Like many Americans, Jesse Jackson is squeamish about actually, explicitly using the word 'nigger,' even when criticizing it.

When in a recent news conference he declared that the word is not "protected language" in any way, he used the popular euphemism — "the n-word" — to make his point.

Jackson didn't have to be so circumspect. He is, after all, black and for the past few decades that has conferred a licence to use one of the most powerful epithets in the English language as casually as whites might toss around, say, 'sonofabitch.'

American blacks have transformed the word. In their mouths, it has become edgy, ironic, even a term of endearment. Everybody uses it, everybody who is black that is. Rap performers most notoriously, kids on the subway thoughtlessly, comedians like Chris Rock and Richard Pryor hilariously (although the laughter of whites in their audiences always seems a bit self-conscious).

The ability to drop the word easily into conversation is actually a measure of cool. Samuel L. Jackson grins into the phone in Pulp Fiction: "Why didn't you say so, Negro?" he asks, when his gangster boss promises to send in "The Wolf" to clean up a particularly bloody mess.

Denzel Washington, a role model if ever one existed, has slung "nigger" around harshly in some film roles, and warmly called young boys "li'l niggers" in another.

To those in the know, there is even, apparently, a difference between 'nigger' and 'nigga.'

My son and daughter, who attend a school so diverse that they are among the very few white children in their classes, understand the distinction perfectly, and stare uncomprehendingly at anyone who doesn't.

Crossing the line

'Nigga' is the affectionate version of the word; 'nigger' is the more bitter, more ironic application. They also understand the word is completely off-limits to them as white teenagers, even while joking, even as a topic of discussion with their closest friends.

They accept this. When hip-hop performers like NWA, that is Niggaz With Attitude, belt out "You are now (real, real) niggaz! Niggaz!," my kids shrug their shoulders in time, even aping that thing rappers do, setting their fingers in what used to be the peace sign and jerkily whacking them against their chests.

But when Michael Richards, the Kramer guy from Seinfeld, erupted at a heckler in a Los Angeles comedy club, and the cellphone-recorded video of the performance arrived on their computer via YouTube, they cringed.

"Throw his ass out!" Richards bellowed. "He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger!"

Jeez, said my 15-year-old daughter. What was he thinking?

Clearly, Richards was not thinking at all. But he may have pushed American racial discourse around another corner.

He began apologizing profusely a few days later, to anyone who would listen, including the Rev. Jackson. (That seemed rich to some: Jackson is still remembered for having characterized Jews as "hymies" and New York as "Hymietown" back in the 1980s.)

But Jackson ran with it. When he appeared at the news conference with black Congresswoman Maxine Waters, he suggested that perhaps the collective black decision to appropriate the slur and "turn it around" wasn't such a hot idea in the first place.

He urged black Americans to "give our ancestors a present … dignity over degradation," and stop using the word.

Just words?

Other prominent black names have said as much in the past. Richard Pryor, after a trip to Africa, renounced his use of the word. The African American Registry states: "Nigger, like the false impressions it incorporates and means, puts down blacks, and rationalizes their abuse. The use of the word or its alternatives by blacks has not lessened its hurt."

That logic seems natural enough to many white Americans, whose sensitivity radars constantly scan the cultural zeitgeist for subtle shifts in far less offensive taboos. (Yes, President George W. Bush did refer to America's Pakistani allies in 2002 as "Pakis," but in general, Americans tread pretty carefully.)

I remember the uplifted eyebrows in the room when an exceptionally polite, but elderly, Canadian woman remarked on visit to Washington not long ago how well dressed "many Negroes" are here. Someone pointed out that, um, African American is more the preferred term, and she blurted out, a bit sheepishly, "Well, I never know what to say anymore. When I was young, 'Negro' was a polite word. Then it was 'coloured people.' And then 'blacks,' and I just think that black sounds sort of rude."

A right to offend

Jackson's suggestion also seemed sensible to Jamie Masada, the owner of the Laugh Factory, where Richards blew his professional brains out. Masada, anxious to stay in business, instituted a ban on the word, a risky move in the comedy world, where performers, most of them free-speech libertarians, view all slurs as "just words," and jealously guard their right to offend.

But of course Masada couldn't just ban white comics from saying it, so he made the prohibition universal, to the irritation of many black performers.

Damon Wayans promptly took the mike and uttered it: "I'll be damned if the white man uses that word last," he declared. Masada suspended him.

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who titled his autobiography Nigger, contemptuously declared that "calling it the n-word is an insult." He added, somewhat puzzlingly, that it would be the same as insulting Jews by calling swastika the 's-word.'

He vowed to hand his book to a white woman in his next audience, and tell her: "Here, madam, take this Nigger to bed with you."

Black columnist John Ridley wrote scornfully about those who "replaced 'nigger' with the 'n-word' in the condescending fashion of adults taking scissors from children too immature to know what to do with them.

"I will not raise my boys, my two strong brown men, to live in fear of a word," he wrote. "If anyone at anytime calls them 'nigger,' they will laugh. They will laugh."

Still, the Richards incident is, without question, having an effect. It's all over the net.

Columnists are writing that perhaps it's time black performers reconsider referring to "bitches" and "hos," too. (My daughter thinks bitches is stupid, but more or less harmless, a word that has lost any impact. Asked if it would be all right for non-black singers to start using the word, she blinks and says "Oh. No.")

No doubt gay activists are taking a close look at their own appropriation argot, and considering whether it does any good to refer to themselves as "queers," "fags" and "dykes."

Carlos Mencia, who goes on about "beaners" and "spicks" and "wetbacks" on his Comedy Central show, may well be having a second think, too.

Ultimately, though, words have their own heft and lifespan. Jesse Jackson's ruminations and Michaels Richards' self-flagellations are not going to remove the word from the vocabulary of an entire culture that, for the moment, considers it hip. If it disappears entirely, it will take a generation at least.

And the prime directive will surely remain: If you are going to utter a slur, you had better be slurring your own.

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