I'd be at the keg and he'd come up to me like, "Ernest, when you get a second, I have a question to ask you." Finally, he goes, "Don't get offended, serious question, I'm only curious.
This kid kept trying to get my attention in what appeared to be a benign manner. Despite the fact that I was okay with, like, 15,000 white people yelling "nigga" around me at a concert, it was only a few months before that I punched a white boy in his mouth for doing the same thing at a party. I guess enough rap concerts will do that to you. What can you do? Around the same time, Kanye told TIME that he didn't like the word and attempted to replace it with "homie" on "Crack Music," but that it "just didn't have the same impact."īut lately, more and more, I’m beginning to feel like it doesn’t matter.
1 song in America for 10 weeks and before the chorus kicked in he screamed, "White people! This is your one chance to say nigga!" And believe me when I say that most of them did, just like they do during the Michael Jackson part on "All of the Lights," if you’ve been to any of his recent tours. Is that what ScHoolboy Q and Meek Mill are thinking when they say they don't mind if white people say "nigga" at their shows? At one of the first concerts I ever went to, Kanye West ranted about how "Gold Digger" had been the No. We took away its racist connotations so effectively that it's gotten to the point where some white people call each other "nigga" as a term of endearment. We use it incessantly in the most popular music. Yeah, it'd be great if no white person ever said "nigga," but that's unrealistic, and part of the blame falls to black people. Fact is, there is a difference between both words and only with the latter are lines blurred on the acceptableness of use by non-blacks. Obviously, whites who use the word with malicious intent are liable to get cursed out or hit in the face, but those people would probably say "nigger" before they said "nigga" and they're not who I'm talking about anyway. I don't give a fuck if Justin Bieber said "nigga" in a joke when he was 15.
It's just a waste of time to be up in arms over a single word every other day. My gut tells me that I should be offended every time a non-black person uses it, but as much as I hate to say it, I'm not. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to respond to that word anymore. Respect to those who haven't-even when singing along to rap music by themselves-but it seems like they account for an extremely small percentage of the population. I'm going to assume that every white person has said "nigga" at least once in their life.