Lifestyles of the poor and nameless

The Real World is a crazy place (and I don't mean the TV show). I was listening to Star & Bucwild on my way to work (even though I don't like Star) and I heard them discussing the acquittal of a boy (or group of boys) who had beat a black youth while yelling "I'm gonna kill you nigga/er". I didn't get all the details, but apparently, the boy(s) were not found guilty of a hate crime because "nigga/er" wasn't considered a racial slur.

Say WHAT?! What a sad day this is for Black America. But you know what, we got what we wanted. For the past decade or so music, media and Black youth have glorified the "n-word", proclaiming it a term of endearment instead of the racial epithet that it has been historically. People of all backgrounds bandied the term about; even Asian people called each other "nigga". But as I've always said, if the meaning of the word really changed, then we wouldn't be so offended when other people use it to refer to us. I am willing to bet that 95% of Black folks who see "nigga" as a term of endearment are offended (to say the least) when a non-Black person refers to them by the same term. Case in point: a few years ago, J.Lo used the term in one of her songs. There was no shortage of angry people calling radio stations to berate her.

The crazy thing is that other ethnicities/persecuted groups (with the exception of homosexuals, who seem to have made peace with the term "queer") do not embrace their oppressive monikers. Jews, Italians, Irish and Asian people still get offended by their respective racial slurs. Where a Jewish person will run to the police at the slightest hint of a Swastika, Black youth proudly refer to themselves as niggas. Go figure.

The judicial system is (theoretically) blind to race. Although inequities are still common in practice, I think it would be just plain foolish for a Black person to expect the system to penalize non-Black people who use the term "nigga/nigger". Any court that remotely considers society in its decisions (at least 95% of them) will always include some liberal language to the tune of "we look to evolving societal norms and conductin rendering this opinion". In this case, evoloving norms dictate that "nigga" is a term of endearment. So you can be beaten to a bloody pulp while called a "nigga" and the perpetrator will get a lesser sentence because use of the word "nigga" does not prove the requisite element for a hate crime.

...and the messed up thing is we did it to ourselves. I guess we might as well just invest in the shackles now because at this rate, slavery is just around the bend.