Some of you may know that there are some words out there that people from different communities use against others in a context that may be very offensive and sometimes not offensive depending on how the word is being used. One community that experiences this is the Black community. Being a part of the black community there’s some words that we’re allowed to say, and people of other communities aren’t allowed to say because of the meanings behind those words. That specific word that I am talking about is the N-word spelt with er at the end.

For those who don’t know this word, it is an ethnic slur typically used against black people especially African Americans. This word is considered as an extremely offensive word towards black people even if it’s just mentioned without the intention of using it as a slur. This word is also used by black people in a more neutral meaning usually as “nigga”.

The word also has two different spellings, and both of those spellings have their own way of how they’re used. The first one is spelled as “nigger” which is the way that those who aren’t in the black community uses as they would feel the need to say the word and pronounce it with the hard er at the end of it. This way of spelling and pronunciation of the word would mostly help you in a way to tell if someone is a part of the community of those who are considered as racist. The second one is spelled “nigga” which those who are a part of the black community uses in a more neutral way and can refer to those a part of the same community as a friend. For example, if someone asks you if you know a specific person that you are friends with, but they don’t know that, some people would respond as “yeah that’s my nigga”.

I think everyone know about this word, but some don’t know or understand the meaning behind it. This word is a word that holds a lot of things that’s related towards the black community, and it should be taught too those who don’t know what this word holds against the black community. The word originated in the 18th century as an adaptation of the Spanish word negro which means black. Over the time it became a derogatory connotation and then became a racist insult by the 20th century, and it has never been able to shed that baggage since then. During the late 18th and early 19th century the word was used by white people as a derogatory nickname towards African American laborers and their non-standard language.

My first experience of this word was when I first moved to America. Back in the Caribbean this word was never really known, well not that I knew of. First time I heard someone use the word “nigger” I was confused on what it meant and why people got so mad about it being used against black people. My first impression of the word “nigger” was that it sounded like a curse word because people would use it as a add on to their curse words and some people weren’t allowed to use it at all because of their skin color or community. Instead of asking people about what the word meant, out of curiosity I did a little research to understand the word a little better. Doing so I found out that it was a word that whites used against blacks back in the day around slavery time and it was a way of them causing mental and physical harm to the slaves.

Seeing how this word has some much history behind it on how this word developed and the main characters of that are people from the black community, outsiders who are not a part of the black community should not use the word. There’s been so many debates happening between people who aren’t a part of the black community talking about why they can’t say the word but people in the black community are allowed too. Those same people are the ones that takes advantage of the word whenever they can and just doesn’t understand or care to learn about what the word really mean and does to the black community.

When this word is used by people outside of the community it comes off as an insult towards the black community all because of the history of the word and the meaning. Instead, they should try to learn the history of the word and try to understand why people from the black community react the way they do when the word is being used against them. They should try to inform and educate others who tend to just use the word because they hear someone use it and got away with it and think it’s fair for them to also go ahead and use it too.

To those outsiders from other communities besides the black community, I would advise them to learn more about the word and its roots before going out into another community and not caring and just throwing the word around like it doesn’t mean something to other communities. I say this because today in the present world we live in there are heavy consequences for using certain words. People are losing their jobs, being disowned by family because of their word choices, and being labeled as a racist for using those words that are connected to being slurs against different communities not only just the black community. You shouldn’t feel so comfortable to know that a word holds so much hatred against a community and be out here using it like nothing is wrong with it because I do think if the tables were turned, they would act the same way these communities act when their offended using the word.