Everything Matters
When “Nigger” Has No Meaning
By Patrice Gaines
Thursday, June 22, 2006

Warning: This is about the “N” word. I know it still riles a good number of Black people, reminding some of Black men swinging from trees or any measure of ways in which Black people have been treated as if they were less than human. I know some people can’t tolerate any form of the word, whether it ends in “er,” “ah” or “a.” I understand. But I’m not one of those people.

The word “nigger” doesn’t bother me.

I first heard it sometime around second grade. I recount the story in my memoir because it is something I will never forget. I was living on a military base. My two best friends were White. One day the three of us sat at the edge of a creek talking about a new girl named Mary Ann. She was the only other little “colored” girl our age in our neighborhood.

“My mother said Mary Ann and her parents are niggers,’” Lucy announced.

“What is a nigger?,” asked Charlotte.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.

None of us knew. It was adults who had given the word definition and reality. They breathed life into six letters with acts of hatred. We were clueless. None of us had done or witnessed anything that made the word real.

We figured it was something adults knew about. Lucy’s parents had introduced her to the word, so I turned to my mother for a definition.

“A nigger is someone with a dirty mind,” Mama said.

Years later I would think that at that moment my mother had set me up for a great disappointment in life. She had to know that one day I would find out the truth and that most likely it would come more harshly than she could have given it. But at the time her explanation made perfect sense to me because Mary Ann lived in an unkempt house. Most surely her family also had a dirty mind, I figured.

This was my truth until we moved to Beaufort, South Carolina and I learned there were Black children who heard the word “nigger” long before their seventh birthday. By this time I had come to understand the story behind the picture of Emmett Till’s disfigured face in Jet magazine. I had learned about Rosa Parks and knew there were White people who did not want Black folks to sit down on a bus. I saw White people, their faces taunt with hatred, screaming “nigger!” at children who wanted nothing more than to go to school.

After those experiences I understood the hate behind the word—and the reason the word was hated. I hated it, too. When I saw the word, I saw the blood of every Black man lynched, every Black slave woman raped by her master, every ounce of blood spilled so that I could be freer. I grew a large afro and put my fist in the air because I could not put it against the heads of all the White people I was angry with. “Black power!” was my retort to those who looked at me and saw “nigger.”

At some point, though, as I got older I had to set out on a journey to find myself, to ask the seemingly unavoidable question: “Who am I?” It took me years and many mistakes but when I arrived at my core I found a holy and divine spirit. No nigger, no bitch or whore or anything bad. An independent, beautiful, Black woman.

Now that Rosa Parks has left this earth to stand—or sit—on high holy ground, she must see the truth in every direction: There are no “niggers.” Not in the old sense of the word. I say this with all due respect to my elders, or those who because of tragic experiences, are still pained by this word. We Black people have been wounded and the pain that continues is an indication of the healing that must still take place. Of course, the people who sling that word with anger, bolstering it with hatred, need healing, too.

But there is no need to wait any longer. If you think of words as arrows flying around, then some are filled with poison and others are filled with a love potion. If at my core there is a bull’s-eye of a wound filled with anger—and fear—then that poison-tipped arrow will hit my wound every time. If I remove the anger and fear, the bull’s-eye disappears. Then that word filled with venom can’t touch what remains. The arrow dissolves on impact.

Reacting to the word “nigger” is just that—a reaction. To change the meaning of the word is an act of power. It took people younger than me to open the door for this opportunity. They were born into a world where they do not hear racial epithets every day. That doesn’t mean they don’t know there is racism. They refuse to be a slave to a word.

Now that the door is open, I say, “Follow the children and let the healing begin.”

 

Patrice Gaines is a career journalist and author of "Laughing in the Dark: From Colored Girl to Woman of Color—A Journey from Prison to Power and Moments of Grace.” She lives outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, where she is co-founder of The BrownAngelCenter, a program for women who have been incarcerated.