What does it mean to be a nigga in today’s society? Is it OK for people to use the term?

I myself have gone back and forth on this issue. Yet, I find it interesting that the word itself represents a major issue that goes on in our country. The word seems to divide our older and younger generations. Many older people say it has no place in our society, while many in the younger generation feel it has become a word in their everyday vocabulary. So I asked myself, what does it mean to be a nigga in today’s society?Trumaine: I don’t think the word nigga is so bad. I understand the historical value behind it, and I know it was not originally a word based on love and all that. But I also know that times have changed. The word has evolved and we have adopted it as our own.Mr. McCaskill: True. But why would you want ownership over such a word? You have become the main cause in your own destruction. Many people have died to change this mindset of being a nigger, yet our younger generation still glorifies it.Trumaine: But the older generation pretends as if we are stupid. We know the reality of our history and the word nigga. Truth be told, this country was built on racism. It was seen as a necessary evil at the time. So when you talk about history, you cannot teach it without injecting some form of racism into our children. The word nigga represents our history just as much as slavery. So why banish that and pretend it never happened?Mr. McCaskill: That’s not my point. The point is that the word nigger is destructive. It was meant to strip people of their identity and of their self-respect. Yet black people still try to glorify it. You cannot glorify destruction. The word has been passed from generation to generation like a genetic trait. Why would you continue to support this ignorance? Trumaine: We will not let the word die because it represents our history so well.  Chris Rock once said, “It’s the same as soul food. They gave us scraps and we made it into cuisine.”   In the wrong hands, that word can hurt.  But if you put the word into the hands of a true visionary such as Dave Chappelle, Dick Gregory, NWA, or Nas, then the word becomes art. It may seem terrible, but we have still embraced it just like soul food. Mr. McCaskill: You cannot tell me a time when nigger was acceptable. The word can be replaced in any sentence by any word on the planet, yet we still acknowledge it like it is a medal of honor. It is a word that has caused death, migration and segregation for hundreds of years. It is hurtful.Trumaine: We all know that context is key when using the word. I know the power of the word because I have been called a nigga by a white person. That mess was not cool. However, that does not stop me from using the word because I can see the difference between friendship and ignorance. The word was not originated to degrade our people. We give slave masters too much credit for that. They were ignorant white people who accidentally stumbled upon something when they continued to mispronounce Negro (the Spanish word for black). Mr. McCaskill: This is probably true. However, that does not make it OK. You have probably been called nigger once or twice in your life, while your grandfather and grandmother was called that on a regular basis. And now your president is called that on a regular basis. Truth be told, if you feel that white people cannot say it, then you are a hypocrite by saying the word holds no true power anymore. If you are offended, that shows it still has its original power. Trumaine: Just because white people cannot understand why they cannot use it does not mean we have to discontinue and the use of the word. Stop hating on the word just because it’s not universal. I feel they only get mad because there is a word that they cannot use anymore. They invented nigga, we were forced to take the meaning of the term away from them and reverse it, and now they want the rights to use it again.  Just because they used the term to destroy us does not mean we have to use it in the same way. The abuse of the word is why they have lost their privileges to be able to use it. Mr. McCaskill: If we truly understood our history, then we would know that this word does hurt people. Every time I hear it, I shake my head and cringe. It shows a sign of no knowledge of self and ignorance. White people know this. That is why they used the word so frequently and viciously. Words have power and we cannot deny that. When John Mayer tried to use it, it did not work. When Michael Richards tried to use it, it came back and hurt him. It did that because people are still offended by this word. We understand what people did to move forward and destroy it.Trumaine: However, by us ignoring the word it still allows white folks to speak for us. The word represents our history. And since they have no understanding of why we continue to say it, they make us feel ignorant for continuing the use of it. But, in the words of rap legends like Nas, when we want to speak about other issues in our history, our current conditions or even our plain existence, they refer to it as reverse racism. So today we are still in the condition we are in because we are split amongst our own people. That causes us to still not have a voice against the people who have never tried to understand us.Mr. McCaskill: OK, but at the end of the day the word is inappropriate. For example, what would you call a black man with a Ph. D? A nigger! There is something wrong with that. Our children must realize that there has been too much done to reverse this. The word represents a status of ignorance and if we plan on moving forward, we must leave that word behind.After realizing these two sides within myself, I question where you stand and if you feel the word has a place in our society or not and if we are acknowledging both sides in this issue equally? 

• TRUMAINE MCCASKILL