"Are you a Nigga?"

            I walked next door to meet up with my neighbor so we could walk to MELS English school together. When I approached her she asked, “ Are you a nigga?”.  I was taken back by this question.  I wasn’t expecting to hear the word nigga come out of her mouth. In the US there are multiple definitions for that word and I wasn’t sure in what way she was using it, or what that word meant to her. In my head I thought, is she calling me black, is she calling me a man, did I miss hear her and she really said “ what’s up my nigga?”, as in “what’s up hommie? “

            I asked what she meant. She said, "You’re walking like a nigga.”  Still not sure what that meant, I asked what a “nigga” was.  She said, “you know, those black guys who wear baggy clothes, expensive jewelry and sing rap music.”

            I was amused that she related how I walked to the profile of someone I obviously don’t fit. She said I walked with a little lean in my body like rappers do.  This definitively made me laugh.

            But after that experience I kept coming across people who were talking about “niggas”. Even my 5 year old niece/cousin used it to describe my step dad when she saw him sleeping on the couch with his hat turned to the side.  I would always ask people how they defined the word. People used the word nigga to descried what I would directly translate to a rapper. The word rapper exists here too so I was confused why they didn’t use rapper instead of “nigga”.

            As these encounters continued to happen I began to ask if they knew the origin of the word. The answer so far has always been no. What’s interesting is once I explain the origin and start talking about its history in slavery there is a shift in the demeanor of the person. After a brief explanation I get a “ooooooh, I didn’t know that” as a response and the conversation usually ends there.  I wonder if everyone knew the origin if they would still use it.

            I’m really curious how did the word nigga, that is still very controversial in the United States, come to be used to describe American and other black rappers? ( I say other black rappers because I have seen the word used to describe rappers from Angola and other African countries, although most of them are emulating American rap culture.)

             What does this mean for the evolution or regression of the word nigga? Could this be the next level of reclaiming the word. That it now means a black man who has reached financial surplus thru making music. Or is it a regression in that even the rich black rapper is still called a nigga. And that’s even if you would call being a rapper successful. While it surely represents financial success, what image does it place and ideals does it create for those who want to emulate them? If you look at the culture surrounding rappers in the US you see dollar bills, half naked women, alcohol and fancy cars.

            Or does it mean anything at all? It could merely reflect the fact that rappers use the word repeatedly in their music and so that culture, that life style, and that image has become defined by that term. For the sake of not over analyzing, I’ll leave you with the fact that it has surly given an interesting taste at how American rap culture is received here in Bissau.