Page 1 of 2 Say it loud, say it proud: Nigger vs the N-word
By Geoffrey Sherwood
Editor's note: New York's city council this week voted unanimously to
approve a resolution calling for New Yorkers to stop using the word "nigger".
The ban is symbolic and will not be enforced.
There's a movement to eliminate "nigger" from US vernacular, and replace it
with "the N-word". Only an angst-hobbled Caucasian or a black American
surrounded by angst-hobbled Caucasians could think up such a harebrained
scheme. I've got news for fans of the insipid "the N-word". "Nigger" is here to
stay.
Many white folks would have been denied early entre to Black
America without the rough and ready use of "nigger". I was six when Johnny
Northrup made the necessary introductions. We were standing at the end of his
driveway on Garden Street, in Rocky Hill, Connecticut (in spite of our location
above of the Mason-Dixon Line, we Yankees still had occasion to use the word).
We just stood there, me not knowing for what.
Just as Johnny knew would happen right about that time, the front door to
Johnny's house opened and out popped a woman. "That," Johnny proclaimed, as
sure as a steel I-beam, "is a nigger." I squinted at what he was pointing at
and thought in one of those straight inferential lines that only a six-year-old
can think: What's different? Oh! Black face. Nigger! Another truckload of tar
on the road to enlightenment.
It came in handy after we moved to Connecticut's hardscrabble capital city,
Hartford, home to more blacks and Puerto Ricans than whites. At age 11, my best
friend was a black kid named Bruce Vaughan. One day, we were playing
king-of-the-hill on the dirt pile that Reverend Zezzo was going to use as the
base of a new stone patio. Bruce was getting the best of me, so I elbowed him,
and he slugged me in the gut as payback.
I had learned a few things since I learned "nigger". Between gasping and tears,
I unleashed, "All you niggers should go back to Africa!" This was my ace in the
hole. Bruce's face dropped. He took on the quiet countenance of a boy without a
meaner retort. Without a word, he trudged down the dirt pile, through three
back yards, back home.
Next day, Bruce called. "Hey, Geoff. My mom's not home. Wanna come over? We can
go up on the roof and throw chunks of chimney brick at cars." "Sure", I
answered. Even then, we knew that words, dictionary definitions, and intent did
not always march together in lockstep.
One day, Bruce and I caught a couple of Puerto Rican kids our age in the
neighborhood. Black and white in the same neighborhood is one thing. Puerto
Ricans are another. We had to draw the line somewhere, we thought. They were
amazingly fast. We were fast, too, and could run all day without getting
winded. But they somehow stayed a hundred feet in front of us for a solid mile,
over dirt, pavement, and chain-link fences. Fear will do that to you. Maybe
it's also what kept us a hundred feet back.
Johnny Northrup hadn't taught me about territorial limits. The chase ended at
Cherry Street, which Bruce and I quickly learned was a colony of Puerto Rico.
Bruce must have thought that behind every Puerto Rican was a black avenger,
because he plunged into the thick of a crowd of relatives and acquaintances of
our quarry. I stayed back a safe distance.
There was lots of amused laughter from the crowd. Oye! When was the last time
we had a nigger on Cherry Street? It was cause for celebration and a few
flurries of fists. No permanent damage. Just a message to the unwise and
unwelcome. Bruce was sniffling a bit, but no blubbering, as he meekly shuffled
back to me, the rear guard, while holding his sore gut. He never questioned my
cowardice, and I never questioned his bravery.
Back home, I sought solace from my father, who was fixing something in the
basement. I described for him a mob of filthy Spics mercilessly whaling on
"us". "What is it with those goddamned Spics?" I asked, in a rising, quavering
voice. His answer was a withering look, like I was a dog turd that had sprouted
legs and lips. "Get outta here," he snarled. "And don't come back until you can
talk some sense." More tar.
That was one thing about Dad. Never once did I ever hear him say "nigger" or
"Spic" or any term that denigrates any possible category of human beings other
than evildoers, who, he made clear, were a sub-category of the human race in
all its colors and creeds. Not that I didn't think he had occasional cause.
Once, Grandma got mugged by a black man outside her apartment, on Dauntless
Lane in Hartford. She was thrown to the sidewalk so violently that her hip
shattered. Another time, Dad was trying to help some young black man get a job.
The man threw a fit about something or other and cold-cocked him. Our house was
often broken into by black burglars. And every
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