Not since in any year that I can remember, even more than 1995 at the O.J. Simpson Trial, after Mark Fuhrman’s “N-word” denial - even more than the commercial release of Richard Pryor’s 1974 comedy album, That Nigger’s Crazy, has so much “Nigger” talk been part of the public conversation (behind closed doors is another story). One crazy white boy on stage - gone snap - started a national debate on the appropriateness of the use of the term, nigger.

Michael Richards did what the NAACP couldn’t do several years ago (after getting Webster’s Dictionary to change the definition of the word—from “a black person” to a “derogative racial term usually directed at black people). Michael Richards did what Randall Kennedy (author of the recent book, Nigger: The Strange Career Of A Troublesome Word) and several other scholars couldn’t do. Michael Richards did what several journalists (including myself) have tried to do over the past few years (this is my sixth commentary on the term this year). Michael Richards used the word, Nigger, so offensively and so intensely, that even black people who would use the word “endearingly” said, “Damn.” Michael Richards used the word in the context that it was designed for, to insult, to assault, to alarm and to engage.

The rest of us play with the word. Michael Richard wasn’t playin’. He took us back to the day…And he was absolutely right when he said “50 years ago…” To put the call out there like he did, would have drawn a mad mob, and a different kind of posse. Oh, he “went there” and we understand now…why we need to stop using the word. Now if only we can get the hip hoppers, gangsta rappers, young heads, old heads and all the other people “addicted” to the word to understand.

Before this Richards controversy, I wrote a prologue of the use of the term, after a public speaker used it at a L.A. city council meeting and no one said anything (until after the third time it was used). The word, Nigger, was becoming acceptable language in public domain. Like hearing curse words on television, while always inappropriate - some words are no longer censured (as much as they once were). We African Americans were forgetting, or had become conflicted over, the genesis of the word, which was adding to, not detracting from, the public acceptance. So I wrote a four part series, “How America Made Niggas,” that got wide distribution. Over a million hits on several cyber-sites. One installment of the series was even plagiarized in the *add link Philadelphia Daily News. Everybody was willing to talk about the use of the word, and there was a debate as to whether we should even stop using it. But nobody took the debate seriously until Michael Richards reminded us what the debate was really about. Well, hopefully this represents a final epilogue.

See, the way Richards used the word, was the way the word was used 50 years when you had “Separate But Equal” and Jim Crow laws prohibiting the invasion of white people’s social spaces. When a Black from up North, or someone who wasn’t acquainted with the racial etiquette of the South (like Emmitt Till) stumbled up into the wrong space, the call was put out, “He’s a Nigger,” meaning “Black out of place,” and the whole community checked him immediately to put the “uppity Nigger” back “in his place.” Revisit the Michael Richards tirade and you see the correlations. Richards is heckled (his space violated), he notices they’re Black and (tried to check them) reminds them who they are and what can be done to them; he calls for them to be thrown out and when the authorities don’t move fast enough, he puts out the “community call,” “He’s a Nigger! He’s a Nigger! He’s a Nigger. A Nigger, look there’s a Nigger. Michael Richards put out what used to be known as, “the Lynch Call,” the distress call of segregation for the community to enforce customs and protocols of white supremacy. The point is that everybody recognized this. It’s not that far gone. He took us back. We all knew what he had just done. He put out “the call.”

Michael Richards’ use of the word cured even the worse of what I call, “Niggaholics” (people who just can’t stop using the words, Nigga, Nigger, Niggahs and Niggaz). I have to admit…I’m a recovering Niggaholic. We all are. And sometimes our people do things that make us call them a Nigga. Sometimes, we say we do it out of love. Like Richards, it’s right on the tip of our tongues—ready to come out at the least provocation. And if we don’t say it, we damn sure think it—when we see someone acting like one. But, oohhh, Michael Richards cured us all. Even some white folk were cured and now have to find another word to call us. Hell, Michael Richards even cured comedian, Paul Mooney, who is the worse Niggaholic I’ve ever seen. Paul Mooney used to say, Nigger, two hundred times in thirty minute stand-up routine. By his own admission, Mooney stated he said the word 100 times when he wakes up every morning because “it keeps his teeth white.”

Black leadership even made it “official” by calling a press conference to tell the world that we’re (black people) going to stop using the word (you know its not official if there’s no press conference - we can’t just decide amongst ourselves), and calling on everybody to stop using the word (which is a reach). Only I didn’t see 50 Cents, The Game, or Jay-Z, or Snoop or Ice Cube there. I didn’t see former California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante (a reformed Niggaholic - so he says) there. Didn’t see any of the former (or current) Klan members, none of the many corporate executives who got caught “off the record” using the term, and none of the young people who frequent the term on every bus stop, school bleacher, liquor store stoop and corner hangout.

Why is that important? Because those leaders who called for the banning of the word, are not the leaders of those who are most likely to use the word today. I even didn’t see Michael Richards up there calling for “his” people to stop using the word. He just apologized for his own tirade and said he’d seek treatment for his Niggaholism. But, trust me, relapses are in his future. He’s not going cold turkey - not the way he came out with it. Michael Richards understood how America made Niggas. He gave you a first rate lesson on what it meant to be a Nigger in America, what they did to Niggers in America, and he tried to put what he thought were Niggers back in their place in America - like they used to do back in the day… Only he forgot what time it was. It wasn’t 1956. It was 2006. The time had changed on him, but the meaning of the word hadn’t.

Now that our “call” has been put out to stop using the word, hopefully this is the last time we’ll have to revisit this topic. We can’t modernize it. We can’t intellectualize it. We can bastardize it. The word is what it is. I doubt if all will stop using it…but thanks to Richards, we at least need to try. Thanks for the reminder, Michael. Your tirade has done more than all the activist protestation has done in the past decade. At least we can’t claim to be confused about what the word means and how it’s interpreted. There’s only one way to interpret it. Nigger is still a troublesome term in America. America made it that way and Black America’s use of Nigga is keeping it that way. Let’s stop fooling ourselves into believing it means something that it’s doesn’t. We know what it means. White, Brown, Yellow people know what it means. And Michael Richards knows what he meant it to mean—apology and all. He said it the way America meant it.

We just had to be reminded…

Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America. He can be reached at AnthonySamad.com. Click here to contact Mr. Samad.

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