Last time, I wrote about the commodification of black bodies by black people through the perpetuation of white stereotypes, and specifically the every-day use of “nigger/nigga” in our communities and culture. I want to understand more fully if we are not only contributing to the colonial apparatus’s expectations by playing the role the oppressor requires but whether we are literally harming ourselves.
In my first article, I wrote about the medical effects of racial oppression. We understand them as coming from white systems to black people and causing physical and psychological harm. Are our psyches only harmed when a white person uses nigger and nigga, or do our bodies and psyches react unconsciously regardless? Is black to black use of the word just as harmful to our health?
This is an argument that we have among ourselves and we currently understand it as preference or resistance. Some of us think that we are taking back the power or somehow lessening the impact of the word. But I have to question that since the images we portray of ourselves match the images that white systems have portrayed of us for centuries. I also have to question the usefulness of using the words when it brings about no progressive social change. Well, we could once again discuss this philosophically, but I want to add some data.
My dissertation study will look at the physiological response that the brain has to hearing the words “nigger” and “nigga” as spoken by and between black men. I am going to use a portable EEG headset to record brainwave activity that
measure the stress response to neutral and emotional words. The emotional words in this study are, of course, “nigger” and “nigga”.
To minimize the risk of producing false-positives, the voice that will speak the words will be that of African American men and the participants in the study will select the voice that sounds most African American to him.
To my knowledge, we have not gathered this type of data to determine what effects, if any, using these words among ourselves has on us. While I have my hypotheses as to the outcomes, I don’t know what the study will reveal. I will report my findings in my final article and will, for now, end with this:
Either showing a response or not, the results of this study should not:
1. Be regarded as definitive measures of psychological, social, or physiological impacts or non-impacts African Americans as a whole.
2. Absolve people who use “nigger” and “nigga” as derogatory markers.
3. Be used to uphold oppressive ideologies and their toxic effects on individuals, communities, societies, or nations.
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