two with two different meanings?
Of course it is one word.
This question seems rather odd to me coming from someone who chose the moniker "JDawg" (and chose to spell it that way).




if the word is used to take the power out of it, why then does it still have the same effect when a white person says it? If I call a black man a Nigger today, he will react the same way he would have 30 years ago.

Have you read this thread yet? (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=1076817#post1076817)
I said...

Calling a black person "Nigger" was always seen as a derogatory term meant solely to demean, oppress and control blacks.
To take that power away from whites, blacks claimed ownership of the term.
If your master beats you with a whip, take his whip away from him, and he can no longer beat you, therefore he can no longer be your master.

Furthermore, “Nigger” is based on the Latin word “Niger”, meaning black.
Since there is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about in being black, someone calling you black should not be offensive.
In fact, it can very well be a term of camaraderie - especially when people have a common ground of being oppressed.
Oppression breeds strength through perseverance. Common oppression breeds camaraderie.
You are brothers in arms fighting against a common oppressor.

However, when used by whites with the intention of it being an insult or derogatory term, then it is, of course, wrong because the point was for it to be offensive, so why should they not take offense?
It all comes down to intention.

Does that help clear it up?

and...

Blacks have earned ownership of the term.
They have paid for it with their suffering.
Whites, on the other hand, have no right to it.

When asked about whether a white guy that hangs out with black guys should be "allowed" to use it, I responded...
That is a privelage that he has to earn and has to be granted by the group, and often times it is.
I am white and spent most of my time growing up with blacks.
They used to always refer to me as "my nigga" but I would never call them that, because I saw it as a sign of disrespect, even though it would have been OK with them.
I felt I hadn't earned it (see above post) and it would be disrespectful for me to use without having earned the right.
I considered them brothers, but we were not brothers in arms with regard to that struggle.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject.

Blacks have alot of self hate.
Not only do blacks call each other nigger, they also muder and rape each other at much higher rates then do any other group of people.

You don't see any other groups act like blacks do, Jews don't call each other kikes, or whites call each other honkey, or mexicans call each other beaners, or Asians call each other chinks.

Blacks lack of intelligence shines through in many ways.

From the look at the first post, it is clear the thread starter is a racist.

Nigger is a dergoatory term based on the word "negro". Negro means black.
It is used in slang in different connotations. The difference is only relative to the person using the word.

One might use it as a derogatory term.
One might use it to mean black brother.
One might use it to mean man.

I do not use the "N-Word", but I know people use it in different ways. I do not go around making racist comments such as "why do black people do this" or "why do white people do that". There is only one race, and that is the human race. There is only one people, and that is the humans of the earth. I do joke around about the different so called categories of people to make fun of racists such as the starter of this thread.

You'd have to question the intelligence level of anyone that would use either term.

This is one of those things that can be applied universally to everybody. You see gay guys calling each other "fag" all the time, or jewish people using anti semetic slurs in jest. As opposed to singling it out to a specific racial context, It would be more interesting to discuss the inner workings of the 'tough love' social bonding routine.

Blacks lack of intelligence shines through in many ways.D'ster, am I the only person on this website who is getting fed up with your racist remarks? If you want to talk about lack of intelligence, how about an entire majority-white nation that elected a man as President who can't even speak his own native language fluently--the most basic indicator of intelligence?Blacks have alot of self hate.I'm not sure I've ever encountered an ethnic group that at least talks about self-hate more than the Jews. They actually have "Jewish self-loathing support groups."

