The N Word Debate: What's It's Future?

[bigted]

Chris brought this up in Fat Joe's mixtape post about how he uses the n word in his songs so I figure it'd be good to have a debate over it...Personally as a young black man I don't say the n word at all in my conversations or in the lyrics I write since I feel it's disrespectful to my ancestors but it's understandable that rappers try to take a negative word and turn it into something positive something with power as 2Pac did by using it as:

Never
Ignorant
Getting
Goals
Accomplished

I found an article here which shows a video of a white girl using it in her raps and other videos of other rappers opinions of the word:

http://www.sohh.com/2011/08/whats_the_future_for_the_n-word_in_rap_m.html

[Silver Tiger]

I don't like the word. It soils the song, as far as I'm concerned. There are only a few instances where I favor its use in a song. Like Lupe's "Dumb it Down." The ignorant guy at the end uses the word frequently, while the intelligent Lupe doesn't use it at all. I just wish all of his songs left the word out. The reason FJ gets special attention when he uses it is because it's more obvious coming from him since he's not black. I don't like it from anyone, black, white, red, yellow, etc. If I'm rapping along, I wanna be able to rap the full song without stuttering over an oppressive word. A word cannot truly create empowerment if such a small fraction of the community has exclusive use of it. And hell, a lot of people like yourself refuse to use the word anyway. That should say something.

I'm not for censorship. I'm for creating a more conscious world.

[VIsqo]

Nowadays people use the N word as if it was Dude, or man.. I hear white kids saying it to white kids all the time. Dominican and Puertorican guys use it on the Bronx, it just lost its significance for most kids on the hood. Most Educated people dont use it though because they understand quite well its meaning and what it meant to the ancestors.

[Silver Tiger]

I agree with that.

Another thing I wanted to mention was that a word cannot be used to empower one group of people if it seen as a bad thing when used by another race. All you're doing at that point is limiting yourself by placing yourself in the negative category that you associate that word with when it is used by someone else.

[Turntable]

While I somehow agree with what you ar saying, I find it still hard for me as a white person to to judge the black community for using a certain word. It's not realy my problem anyway. If you dont like certain words, dont use them. If you dont like people with a certain state of mind, dont hang out with them. Thats the only thing one can do. I do think it sucks if white people use it, especaly they use it as a replacement for something like "dude". I dont know about Latinos and Hipanics though - overe here they dont use the word, but I was told it is normal for them to use it in the US. Now I also think that while a lot of "uneducated" people use it, there are also quite a few smart, very educated people who use the word and other "bad words" for that matter. I also would like a more conscious world, but I am not seing it happen anytime soon. Next too that, I think we alle have diffrent opinions on how exactly that world would look like. Censoring is bad, especaly based on religious believes that some people (or most people) might not share. I do believe that the freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to talk ****, but I'd rather have people talking **** than people censoring other people.

These are pretty my general thoughts on "bad language" btw

Edited September 29, 2011 by Turntable

[bigted]

yeah you don't want to censor the way somebody wants to express themselves, just like Nas should been able to release his album the way that he wanted to a few years ago, and yes Fat Joe and Big Pun are puerto ricans but they're down with the hip hop culture and the only people that have problems with them saying the n word on record are those who don't like their music...

[Silver Tiger]

Like I said in my first post. I'm not for censorship. I do believe the word would be used less if people understood its impact. My main point is that it will never become a word to empower if it is also seen as a word to degrade by the very people who use it.

[Big Willie]

Like I said in my first post. I'm not for censorship. I do believe the word would be used less if people understood its impact. My main point is that it will never become a word to empower if it is also seen as a word to degrade by the very people who use it.

Perfectly said. How is it possible that you think a word is empowering, but if someone else says it, you then refer back to its oppressive origin, even if they use it in the empowering form you claim it as? If people want to use it, they can, but don't contradict yourself or have a double standard on its use.

Edited September 29, 2011 by Big Willie

[Turntable]

Yeah I can agree with that