You are what you say.

People.

People irritate me. I irritate me, you irritate me, he/she/it irritates me, we irritate me, ya'll irritate me, they irritate me. Conjugate it all - it all irritates me. But I have a special loathing for those who - and this isn't my word - call themselves niggers.

OK, now that your brain has recovered from the fact that I used that word, pay careful attention. Just the fact that I used that word shocks you, I'm sure. It sends your brain back to Africa, back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, back to Jim Crow, segregation, White Primaries, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks. And that is exactly what it should do. Such a word is dangerous. It carries with it connotations of extreme injustice, of hatred and prejudice. That word is in fact a weapon. And I hate using it, as should everybody. It is the absolute apex of offensive - I could call you a cunt, and you might grimace, but shrug it off. Call you a nigger? Them's fightin' words.

It is derived from the Spanish niger (black). This in itself is not surprising. It is its use in historical context that upsets people. Not too long ago it was, and sometimes still today it is used in a demeaning way to black people. It is also not a long shot to say it generally causes great reprisal from aforementioned group when it is said.

So why then do certain black people use this word? I'm sure you've heard it before. You step onto the train and hear a young black guy with his pants around his knees, a pristine baseball cap still bearing its advertising sticker, and a 4XL shirt you could probably stuff the entire population of Cyprus in proclaiming proudly, "Wassup, my niggah?"

What!? This word has seen perhaps two centuries of use as a racial slur, designed to ankle the black man, to put him down, and demean him. Why then do these black boys (and I avoid saying "men" intentionally) use it colloquially?

Let's take a gander at some popular black role models. Barack Obama and Colin Powell: great examples of political role models. Then you have Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks - the quintessential rights movement role models. Now let's try this...type "black role models" into google. First hit? RuPaul. RuPaul is a black man who dresses like a woman and is notoriously flamboyant. OK, fail there. Biggie Smalls. An obese man who rapped about money, objectifying women, cars, and "niggaz", killed by the guns of his rivals. Fail. O.J. Simpson. Famous football player who was involved in a stupefying debacle of a murder trial. Fail. Dennis Rodman. Famous basketball player who had a problem with drug abuse and domestic violence. Fail. Curtis Jackson a.k.a. "50 cent". Drug dealer turned rapper who was shot nine times and rapped about money, objectifying women, cars, and "niggaz". Tiger Woods. Famous golfer who cheated on his wife with an unknown amount of women and sucks at driving.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Aside from RuPaul, who is only considered a black role model because he is crazy enough to keep landing in the media zoo, all of these black "role models" are rappers or sports stars. All of them are involved with either drug dealing, objectification of women, or violence. These men (and RuPaul) can all be found on the first page of said google search. This is what constitutes black role models? What rubbish.

Not to mention the fact that I can't think of a single rapper, or hip hop artist, or whatever you want to call it, that came after 1995 that doesn't include the word "nigga" in their music. Do these people realize that they are perpetuating the horrible negative stereotype of black people actually being niggers? You don't see white people entering a room full of white people going "wassup crackers/white boyz/pasty faces/barbarians". You don't hear Asians saying "wassup chinks" or Jews saying "wassup Auschwitzers". What's the deal!?

Maybe it is satire - like saying "hey fuckface/dicknose/douche nozzle". But this word is not even close to being reconciled that way. Why? I can't call anyone a nigga in the presence of a black person - I would get my pasty face creamed.

The thing that upsets me most about this, though, is not that I want to call people niggas and can't. It's that the continued use of this nasty word encourages prejudice to blossom. Think of the word as a pebble and society as a lake (let's use an already dead and beaten aphorism). Drop in the word, and small waves of prejudice radiate. Now take Lil Jon, Ludacris, Missy Elliot, Nas, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Wu-Tang Clan, and all the other rappers out there and have them drop a pebble in each time they say it. You've taken what could be still waters and continued to froth and froth and froth, until they erode away the entire system that surrounds them.

To be fair, not all black people call each other this. I have found personally that the majority of black people who refuse to say this word are among the most intelligent, well-mannered, helpful, creative, interesting, and useful people I have ever had the privilege to know. I have also found that the people who say it all the time are the most irritating, stupid, incorrigible, worthless wastes of space who feel entitled to everything while earning nothing.

And so it seems to me, those who decide to continue to wield this weapon of language define themselves as such. Call someone a nigger? Then you are a nigger. Don't like it? Don't say it.

(I don't intend to be a hypocrite - I say it solely for the avoidance of the term "The N Word", which is just a pretty euphemism for the same idea.)