For that matter, hatred of the "white race" by white people became quite fashionable in the 1960s and 70s. Many young members of the white majority were so ashamed of the atrocities committed by their elders against people of other races, that they were overcome with guilt by association. I knew several "white" people back then who passed themselves off as black or Latino. (And this was before Affirmative Discrimination made it profitable.) There's another thread going on about the definition of racism, and the phenomenon of people hating their own race is discussed there.They also murder and rape each other at much higher rates then do any other group of people.And you have the research to support this remarkable assertation? You have at least once before tried to correlate rates of conviction and imprisonment with frequency of criminal behavior, and you didn't get away with it on that thread either. People who are both poor and discriminated against are invariably more likely to end up in jail for all the reasons that were set forth on that thread, and it has very little to do with their actual crime rate. Just compare the percentage of the black and white American population convicted of drug crimes with the statistics on actual drug use among those populations and it's a no-brainer that white people are simply allowed to get away with stuff that black people are nailed for. The same is true of everything from speeding and zoning law violations to rape and murder.

Besides, aren't you the same guy who tried to tell us on another thread that it's those nasty immigrants who are committing all the rapes, rather than native born citizens? How about if you at least try to keep your stories straight?Not only do blacks call each other nigger. . . you don't see any other groups act like blacks do, Jews don't call each other kikes, or whites call each other honkey, or mexicans call each other beaners, or Asians call each other chinks.Horse puckey! Mexicans throw around the term "beaner" so often that it's almost lost its offensiveness. They joke about Latinos with college degrees and good jobs being "beaners with Beemers." Listen to any Latino comedian from the era of Cheech and Chong to George Lopez and you'll hear all the "bad words."

"Chink" is a long-obsolete word. But back in the 1960s when it first became fashionable for ethnic minorities to appropriate the white man's racial epithets, Asian-Americans began calling each other "Buddha-heads" in much the same way.

White people don't do it? "Honky" is like "Chink," nobody of any ancestry uses that word any more. But we call each other and ourselves "hillbillies," "white trash," and dozens of other names. How about Gretchen Wilson singing about herself as a "Redneck Woman"? Since Americans are the most resolutely ignorant people on earth when it comes to learning foreign languages, most Americans simply don't know any of the insulting words that immigrants have for us. If we did, we'd happily toss them around too. We call ourselves "gringos," white people in Hawaii call themselves "haole," and women of Christian ancestry in cities with large Jewish populations call themselves "shikses."

"Kayk" is a Yiddish word. Your ignorance occasionally soars to truly astounding heights. I guess that's why we always look forward to reading your posts.

From the look at the first post, it is clear the thread starter is a racist.

Maybe you should go back and read it, instead of looking.

Nigga and nigger are different. For one thing, white's say "nigger," blacks say "yo nigga," and then, it's typically blacks of a particular subculture. Older or more educated blacks tend to never use either term.

Just like "whatever" and "whateva" are different? It seems to me that people get lazy when they speak, so they end all "ing" words with "in." Like, I'm goin to da sto. What in the hell? I am one of the few people I know that is not lazy in speech.

I sound like an Austrian Jewish Mexican Colin Powell. With a high voice.

D'ster:

You last post is clearly racist. The next post of that kind will result in you being banned from the forum for one week.

Out of curiousity, has anyone read "The Bell Curve?" I have a copy of it. Though I never read it cover to cover, I'll flip around and it has a lot of interesting figures about demographics and intelligence.

You don't see any other groups act like blacks do, Jews don't call each other kikes, or whites call each other honkey, or mexicans call each other beaners, or Asians call each other chinks.

Actually, me and my friends make racist comments about our own race for kicks. Also, when I lived in the dorms my freshman year, we had a black roommate (3 white, one black). It was so fun... our black roommate would bring in his friends, also black, and we would all act racist for fun. It was great.

(actually this is not a reply to D'ster as I cannot find myself to be serious enough to do so with him, it is for a setup).

I had this conversation with my GF the other day. I, as a black man, HATE the use of both words. It fricking amazes me the ignorace of some people. On another note: The word is used by all races now. I hear whites and latinos call each other nigga. It's phucking stupid - almost as stupid as D'ster but not as offensive.

What do you think about a black man calling a white man "honkey" broadandbeaver?

Do you think that is different from a white man calling a mexican a "spic"?

