Beggars and niggers

Long ago, when the Dutch were ruled by the Catholic king of Spain, a group of noblemen asked him to permit freedom of religion in his Northern provinces, which were in the midst of the Reformation. Some in the majesty’s court remarked that they were nothing but beggars – in French: ils ne sont que des gueux.

Rebels against the Spanish king started to call themselves geuzen, which is a Dutch bastardization of gueux. By taking their enemy’s insult and turning it into their name, they effectively disarmed it. To this day, the term lives on: World War Two resistance fighters called themselves geuzen and a geuzennaam is any name you take for yourself after it’s been used as a smear against you.

This reappropriation is comparable to what happened with the word nigger. From the plantations of the old South to the streets of South Central, the word changed it’s meaning. A nasty racial slur has become a title of honour, a mark of friendship or shared history. But that’s where the comparison ends.

See, the geuzen wouldn’t have flinched if someone from outside their group would have called them that. They were proud of what they were. In today’s parlance they would have responded with a resounding “Hell yeah!” Not so with nigger. No matter how many times Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg call each other niggers (or niggaz, but nigga please… that’s not a different word): if someone else says it, it’s an insult.

So they took the word from the enemy and then didn’t disarm it. In fact, they turned it into an atomic bomb. Any use of the word in public by outsiders guarantees an explosion of rage. And that’s why Google sends you straight to racist websites when you search for nigger.

Think about this for a second. What are they going to call you when nigger doesn’t hurt you anymore? When it makes you react with pride instead of anger? When Rihanna’s only reaction to the Dutch magazine which called her a nigga bitch would’ve been: “Are you calling me a bitch?”