Nigger. Take a real good gander at it. Two syllables. Six letters. And give it a goodbye. 'Cause right now niggers on a linguistic hit list. If the verbal totalitarians have their way, they will take a blowtorch to the word, light it up and not stop burning until even the embers and ash aren't fit to be returned to the earth. But what would we really be destroying? There is no other word in our culture that incites, infuriates, confounds and informs as does the word nigger. Who uses it, how it's used, which washed-up actor turned comic (think Michael Richards) shoulda stayed the hell clear of the word—they all help mark the ascension of black America through the cultural landscape. In art and letters and theater and comedy, this one word, this mangle of Latin and French and Spanish, has been description and slur and salutation, and in each incarnation a curio of our society.
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