Every week, I leave campus after class, I turn on NPR--and I kid you not--there is always some discussion on race. Today, on All Things Considered, there was a brief discussion of "Urban Desi," which according to NPR "is a fast-growing style that blends South Asian pop culture and American hip-hop." For more on the broadcast, check out "Urban Desi: A Genre on the Rise." Shaman Ajmani, one of the interviewees, had the following to say about what NPR coins as the inharmonious dimension of this "cultural exchange:" "I do see some Indians over here using the N word. It's so annoying. I feel like saying, 'What're you doing, man? Don't try to be black.'"
"What're you doing, man? Don't try to be black." One of the implications here (there are many, one of which is that "being black" is unseemly or undesirable) is that the N word is a "black thing" or a "black word" (this recalls my New Orleanian grandmother who told my sister, my brother, and me as kids that we shouldn't say "booty" because it, too, was a "black word"). This, of course, complicates the debate surrounding the N word, which usually revolves around the issue of who can/cannot say it. Here, in this context, the N word is cast as the language of "the other." This "casting" is yet again problematized by the fact that whites have used (as part and parcel of their antebellum prerogatives as possessors/owners of commodified black bodies)--and continue to use--the N word. Not only is the N word, as Dr. Young said in class, the most powerful word (yes, I used the superlative), but it is also one of the most versatile words, contextually and otherwise (I had to qualify this superlative). Thus, it can be cast as "a black word," as a resistive (re)appropriation of the term, as a word of comradery (among both blacks and whites--students from my high school can testify to the latter [I might post about this later because it relates to Harris' tome of an article]), as derogatory, as racist, etc., etc. (I'm sure you could add to this list).
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Does it rub you the wrong way when you hear people you know use the n-word? If so pass along to them the following information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP2U0jmZjec
Amazing how important it is to not "sound black" in contemporary America!
You can't say 'booty', can't drop the N-bomb, got to refrain from slang (that is, 'broken' English). Language missteps might render you ignorant, low-class, or worse. Of course, blacks are expected to speak this way. Whites who do are betraying their race.
"Sounding white," conversely, means one uses “proper” English. Good grammar. Good vocabulary. Good pronunciation. Everything good. Of course, blacks who sound white are exceptional: “My, you speak well.” Whites who speak this way are normal.
Racial hierarchies are perpetuated through language. There are good and bad ways to speak, and each has its own racial identity. How can we contest this? Or is the only solution to accept the “right” (read: white) way to speak?
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