By Phillip Bailey & Ken Walker
Whatever the motivations for Valley High School teacher Paul Dawson’s use of the word “nigga” – whether it was to connect with black students, to raise awareness about the overuse of the word or just plain racism – he’s certainly got the community’s attention.
After calling freshman VHS student Keysean Chavers the word most commonly associated with white supremacy, it wasn’t a matter of if or when the community erupted, but how. Not surprisingly, the civil rights establishment, led by the ubiquitous Rev. Louis Coleman, demanded Dawson be fired immediately.
My personal reaction was simultaneously disbelief and a lack of surprise. My disbelief was at the sheer symbolism of it all. Here was a white teacher on the second day of Black History Month, just days after Coretta Scott King, the first lady of the Civil Rights Movement, died, calling a black teenager the most infamous epithet in the English language. I cringed for Lamartez Griffin, James Byrd and all the victims of hate crimes and lynching who remember that remark as the last they ever heard.
My lack of surprise was because the controversy surrounding Mr. Dawson is what Malcolm X referred to as “chickens coming home to roost.”
It’s no secret that many black youth use the “n-word” with regularity. Not that my generation started it – Moms Mabley, Slappy White, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory and movies like “Boss Nigger” let the chickens loose way before hip-hop did – but we are guilty of its proliferation.
Via hip-hop, the “n-word” and all its stereotypes have reached around the globe as the main exported image of black America. Instead of resisting the image many wear it as a badge of honor in a neo-minstrel theatre.
Many hip-hoppers defend their usage with ridiculous arguments about the varied spellings of the classic term and the hip-hop remix. The remix, hip-hoppers argue, is a term of endearment, affection and brotherhood.
Perhaps words do have several meanings depending on context. But I’ve also heard the same term used by the same group as one of abhorrence (“fuck that nigga”), division (“them Newburg niggas”) and class distinction (“them ghetto/bourgeois niggas”).
Worse yet is the belief that this cultural cannibalism is actually rebellious. Some of the more desperate arguments in defense of “nigga” hope to marry the epithet with an outlaw version of black nationalism, arguing that using the word on our terms is a source for rejecting white definitions.
Unfortunately hip-hop has yet to produce an equal theory on resisting the crack epidemic, police brutality, debilitated schools, broken homes or joblessness. Our escapism in the face of daunting inner-city issues makes this theory of language as the vital fortress of our political resistance all the more absurd.
Paul Dawson should not have used that word in reference to Keysean Chavers, regardless if Chavers, like most of his peers, uses the term. The community that Dawson works for will decide if he deserves to teach again. But if we get beyond the naive messenger and into reality we’ll be able to come to terms with America’s ugliest word.
Black people have used and will continue to use this imposed epithet. Rev. Coleman & Co. cannot socially expunge it just as hip-hoppers cannot erase its original and everlasting meaning. That may leave us at an impasse, but maybe it’s a conversation worth having.
