I'm going try something

but to some black people, it is a term of endearment.

or even just a generic noun. i’ve got speakers hooked up to my computer at work, and i play them pretty loud… this morning, i’m playing Jay-Z, and the word "nigger; must have been pushed out to the office at large at least thirty times in the last five minutes. nobody minds—i suppose you could make an argument that i’m offending somebody and they’re internally cringing, but practically speaking, i know everybody here, and i’m pretty sure i’m not. (people seem to be hanging out in here a lot, actually, regardless of race. it’s ‘cause i’m cool.) i don’t think anybody would disagree the reason jay-z gets to use "nigger" largely without censure—and why travis tritt could not—is that jay-z is black. so why is that?

like a lot of other communication, the message is not entirely separatable from the medium. when a white man calls a black man a nigger, the underlying historical and social context is slavery and disenfranchisement, regardless of whether or not Some Of His Best Friends Are Black People; when a black man calls a black man a nigger, it’s more complex. one way or another, it’s co-opting the word, and so in a different context, the content is affected. i’m not as familiar with the gay community as i am with the black community, but i understand something similar happens with the word "faggot".

at it’s very root, it revolves around exactly defining the Other. i’m half sri-lankan; every once in a while me and a guyanese buddy call each other "coconut niggers." it’s a line from a movie we both like, and it’s funny as hell. when our white friends hear us do it and do it themselves, we’ll smile—to my recollection, neither of us has ever asked one of them to stop, i think we both feel it’d be rude—but for the most part, it’s really not funny. it’s funny when me and him do it to each other because it’s obviously harmless; the underlying logic is something like "this-can’t-mean-i-am-making-you-the-Other-because-we-are-both-the-same," and so like a lot of humor, it boils down to whistling in the dark. without a doubt, it becomes more emotionally charged when someone who’s not southeast asian does it—and keep in mind, i’m talking about my best friends, people who i’d literally die for, and who i know for a fact would die for me. i’m also obviously talking about southeast asians; our history in america has been a happy walk in the park comparied to the black experience, and in some ways probably exceeds that of a lot of white immigrant groups.

come to think of it—and i didn’t realize this until i started typing—i think that living in europe, where my buddy and i are commonly mistaken for turks or gypsies, groups who have become the defacto niggers of europe—him and i have got a lot more sensitive to the Brown Jokes. but in the right context, they’ve also got funnier…

personally? i’m with ridley. i don’t know what comrie’s motivations are, but my gut feeling is that making things scary keeps them scary. that said, the underlying issue is historical social inequity and modern cleavage—it’ll be, i think, a long time until the word is completely without power.

in other news, take a look at this article from the Irony Department.