Nigga

Nigga is a term used in African American Vernacular English that began as an eye dialect form of the word nigger (which is derived ultimately from the Latin word niger meaning the color black).

Use in language

As of 2007, the word nigga is used, without intentional prejudice, among younger members of all races and ethnicities in the United States, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Caucasian Americans. In practice, its use and meaning are heavily dependent on context.

There is conflicting popular opinion on whether there is any meaningful difference between nigga and nigger as a spoken term. Many people consider the terms to be equally pejorative, and the use of nigga both in and outside African American communities remains controversial. H. Lewis Smith, author of Bury that Sucka: A Scandalous Affair with the N-word, believes that "replacing the "er" with an "a" changes nothing other than the pronunciation" and the African American Registry notes, "Brother (Brotha) and Sister (Sistah or Sista) are terms of endearment. Nigger was and still is a word of disrespect." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights group, condemns use of both nigga and nigger and bought the rights to the website nigger.com to prevent online exploitation of the term.

Some African-Americans express considerable offense when referred to as a nigga by Caucasian people, but not if they are called the same by other African-Americans, or by some other minority, as a term of endearment. In this case, the term may be seen as a symbol of fraternity, similar to the usage of the words dude, bro and queer, and its use outside a defined social group an unwelcome cultural appropriation. Critics have derided this as a double standard.

Cultural influence

The growing use of the term is often attributed to its ubiquity in modern American hip hop music. Examples include: hip-hop group Niggaz With Attitude (N.W.A.), Notorious B.I.G.'s song, The Realest Niggaz, The Geto Boys' Real Negro Shit, Ice Cube's The Wrong Nigga To Fuck With, Jay-Z's Jigga That Nigga and Snoop Doggy Dogg's For All My Niggaz And Bitches. Ol' Dirty Bastard uses the term 76 times in his Nigga Please album (not including repetitions in choruses). The term "nigga, please", first used in the 1970s by comics such as Paul Mooney as "a funny punctuation in jokes about Blacks," is now heard routinely in comedy routines by African Americans.

Stand-up comedian Chris Rock had a routine Niggas vs. Black People that distinguished a nigga, which he defined as a "low-expectation-having motherfucker", from a "black person". In contrast, Tupac Shakur defined NIGGA as an acronym: "Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished" in the lyrics to his song Words of Wisdom, on his 1991 album 2Pacalypse Now. It later served as a title of a track on his posthumous 2004 album Loyal to the Game. In an interview in the documentary Tupac: Resurrection, Shakur further distinguished between nigger and nigga: "Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing; niggas is the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs." [sic]

In 1995, two Houston, Texas men filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the words "Naturally Intelligent God Gifted Africans", and its acronym. The application was rejected, as were numerous subsequent applications for variations of the word nigga. Most recently, comedian Damon Wayans twice attempted to trademark a brand name called Nigga, "featuring clothing, books, music and general merchandise". The Trademark Office refused the application, stating "the very fact that debate is ongoing regarding in-[ethnic]-group usage, shows that a substantial composite of African Americans find the term 'nigga' to be offensive."

See also

• Guilty or Innocent of Using the N Word