{"id":2062,"date":"2012-06-11T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/06\/jesus-is-my-nigga-in-paris.html"},"modified":"2012-06-11T15:09:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T15:09:00","slug":"jesus-is-my-nigga-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/06\/jesus-is-my-nigga-in-paris.html","title":{"rendered":"Jesus is My Nigga (in Paris)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>by Ebony Utley
Rhetoric Race and Religion Contributor
From: Rap and Religion <\/a><\/p>\n

Lengthy discussions about who can and who can\u2019t say nigga exhaust me. J Smooth already issued the final word on the matter. Besides, it\u2019s so frustrating to have a conversation about a word that most people are afraid to say out loud. You won\u2019t hear any \u201cN-words\u201d from me. If I say (or type) the word nigger and you feel terribly uncomfortable, that\u2019s exactly how you\u2019re supposed to feel. And if I say (or type) the word nigga and you feel perfectly comfortable, that is also exactly how you\u2019re supposed to feel.<\/p>\n

There are centuries of history between nigger and nigga. There\u2019s also a common thread that unites the two, but most people are unfamiliar with it because we rarely have honest dialogue about the terms. Let me break it down for you.<\/p>\n

A nigger was a property thing. A nigger was a stolen or bought enslaved African whose value was reduced to how much profit he or she could procure for the plantation. A nigger had no rights\u2014not even the right to be considered human. Oppression is defined as the complete eradication of one\u2019s choices. A nigger is the epitome of oppression.<\/p>\n

Post-emancipation when blacks earned the power to name themselves, they called themselves negros\u2014a shift from, but still a derivative of nigger. The biggest difference was that a negro had personhood. As history progressed, the identifying terms changed from negro to colored to black to Afro American to African American and back to nigga. Why would years of renaming and progress cause some blacks to publicly declare themselves niggas? In a word, oppression.<\/p>\n

When rappers ushered nigga into the mainstream, audiences of all races were introduced to contemporary forms of black oppression through criminalization, discrimination, surveillance, and imprisonment. (Read more about oppressive urban conditions in the Rap and Religion excerpt.)<\/a> Audiences were also reintroduced to nigga as a commodity thing\u2014a persona packaged by rappers with the help of white industry executives to sell black bodies to primarily white audiences.<\/p>\n

The common thread between nigger and nigga is black bodies as a form of capitalist enterprise. I don\u2019t expect Gwenyth Paltrow to understand this. Clearly she\u2019s not a racist because she has black friends\u2014several of whom are very rich, don\u2019t seem to be oppressed, and don\u2019t mind her using the word. Watch Nas emphatically call her a \u201creal nigga.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I noted earlier that you may feel perfectly comfortable when you hear nigga, it\u2019s because the popularization of the word abstracts nigga from history. If you don\u2019t know the history, you won\u2019t have a problem with casually tweeting nigga as Paltrow did or singing along to \u201cNiggas in Paris\u201d as millions of fans do.<\/p>\n

Jay-Z and Kanye are not casually using calling themselves niggas, though. A careful reading of the \u201cNiggas in Paris\u201d lyrics acknowledges that the rappers see themselves as oppressed outcasts moving into the upper echelons of power. The folks that want to fine them are trying to reduce two black men to dollar signs. While Jay-Z acquiesces that his money defines him<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s 50 grand to a muh\u2019fucker like me? Can you please remind me?\u201d<\/p>\n

they subtly acknowledge that although outsiders may see them as niggers (i.e. property things), they see themselves as niggas (commodity things).<\/p>\n

And this is the essence of the term. Nigga is not nigger spelled differently. A nigga acknowledges histories of oppression and simultaneously resists these histories by exercising some control over his (or her) capitalist production. Jay-Z and Kanye West are not performing \u201cNiggas in Paris\u201d 8-13 times in a single show for free. They are capitalizing on their ability to create capital from the very same audiences that have historically benefited from their oppression and their ancestors\u2019 unpaid labor. And picking Paris was no accident. In addition to being a fashion capital, black artists and intellectuals exiled themselves to Paris for years in order to escape American oppression.<\/p>\n

So back to the title of my post. If a rapper says, \u201cJesus is my nigga\u201d the rapper means that Jesus was a fellow oppressed person exiled from his homeland. Jay-Z and Kanye are notorious for rocking blinged out Jesus pieces because the commodification of Jesus proves that one can still be a powerful, humanized, revered commodity thing regardless of what one\u2019s oppressive haters may say.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ebony UtleyRhetoric Race and Religion ContributorFrom: Rap and Religion Lengthy discussions about who can and who can\u2019t say nigga exhaust me. J Smooth already issued the final word on the matter. Besides, it\u2019s so frustrating to have a conversation about a word that most people are afraid to say out loud. You won\u2019t hear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nJesus is My Nigga (in Paris)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"by Ebony UtleyRhetoric Race and Religion ContributorFrom: Rap and Religion Lengthy discussions about who can and who can\u2019t say nigga exhaust me. 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