I see 'nigger' and 'nigga' as the same word spoken with different accents. It's comparable to 'what' and 'wot', which are the same word, except the latter is said with a British accent. But unlike 'wot', 'nigga' has gained a connotation different from the same word said in the general accent.

You don't see any other groups act like blacks do, Jews don't call each other kikes, or whites call each other honkey, or mexicans call each other beaners, or Asians call each other chinks.
Have you not seen "Mind of Mencia"? The host of the show is a Mexican. Sometimes in his show, he shows random celebrities and other people, and has this weird Mexican narrator say to those people, "You're a beaner!".

Have you tried not being racist, sir? It's actually quite fun and wholesome, not being prejudiced of different races and all. I encourage you to try it, if only for kicks.

D'ster, am I the only person on this website who is getting fed up with your racist remarks?
No sir, you are not. ;)

Lets face it. It all boils down to the fact that gangsta's have shit for pronunciation.

Lets face it. It all boils down to the fact that gangsta's have shit for pronunciation.
It's a different accent. You wouldn't say the same of British people, would you?

Silly British, they cannot speak English :p

However from what little knowledge I have, I think the US's first dictionaries actually spelled words differently from the Birtish to make us even more seperate. Color or colour?

Silly British, they cannot speak English :p

However from what little knowledge I have, I think the US's first dictionaries actually spelled words differently from the Birtish to make us even more seperate. Color or colour?
Yeah, I think it was Webster that changed the way we spelt words. Taking U out of some words was one of those changes. Another was taking the A and O out of AE and OE combinations ('encyclopaedia', 'aeon', 'oestrogen', 'foetus'). Then there's the -ise/-ize difference ('criticise' as opposed to 'criticize'). And one of our changes that they adopted for themselves is cutting off the K after IC at the end of some words ("publick" used to be an acceptable spelling).

It's interesting to note that American English is more archaic in both sound and vocabulary than British English. It used to be that when the American Revolution came about, we all still pronounced terminal Rs and the A sound in 'ass', instead of rendering it as "ahss" (and spelling it "arse"). And we've been saying 'trash' since Shakespeare, but sometime after the Revolution, the British started using 'rubbish'.

Silly British, they cannot speak English :p

That's fosho ;)

However from what little knowledge I have, I think the US's first dictionaries actually spelled words differently from the Birtish to make us even more seperate. Color or colour?

What the British should have realized was that they had their words misspelled and the Americans were just correcting them :D .

It's a different accent. You wouldn't say the same of British people, would you?

And in all seriousness, when does mispronunciation become an valid accent? Don't get me wrong, I see exactly where you're coming from. At the same time, however, I wouldn't necessarily put the total elimination of the conjugations of the verb "to be" under the catagory of a dialect.

Then again --that's just me.

Maybe you should go back and read it, instead of looking.
WTF.

From the look at the first post, it is clear the thread starter is a racist.

Not at all. I really am curious, and if that sounds ignorant and naive, then I am guilty of that , but not racism.

I do not go around making racist comments such as "why do black people do this" or "why do white people do that".

If I had said, "Why do black people love fried chicken and watermelon," or "Why is it that black people are so damned stupid," then yes, I'd be making a racist comment. But what I am doing is asking a valid question...in black culture, the word "Nigger" is a commonly used word, even if it is used mainly by the younger generations.

I think you're being overly sensitive. It isn't racist for me to ask with the hopes of having a better understanding of the culture.

There is only one race, and that is the human race. There is only one people, and that is the humans of the earth.

That's not the case, though, coolskill, and you know it. What you're doing here is trying to sound like the most PC one of the group, and trying to be the Hero by "standing up" against supposed racists such as myself (though you are the only one who's accused me of such), when really what you say has no validity. The truth is that everyone is different, right down to the person. Our differences have bred widely unique cultures, and I think that's the spice of life. If we were all just one group of people with no differences, then life would be boring.

