Are We The Niggers Of The World?

Southern chef Paula Deen is the newest celebrity to say something out of pocket regarding the politics of race in America. In a nut shell, Deen is in a legal battle regarding a hostile working environment, particularly saying nigger and glorifying a segregated South. My instant reaction, as one who is forever a student of media, was, "She's at the last five seconds of her 15 minutes." As an African American man, one of the benefactors of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, though I never had to address a segregated South, my family is not that far removed from it. My grandmother and her daughters had to go to the colored entrance for ice cream in Henderson, North Carolina. A professional colleague of mine could only go to the colored section of the Carolina Theater here in Durham, NC. Segregation in the South was so bad that legendary comedian Redd Foxx said the following in a stand up routine, "I wouldn't go down South to get my mama out of the hospital, I'd send her cab fare, but damned if I'd go down there." From my oral history, I don't see Mint Juleps; instead, I'm reminded of that strange fruit that bears from southern trees.
Recently, I had an opportunity to discuss the Deen debacle with a high school friend of mine. It generated from an earlier post I made on Facebook which was this:
We are ready to roast her (Deen) in her own barbecue pit, in her own barbecue sauce for saying the "N" word and going back to a time of the segregated South. But when
Jay-Z and Kanye (West) roll out w- "Niggas in Paris" and preform it live at a Victoria's Secret televised fashion show, there's a cultural pass. In a post racial society, I smell a little hypocrisy.
My friend, who has confessed to me that he is white (lol) in earnest wanted me to explain why there is this racial double standard in the use of the word nigger. Because he is my friend and we never had an opportunity to discuss race, for me I embraced to opportunity. I didn't feel as though I was his personal expert on all matters African American, but instead it was an opportunity to share that side high school life in Knoxville, TN he was obviously oblivious to. I began somewhat snarky:
My professor answer would be, many of us (African Americans) have taken the tools of the oppressor (racists white folks) and adopted them to build a level of desensitization whenever it's used. However, when someone of power and privilege takes that pejorative and uses it in an assaultive way (ie hate speech) then it stirs up an oral history that's been passed down; up to I would say our generation (children of the 1980s). Think about it like this: when I was in Knoxville with you, I think you and I could agree, I presented a bit of an anomaly. My speech pattern was different (I was constantly told I sounded white) and in many cases, I was in accelerated classes. I had different interests. It didn't make me better than anybody. Now, I was in the minority on quite a few levels, and I really had no power. I had very little cultural capital. I had to wrestle with taunts, not just because of the color of my skin, but also because of the texture of my hair and because I was an heir to the advances of the civil rights movement. People teased me when there was the first nationally recognized MLK holiday at South Young. In fact the day someone did called me a nigger and spat on me from a roaming pick up truck with the confederate flag, I was frightened and powerless. Now, we jump to a generation of greed where profit is key. HipHop culture uses the word nigger liberally. I don't agree with it at all.... At the same time, the term isn't considered hate speech when it's used in the marginalized culture. But here is where it gets interesting, HipHop music (gangsta rap specifically) crossed over into hegemonic audiences. In some schools of thought, some scholars theorize that this entry into mainstream suburbia, may have created a cultural normalization of the pejorative. I think an equally salient theory is that belief structures are passed down and in some cases, the language is synonymous to the belief. From what I can say in certain Black cultures I've been able to circulate in, there is class division and in some cases, African American circles will shun one who won't engage in a battle of the dozens using the N word because they feel that the person is "not being black enough." Stupid, I know but it exists.
Just my .02 worth.
As I responded to him, I was beside myself because our cultural logic presents a contradiction. Our popular culture says its ok to say Nigger. Quentin Tarantino apparently has the American Express Race Card that allows him to use Nigger carte blanche. Co songwriter of Accidental Racist, LL Cool J has used nigger in quite a few of his songs. In our culture we have normalized not just the word nigger but even the nigger ideology as well. When we deconstruct the nigger ideology, we have to accept it as what is, as opposed to what we have enabled it to become. Webster's dictionary would lead us to believe nigger is derived from the Spanish word Negro, born out of referring to Latin Niger. Both references deal with Black people, yet the context addresses a matter of chattel property. Niggra, the Southern pronunciation, eventually evolved into nigger, also considered America's pariah. I think about what my favorite Beatle, the late John Lennon did so masterfully with the word nigger, "woman is the nigger of the world." He took the malignant cancer of nigger and injected it into the feminist movement. That resonates with me. So I raise this question in our post racial society, collectively: are we our own niggers, or are we (Americans) niggers of the world?