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N-word debate is not really open to all

Sofiya Ballin is an Inquirer staff writer This past week, I realized the N-word debate is gearing up to be as old as the word itself.

President Obama waves after speaking at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton, where he was joined by comedian Larry Wilmore (left), Michelle Obama, and Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal.
President Obama waves after speaking at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton, where he was joined by comedian Larry Wilmore (left), Michelle Obama, and Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal.Read moreSUSAN WALSH / Associated Press

Sofiya Ballin

is an Inquirer staff writer

This past week, I realized the N-word debate is gearing up to be as old as the word itself.

Before comedian Larry Wilmore could even complete the second syllable of "nigga" at the end of his White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30, a hailstorm of think pieces and tweets began to swirl. Many loved it or hated it.

But here's why I wasn't offended by Wilmore's use of it to refer to the first black president of the free world.

My father always told me that when he came to this country from Jamaica in the late '80s, he never understood why black people called each other "nigga."

After living here for a few months and experiencing a different, more concentrated breed of racism, in a country where he was a minority and treated like one, he understood it.

He said he realized it was a way of saying we were "facing the same oppression and racism."

My experience is similar.

For me, it wasn't until my last year of college and my first year working full time that I began to use it.

Working in a predominantly white space and seeing black death repeatedly on TV news, while everyone was going on with their day, I felt isolated.

There were times when another young black writer and I would just look at each other in dismay and say, "My nigga . . ."

In that moment it was a word of solidarity, an acknowledgment that said, "Yes, this is how the world sees us, but we have each other."

This argument doesn't sit well with many in the black community, who are dead set against the use of the word. I understand that as well. To say the history of the N-word is ugly, is an understatement of the highest disrespect.

But its usage or lack of usage is a conversation to be had within the black community, white input not required. Shocker, I know.

Public service announcement to white people: It doesn't matter what you feel or think about the word.

"Bu-"

Don't.

"Wh-"

Don't

"How come-"

Don't.

Simple as that. And the desire to take part in the conversation or broach the "Why can't we use it?" debate is quite bothersome and a little sickening. In the words of Philly native, academic, and media commentator Marc Lamont Hill on CNN, "Why would you want to?"

He added, "We share a collective condition known as nigga; white people don't. I'm not saying it should be illegal for white people to use it. I'm saying [you] shouldn't want to use it given everything that's happened after 400 years of exploitation and institutional racism."

Yet, commentators like British journalist Piers Morgan was one of the many who fired back at Wilmore for using the word. Explaining why he "feels" black people shouldn't use it and reminded us, lest we forget, that Wilmore and Obama are not "niggers." (I could hear the hard "er" as I read it and had to close my laptop.)

Morgan, and many white commentators, are speaking of an experience they will never truly understand. Not only that, he's telling black people what he "feels" they should do and how they should interpret and express their love, joy, and pain.

Probably knowing this, Morgan cited a bit by legendary comedian Richard Pryor, who stopped using the word after going to Africa and seeing there "were no niggas" there.

But in this country, as my father learned, the word for some has become a sort of bridge. Whether you condone it or not, it has.

In many instances, the black community has had to master the ability to make something out of nothing, to find joy in pain and, in this case, to somehow make love out of hate.

Wilmore told the Washington Post in an interview:

"When I think of the words that have been used against us and how we have turned them around, I thought of Obama and how he as an icon has turned upside-down [ideas of] black leadership and the conceptions of that. For me to turn this word upside down on this occasion was almost like a private moment we would share in this very public way."

What really made people uncomfortable was that Wilmore brought the country's traumatic, triumphant, complicated, and contradictory history on that stage, talking about a White House we built but never got to live in and lead from, until now.

In speaking truth, he showed love, in his way, with the word that was supposed to destroy us.

sballin@philly.com