Of "N-Words" and "Niggers"

This recent report on Quentin Tarantino's backstage presser at the Golden Globe leads me back down well traveled paths regarding America's most debated, provocative and complex phrase. The Salon.com article states that in a back stage interview with the press Tarantino's use of the word "Nigger" so disturbed the reporters that issued "audible gasps" due to his word choice. It would seem that Tarantino assumed the press would return to the question of the use of "nigger" in his character's mouths and was prepared to continue the conversation. Though the conversation was not reported on verbatim (despite the seeming explosiveness of his word choice), Tarantino apparently was on the verge of violating all that is sacred and holy among the Hollywood beat reporters. Clutch the pearls! I am not going to defend nor condemn, Quentin Tarantino and his choices, there are moments in his films where I believe his use of "nigger" is gratuitous, incredible (as in lacking credibility) pornographic.

This is a cringer due to the lack of organic placement of the term and Tarantino's visible excitement at its use. However, there are times when I believe his placement to be reflective of his characters and their social/cultural dispositions.

The ultimate merits of these two types of instances I leave to the reader but I will say that if Tarantino in his interview was using the word as an object, as in "the use of 'nigger' in my movies" vs. as a subject or signifier as in, "that nigger right there pissed me off", if even in vapor inducing repetition, than I would prefer that to the use of the weak kneed, "n-word". I for one could not support the absolute banishment of the word, nigger, from public use. There are moments clearly where it is not appropriate or appreciated but it remains a part of the English language and substituting it with a passive aggressive attempt to be sensitive to the feelings of Black people is as cowardly as the use of the word itself can be malevolent. I do not write this out of some attempt to justify the use of the word among Black people. I use the word and understand what I mean when I use it in the various ways that I use it and have come to understand the irrationality of trying to explain that. Either you know or you don't. However I refuse to buy into the "n-word" until this society shows as much passion for prison abolition as it does for the substitution of the "n-word" for the word "nigger". I refuse to buy in to the "n-word" until this society shows as much shock over the liquidation of our civil liberties under the "War on Drugs as it does over the use of the word "nigger" as an object in context of larger points. And finally I will buy into the "n-word" when the the disgust and outrage over the history and circumstances that gave the word "nigger" such atrocious power equals the disgust and outrage that is ginned up over the use of the word in reasonable context.

Update: This is an example of the problematic use of the word "nigger".