Famously, Aimé Cesairé appropriated the French racial epithet negré, a term traditionally used for demonization,
for his own creative endeavors, namely poetry. This primarily linguistic move led to a popular political
movement called Negritude, the aim of which was to garner the power of self-repsentation for all those
impacted by the African Diaspora. Likewise, in the United States, the signifier "nigger" has successfully
been robbed, to some degree and in some contexts, of its descructive power in white hands in the same way
as negré. By appropriation, each distinct Black population, please pardon my vast generalization for just
a moment, was able to reclaim a negative word in order to give it new, perhaps positive, connotation.
Often times in history, we see certain words, phrases, mannerisms, and creative mediums
used, or stolen (depending on your perspective), from peripheral political groups (Jazz and Blues are two
examples of this). Granted, these once burgeoning art forms were not created in a vacuum. It is impossible
to say that one race can lay absolute claim to each form; however, we do historically and mostly accurately
attribute their origins to Black musicians, and a Black ontology. Over time, these forms have been co-opted
into the hegemony, meaning that they have become popular with whites as well. Building on Omi and Winant,
we can say that this political move has resulted in a somewhat re-signification of Blues and Jazz as traditional
American rather than Black forms--taking away their potentially destabilizing influence. This movement
on the one hand granted a certain legitimization to Black musicians and thus power, while on the other hand
it also garnered a certain coercive influence for White hegemony. The reverse appropriation of negré and
nigger has caused a much different reaction. Rather than white washing these signs, they have been used
against the hegemony that originally bestowed them with power. (I encourage everyone to watch Samuel
Jackson's Django interview, where a reporter asked him about the use of the word nigger in the film. He
responded, of course, but you have to use the word. The reporter refused to do so and became visibly
uncomfortable.) The term, although used in many contexts, metonymically invokes many historically and
culturally shameful episodes in the course of United States' development as a country, most importantly
slavery and Jim Crow. These moment of interpolation, where a repressed period in history (repressed
in class and in cultural (at least white) consciousness is brought back to the current moment, facilitate an
inversion in the still prevalent power dynamic of white over Black. The question I want to ask, and that
has been asked, should these terms continue to be used given their etymologies. Also, are there other
ways in which this power dynamic is inverted in every day life?
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