It’s a word I use every day,” said comedian/actor Tehran Von Ghasri, a 34-year-old D.C. “It’s such a regular part of my vernacular. For many of this generation, the word is tossed around unthinkingly, no more impactful than a comma. By comparison, “bro” and “dude” - two of the terms with which the n-word is synonymous to many people younger than 35 - are used 300,000 and 200,000 times, respectively. If there is still a meaningful n-word debate left to have, it is over context, ownership and the degree to which it should be tethered to its awful history - or set free from it.Ī word that is used 500,000 times a day on Twitter - as “nigga” is, according to search data on the social media analytics Web site - is almost by definition beyond banning. It was a long and noble fight, waged largely - but not exclusively - by an older generation for which the word is inseparable from the brutality into which it was born. If anything, in 2014, it is the very notion of banning the n-word that appears dead and fit for burial.
Never mind the troublesome optics of a group of mostly white NFL executives dictating the language rules of a majority-black player pool. And more than likely, it will prove too complex and nuanced to be policed by football referees wielding yellow flags and penalties. It is too ingrained in youth culture to be eliminated from city streets, as the New York City Council attempted with a symbolic resolution banning the word the same year. The word is too essential as an urban slang term to be placed in a casket and buried, as NAACP delegates attempted to do in a 2007 mock “funeral” for the word. If there is one thing certain about the modern n-word - a shifty organism that has managed to survive on these shores for hundreds of years by lurking in dark corners, altering its form, splitting off into a second specimen and constantly seeking out new hosts, all the while retaining its basic and vile DNA - it is that it defies black-and-white interpretations and hard-and-fast rules. But like the others, it is almost certainly doomed to fail to be ignored, at best - or mocked and flouted, at worst.
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