“Mommy, What Does ‘Nigger’ Mean? ” In a time where everyone seems to be tiptoeing around each other’s feelings, not wanting to offend anyone, racism continues to remain a significant problem that affects almost every person of color. In spite of the fact that many people have not dealt with racism and therefore do not comprehend the impact it has on the mind, everyone understands that words can pack an injurious punch.
Whether it was a bully who pointed out your flaws, or a friend that unintentionally said something hurtful, no one has avoided the afflictive sting of a well-placed word or two. But are the words themselves hurtful, or is it the connotation they have? Gloria Naylor expresses that the power of consensus is what gives a word power, instead of the words themselves in her essay “Mommy What Does Nigger Mean? “. Gloria suggests that one word does not have more influence over another because words are just words.
A word has an impact because of the weight or undertone carried along with it: How the word is said. How it is used. Despite the saying “Words can hurt”, words themselves hold little to no meaning; many times they are used to spread hate and it is the context or a consensus of a word that holds its true meaning and impact: Not the word itself. Though most Caucasians shrink away from the word “nigger”, in many African American families it is a widely used term. Throughout “Mommy What Does Nigger Mean? Gloria explains the words’ many meanings and uses in her Harlem, New York (African American) household. First, she states “In the singular, the word was always applied to a man who had distinguished himself in some situation that brought their approval for his strength, intelligence, or drive”(Naylor 421). Secondly, she explains “When used with a possessive adjective by a woman-“my nigger”-it became a term of endearment for her husband or boyfriend”(Naylor 421). Thirdly, she explains how”… it could be more than just a term applied to a man.
In their mouths it became the pure essence of manhood-a disembodied force that channeled their past history of struggle and present survival against the odds into a victorious statement of being”(Naylor 421). Last, Gloria says, “In the plural, it became a description of some group within the community that had overstepped the bounds of decency as my family defined it”(Naylor 421). The word always had a specific dynamic, offering an outlet, or providing a descriptive word that held no more power than any other. As a mixed child, the word “nigger” was oddly absent from my life, virtually never used.
Since I am as light skinned as most Caucasians, the word was almost never thrown at me. Instead of “nigger” I would hear “nigga” on a relatively regular basis, but it was not an extremely common word either. My parents divorced when I was oneyear-old, and because of the divorce, there was a large divide between the two parts of my family. I spent Wednesdays, Saturdays, and every other Sunday with my father, who is African American. While with him, I would frequently visit my African American relatives who threw the word “nigga” around in virtually every sentence.
They used the word almost exactly how Gloria’s family used it; as a term with a special type of dynamic and meaning. Every other day of the week (excluding the days I was with my father) I was with my mother, who is Caucasian. The two sides of my families have totally different views on the word “nigga”, so growing up, I had a neutral view of it. Walking down the street with my father, other African Americans would wave and say things like “Sup my nigga” to him, and he would laugh and wave back; this positive response (coupled with the fact that my African American family used it frequently) made me think the word was a good thing.
However, my mother offered a very different opinion. She said “nigga” was an awful curse word, and forbid me to use it. At the age of seven, I moved to the opposite side of the country and rarely saw my father, causing the word “nigga” to fade into my past. It was not until grade school that I heard the word “nigger” while we were learning about slaves. And almost immediately after we learned it at school, the word was thrown at me for the first time. For most African Americans recounting the first time the word “nigger” was spat at them is a fairly easy task.
It is not hard to sort the insult from the endearing term, especially when it comes from someone who is not the same ethnicity as you. Gloria recounts the first time she really heard the word “nigger” to prove that a words impact comes from its consensus, not the definition. Though she was in third grade and commonly heard the word at home, she expresses that “I didn’t ‘hear’ it until it was said by a small pair of lips that had already learned it could be a way to humiliate me. ” (Naylor 422).
