Strange fruit

N-I-G-G-E-R.

Is it time for this word, and all its derivatives -- including the hip-hop term "nigga" -- to be abolished from the English lexicon? More to the point, should Black people stop using the word, whether in hip-hop, in comedy, in movies and television or other entertainment? Are we giving White people permission to use it by claiming to "appropriate" it ourselves? (And we certainly don't like it when the word becomes a pictorial...) Have we so internalized the notion of our own inferiority and marginalization that we now use the term reflexively, and self-destructively, without even realizing that we are contributing to our own dehumanization? (A legal case in Brooklyn could hang on whether the word has become so mundane that White people can no longer be called racist just for uttering it.)

The web-site AbolishTheNWord.com has touched a nerve around the world, and has renewed this debate. We had the co-founder, Jill Merritt, on the radio show today, as well as Michael Eric Dyson, who -- along with others, like comedian Paul Mooney -- is on the other side of the argument. Check out Jill and Kovan Flowers' web-site. I dare you not to be viscerally affected by the images of slavery and lynching that Merritt and Flowers say are inexorably tied to the word. So should the word be stricken? (Image credit: Lynching in America)

Tags: racial slurs, nigger, nigga, Abolish the N-word, Paul Mooney, Fat Nick Minucci, Howard Beach