Why, then, did I hear it 5 times yesterday in otherwise civilized company?
Of course, it was from one black person to another. Had I used that word, there might have been….friction.
But they used it:
“yo nigga”
and
“Hey,, niggah, where you been”
and
“what’s up my niggah?”
plus
“Nigga you been gon a while”
along with
“Yo nigga, where my money?”
5 instances that I heard in about 3 hours…I would expect that there were more that I missed, despite being fairly observant…
Yet no one batted an eye.
This was a place where a lot of cultures mixed: white, black, hispanic, indian, egyptian korean, chinese, etc. No one misbehaved towards anyone else, people were polite and decent.
But still, if it is such a bad word, one that causes hurt and is an incitement to violence…. why can they use it without harming one another but for the rest of us it is a social sin of the highest order?
(I also saw a black couple selling cotton goods, but that is another question for another day)