Taking on a completely different meaning, Gloria recalls how she was perplexed when she was first called a “nigger”: … s I handed the papers to a little boy in back of me, I remarked that once again he had received a much lower mark than I did. He snatched his test from me and spit out that word. Had he called me a nymphomaniac or a necrophiliac, I couldn’t have been more puzzled. I didn’t know what a nigger was, but I knew that whatever it meant, it was something he shouldn’t have called me. (Naylor 421). Though the word was altered to decrease its potency by Gloria’s family and turned into a positive thing, like most African Americans, she encountered the word in its most stripped down and historically pertinent form: as an insult.
In her grandmother’s living room; a place that was comfortable and safe, the word did not seem special. But her view widened and the meaning of “nigger” transformed once she heard it spit out of someone’s mouth. While the details surrounding why was called a “nigger” for the first time are hazy, the words that were said have never faded from my memory, even though my age has more than doubled. The bus was a place that frequently resulted in trouble for many kids during my grade school years. The school itself held plenty of trouble itself; not in a good part of town, with students who had no desire to show any type of respect.
Every student studied the same basic thing at the same time but at different levels of depth, depending on their grade. I remember having heard the horrors of slavery for the first time in my second grade class. We learned the vocabulary and dialect of the time, and dissected life during colonial times. After school on the first day of lessons about slavery, I remember that climbed onto the bus like I did every day. I was talking to a friend about what we had learned, and she asked me if I knew that “slavery had happened to my family”. Before I had the chance to answer, a boy sitting behind us popped his head up, and looked curiously at me.
He was in the fifth grade, and was the biggest troublemaker on the bus; often getting kicked off for starting fights, throwing things at passing cars, or cursing. His chubby freckled cheeks and dark eyes scared me as he stared at my friend and I, but he finally focused on me and asked, “Wait… You’re black? ” | nodded, and explained that my mom was white, but my dad was black. The rest of the bus ride went as it always did, and I cannot remember anything that specifically stuck out of place. As the freckled fifth grader behind me disembarked the bus though, something happened as he was walking down the isle, and he fell.
I may have tripped him, or bumped into him, but I remember him whirling around and glaring at me. I apologized quickly, not wanting any trouble. The boy grabbed his book bag and continued making his way off the bus so | assumed the issue had been resolved. He was all but off the bus when he turned to me and spat “It’s not like we can expect anything less from a shit faced nigger”. Earlier in the day we had been taught how during slave times, African Americans were called “niggers” by white slave owners, who meant to put them down.
My teacher described it as “one of the worst words in American history”, and immediately I related it back to what my mom had said about “nigga”. The words sounded similar, and for a few seconds, I stood on the bus, shocked. Only my African American side of the family joyfully used “nigga” and they were the ones who would have been enslaved. But something about how he said “nigger”; only changing two letters from the familiar term “nigga”, and relating me to my abused ancestors showed how wildly unlike the two words were; even though they were only a few letters different.
The entire situation struck on a deep level, throwing me off guard. Immediately my bus driver yelled at the boy, and he was kicked off of the bus for several weeks. Even though he had been punished, his words didn’t hurt any less and for a long time, I questioned how two words: “nigga” and “nigger” could feel so different. Today, I am certain that the way the words were said hold most of the impact that they had.
While “nigger” is a more negative historical form of “nigga”, I am positive that if “nigga” had been spat at me like “nigger” was, I would have felt exactly the same. The spite that came with the word is what struck me the most, and I believe that is the same spite that struck Gloria, making her “hear” the word “nigger” for the first time. Gloria and I were around the same age when “nigger” was thrown at us as an insult, and though we grew up hearing “nigga” or “nigger”, the word struck in an entirely different way coming from the mouths of two small boys.
If the boy on my bus, or the boy in her class had said the word in a positive way, the memories that we can both recall clearly would have faded over the years, blending into the other times the word was used. The consensus of “nigger” is what made the insult stay clear, impacting both Gloria and I in similar ways, further backing our opinions on consensus. Words themselves are not what hurt, as they are simply a series of bland letters strung together; what truly leaves an impact is a words connotation or implication.
