What Does Nigger Mean

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Recommended: The history of the word nigger

One might assume that because I am a black man I should know everything there is to know about the word nigger; however, that would be a racist assumption. I know probably just as much about the word as the next American. Obviously, I know that nigger was used to refer to slaves and then later as a pejorative label for an entire race of people, but the emotional power it has over Black people I have never really experienced. I seek to enlighten not only myself but those who choose to read this paper about nigger, its origins as well as the mystique of its checkered past. Nigger started off referring to Africans who were slaves, widening to Black people, then pejoratively as a racial slur, and now urban Americans are trying to reclaim it. Nigger …show more content…

The definition has been tweaked over the years but, no matter the language, nigger has stood for either a person with dark/black skin or in Spanish the color black. Dictionary.com defines nigger as one of the most offensive words in English that refers to a Black person. This definition is rather generic but not the most extreme; there are more descriptive definitions such as, “The… “n” word [is] like poison, whether you take [its] poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison” (Maya Angelou). Maya Anglelou means that no matter what the suffix of Nigger, it is still a hurtful word. Every time Americans use nigger our nation as a whole continues to instill the racial over tones of our bygone era. Although nigger is the epitome of racial epithets used to referrer to Black people it did not always hold such disdain. Rather, nigger began simply as a name given to the human chattel being traded. However, “by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, nigger had already become a familiar and influential insult” (Kennedy). Though nigger may have an actual definition, it does not do the word justice. Nigger, when spoken spurs feelings of such irreverence that seeking its true meaning may be fleeting at best, because it has many

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