it’s still not ok for wypipo to call us “n*gga”, sorry not sorry becky

By Jaelani Turner-Williams, AFROPUNK contributor

In summer of 2014, I was hired at a retail distribution center in Ohio, gradually bonding with fellow employees through our mutual fandom of rap music. Having attended majority-black public schools throughout my youth, at 18 years old, I was newly getting accustomed to occupying workspaces with white colleagues. There were unavoidable differences within our gumbo of diversity, with a surplus of workers being from rural Ohio while I originated from the city of Columbus. Sooner or later, racial transgressions came to a head.

After the dual, Street Fighter stylized Drake vs. Lil Wayne tour was announced, marked to begin at the end of the summer, I passed along the good news to my one of my coworkers, a quirky white woman who would gush about her infant son five times a day, on average. Her excitable reaction to the news took place during our midday routine of refolding newly stocked clothing, as she was clearly familiar with both rappers. As our conversation ended, we went back to work and she put on her headphones. She began rapping, I can still hear the word that bellowed from the pit of her throat: Nigga.

The word seemed to hang in mid-air, ringing off like a deafening gunshot. I stood paralyzed, blankly staring at my coworker, giving her a moment to realize what she had repeated. As the song continued, she went on, wading through each verse without hesitation. Her audaciousness of dropping the N-word in front of me was something I couldn’t shake; a wince that still rattles and divides rap audiences in 2018.

In Alabama, a young Kendrick Lamar fan takes the stage at the 2018 Hangout Festival, in which Kung-Fu (now Pulitzer) Kenny is headlining the final day of the weekend concert series. The fan is named Delaney and she’s earned the chance of a lifetime; performing ‘M.A.A.D. City’ with Kendrick in front of nearly 40,000 attendees. Winded, she begins the hook with Kendrick, omitting the first N-bomb that comes her way, but the word becomes more imminent during the the few next lines:

“Fuck who you know/where you from my NIG-GA!

Where yo grandma stay, huh my NIG-GA?

This is m.A.A.d city, I run, my nigga.”

Delaney guns it, meticulously reciting the the hook word-for-word, just as Kendrick stops the music.

“You gotta bleep one single word, though,” Kendrick saids, as the audience rouses, booing Delaney in unison.

“Oh, i’m sorry,” Delaney responds. “Did I do it?”

“Yeah, you did it.”

The it still trickles upon African-Americans, side-by-side with white rap fans at festivals who feverishly allow the n-word to escape their lips, not knowing the difference between it being used as a term of endearment between us, and a derogatory term if used by them. While it’s easy to dismiss the word as being contextual, meant for a time and place, history has proven otherwise. The it was once a verbal lashing in its entirety, strewn upon generations of African-Americans in the United States as a means of dehumanization throughout slavery, the Jim Crow era and continues to smite in the present day.

The it was roared voraciously in a viral tirade in January of this year by Harley Barber, a then-student at The University of Alabama, the same state in which Delaney stood on her epithetical soapbox.

“I love how I act like I love black people because I fucking hate niggers,” Hayley spewed, after turning off a bathroom faucet, in which she says continued to run after an African-American used it.

“I don’t care if it’s Martin Luther King Day,” she went on. “Nigger, nigger, nigger. I’m in the South now, bitch. So everyone can fuck off.”

The video left viewers enraged. While The University of Alabama went on to expel Barber, just days later in the same state, high school teacher Teddie Butcher advised a black female student to “turn the nigger tunes off” as she played a song by 2Pac during an in-class project. Butcher, in turn, resigned after being put on administrative leave, but how many times can white users of it be punished until they ultimately understand their wrongdoing?

“If you are going to accept royalties from album sales and concert revenue from both black and white fans, you can’t legitimately expect them to consume your music differently,” says journalist Jeremy Helligar in a Variety article based around the Hangout Festival incident. In his misguided notion, rap concerts are a basis for the N-word to be heaved from white audience members, without repercussions. The word being flayed about is no longer aloofness, but instead being indivisible from calling a black artist “boy”. From the mouths of white fans, there’s a reeking of ownership.

While Kendrick was quick to hush Delaney of the N-word, rapper Travis Scott, who ironically supported Kendrick during The DAMN Tour last summer, has held esteem in giving white fans a pass during shows. At a Toronto stop during the Anti World Tour headlined by Rihanna in 2016, Travis performed ‘3500’ with a young white fan, holding the mic for him during the hook. As the N-word leapt from the fan’s voice, he sped through as Travis kept his hand on the bold fan’s shoulder, an indication for him to be fearless.

“A lot of years ago, no one wanted to see this happen,” Travis said, panting from the intensity of the set.

Seeing the celebration of rap between black artists and white fans is increasing as crowds overrun concert venues. While this is evident, there is still censoring that white fans should adhere to. This undoubtedly would be a respect for black fans and a means to avoid the replication of a full-on social media crusade against Delaney. The expectation of this censorship is very clear, as a word that was once used to break African-Americans mentally is now a word that only we should use at our own discourse. The argument surrounding the N-word will resurface each time white concertgoers lack reverence for us, but to escape the slaughter of backlash, when it comes up, you just have to bleep one single word.