Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

by Michael Eric Dyson

The use of nigger has been eerily consistent in the culture, especially with the presidency of Barack Obama stoking resurgent white panic and the emergence of Donald Trump amplifying white paranoia and racial belligerence. But black folk haven’t stood by passively. A great many of us have tried to rob the word of its essential viciousness by reappropriating it, though, to many black folk, the effort smacks of internalized racist self-hate. They feel the effort is futile, and tips our caps too eagerly to a word that should be banished from the culture. A nigger is a nigger, or a nigga, they say. Beloved, many of you don’t understand why black folk ambushed the word nigger and made something strangely beautiful of it. What’s more, you often appear upset that we appropriate this term while denying you the pleasure of helping us to reshape its use. We strictly forbid you the privilege of participating in our fierce disputes about the word. As for the attempt to make the word palatable in our arenas, you don’t have to know a lot of social theory to know that powerless people often fight power with their words.