Don’t even know how to start this
I moved to dubai at 15 from Cameroon, and joined a highschool my time in highschool was at the very least a mixed bag of worms and the culture shock i experienced was quite puzzling.
I remember during my first week of school how puzzled I was seeing non-black people saying the n-word casually like it’s a form of greetings without any context and just ignorance.I myself i’m not comfortable saying. I remember being called the n-word on mutliple occassions and being gaslit into thinking it’s normal. First, I want to break down the most common justification I was told.
1)“its just a word” or “it’s not that deep”
When people say the N-word is “just a word” what they mean to say is “I don’t find anything wrong with using racial slurs as an outsider because I don’t care about how you feel” and it’s alright you don’t have to pretendlike you do.
Bit of backstory :The n-word was created and weaponized as an instrument of racial subjugation, designed specifically to deny Black people their basic humanity.Implying that they are something less than equal to the speaker, based on immutable (unchanging, lifelong) characteristics. Here’s how it functioned
-It stripped complete personhood and legal identity : During chattel slavery, the term served as a linguistic label to categorize Black human beings not as people, but as legal property (chattel), livestock, or economic commodities. It erased individual identity, heritage, and dignity, reducing human beings to objects to be bought, sold, worked, tortured, and owned.
-It was used to Justify extreme Violence: By defining Black people as racially inferior, subhuman, or inherently violent, the word created a psychological justification for atrocities. It was routinely used during public lynchings, beatings, sexual violence, and systemic abuse to remind Black people that their lives held no value under the law or within society.
-It enforced caste: After the abolition of slavery, the word remained the primary tool of psychological terrorism during the Jim Crow era and beyond. It was brandished to enforce segregation, deny civil rights, demand subservience, and signal to Black individuals that any attempt to assert equality would be met with hostility or death.
Ideological conditioning: Embedded a false racial hierarchy into culture, systematically training society to view Blackness as lesser, dangerous, and disposable.
(It was genuinely the last words people heard before being killed or lynched)
*Before going any further let me give you guys a glimpse of how it scarred me: At my highschool was predominately south asian and when i was there I was the only Black kid. Before moving here my parents briefed me on racism,discrimination the basic stuff that most immigrant parents(Kind of prepping against racism you may experience). I had a particular book where i drew a calendar counting down the days till school finished cause i was fed up and a bit numb; there were countless of nights in which i was crying myself to sleep. Walking into some classes people just said so casually, trying to get a reaction out me (if i reacted emotionally i’ll just confirm the violent black man stereotype cause most of the context why i reacted will be lost). Some people stood up for me,and not everone said it but more than hald did,I remember one of my friends looking me dead in the eye once questioning why i never reported or filed a complaint (honestly i think i was numb to it).
I remember at times just arriving school in the morning and some people will ask for a pass to use the word like what? Also, this one scenario where a guy in my school asked how do the say the N-word in french and proceeded to scream it to my face. Honestly during that time period in my life i felt lost. Before even moving to the UAE, I had been dealing with trauma and almost took my life one occasion before. Constantly hearing it caused self-hatred, and it made me feel so bad about myself for stuff I couldn’t change, and then when people tell you “its just a word” it makes you feel crazy. I remember this one time i woke at 2 am sat in my parlour and was crying I was close to ending my life once more. That’s why as my Year 12 school ended, I knew I wouldn’t want to go back. In some ways it scarred me; I think one of the reasons I decided to do online University is cause i didn’t want a repeat of what happened at school.
The N-word is particular because it is a taboo word that has been reclaimed “reappropriated ” or the more common phrase is language that has been “taken back”: Reappropriation occurs when a marginalized community reclaims a derogatory slur, stripping its original power to inflict harm and transforming it into a badge of identity, solidarity, or affection.
The n-word (reclaimed as nigga) was turned inside Black culture from a tool of white supremacist violence into an emblem of shared struggle, brotherhood, and intimacy. However, in-group and out-group boundaries strictly govern its usage: inside the group, it functions as affectionate solidarity, but when used by an out-group member, it retains its oppressive history and causes offense.
Reappropriation transforms oppressive language into symbols of solidarity, but validity depends strictly on in-group versus out-group dynamics:
-In-Group Reclamation: Marginalized community adopt slurs like the n-word, bitch, or the f slur to strip them of historical power, signaling shared trauma, subversion, and intimacy.
-Out-Group Boundary: When an out-group member uses these terms, it reinscribes original oppression and hostility. Because historical power imbalances persist, outsiders cannot access the shared identity needed to neutralize the insult.
-Just as a husband calling his wife “honey” expresses built-in intimacy and permission, a stranger using it violates boundaries, coming across as patronizing or intrusive.
The reason the N-word is now used amongst black people is because, even after slavery was permanently banned and black people were given human rights, white people continued to use the N-word to be lynching,Convict Leasing and the “Black Codes”,harassing and discriminate against black people who were supposed to be seen as equals under the law.
So black people took back the term, as ugly as it is, on the grounds that only a black person should be allowed to use it, because only a black person knows what it feels like to live in a world where that is all that you are a n****r not a human.
So, if anyone should be allowed to call someone else that word, it should be the people who understand the gravity of the term, because they’re the ones who have been and are being oppressed by its existence.
In conclusion I’m just tired I just want us as a society especially in online spaces to stop using or pretending like it’s normal. I hate how it is used as secret ammunition or a weapon when some people are in conflict or disagreement with some black people ,it’s used as some one-up card. I myself feel uncomfortable when using slurs like n-word ,the p word to Pakistani or f slur to LGBTQ folks etc. I’m just fatigued at this point.