At the same time, fear and lack of understanding breeds racism. By asking questions, trying to understand through learning, you're trying to bridge the gap. And not so I can dress a certain way, or act a certain way, or talk a certain way; just so I can know what I'm talking about.

And the very bottom line of this whole thing is that I was curious, so I asked a question. It wasn't racially insensitve or cruel.

One_Raven, thank you for being just about the only person on this thread to actually answer my question. I thought it was eloquent and to the point. I agree with just about everything you said...save two points. Here they are:

First, you say that it is one word. I only asked that because, from a few people I've asked, they have claimed that it is, in fact, two words, and there is a difference. The word with the "er" at the end is derragatory, while the one with the "a" or "ah" at the end is a salutation. I wanted to know how the gerenal population felt about that.

Second, you said that by taking the word, they are taking the whip away from their master, so they won't get whipped any more. But with this, I disagree. I feel, as I have stated, that the effect is the same. The truth is that word still has the same negative, dehumanizing effect. The whip analogy works still; the whip, in my opinon, is now being put on a shelf, on display, as opposed to being taken away. That is just my opinion, and I could be wrong. I'm not black, and I have never felt the effect of the word.

Would you care to comment further, One_Raven?

And please...understand, again, that I'm not racist. I'm just curious.

Nigger please.
Nigga is not a word.
Nigger and nigga are used interchangeably. Just like Water and Wata.
Really, there is no such thing as the word nigga. The word is nigger, and you can pronounce it how it is normally pronounced, or pronounce it nigga. Either way you wish to ponounce it, the word is still water or nigger.


I am not being overly sensetive. If a nigger posts a stupid thread asking why certain niggers of certain color behave in a certain way, it is indeed ignorant. It is also racist.
Intellectual niggers don't post racist implications in the form of a question.

Ignorance is not the lack of knowledge.
Ignorance is the lack of desire for knowledge.

There is only one race of niggers, and that is the human race.
Racism = The beleif that humankind consists of more than one race. Evey nigger on this planet belongs to the same race. The human race. There are no differences between races because the are no different races. There are differences between individual niggers because all individual niggers are different.

The belief that there are different races of humans is a belief of a racist. You believe this. You are one racist nigger. There is nothing PC or heroic about this fact. Ony one seriously racist nigger would attribute being PC to a simple fact of humanity.

Racism is not simply asking questions about why black niggers eat watermelons. Watermelons happen to be delicious. Racism is a belief about human kind being more than one race.


First, you say that it is one word. I only asked that because, from a few people I've asked, they have claimed that it is, in fact, two words, and there is a difference. The word with the "er" at the end is derragatory, while the one with the "a" or "ah" at the end is a salutation. I wanted to know how the gerenal population felt about that.
Nigger puhleeeez!

This pointless question is about trying to classify slangs which have no classification. Niggers can use any word they want to in any way they can. Nigger by definition is a derogatory term. In slang, it is used in coutnless ways. None of which are that difficult to figure out.
Either way, you are one racist nigger.
Just like the girls on the block always say: Trust no nigger!

It's interesting to note that American English is more archaic in both sound and vocabulary than British English. It used to be that when the American Revolution came about, we all still pronounced terminal Rs and the A sound in 'ass', instead of rendering it as "ahss" (and spelling it "arse"). And we've been saying 'trash' since Shakespeare, but sometime after the Revolution, the British started using 'rubbish'.

Ummm, here in Scotland we actually pronounce the "r" in "arse". It's not just a poncy way of saying "ass" which came later.

"Arse", from Old English ærs "tail, rump," from Proto-Germanic root arsoz (cf. Old Norse ars, Middle Dutch ærs), meaning anus, and by extension the crease between the buttocks of any animal, but especially the human bottom, with many cognates such as German Arsch, Dutch aars (meaning anus), Greek orros "tail, rump, base of the spine," Hittite arrash, Old Irish err "tail" has been connected with it. The Scots form is 'erse'. In English first attested c.1400 in arce-hoole.