I traveled to Hawaii recently for vacation (lovely place by the way). While there, my girlfriends and I found ourselves in a nightclub in the middle of Oahu on a Saturday night, turning up to music we barely like (sorry Fetty Wap). But you know how it is when you’re with friends: You must be down to clown.
The club, on that evening, was made up of a large number of both Asian and White people, a few Pacific Islanders here and there, and even fewer Black folks. Counting myself and my friends, I would say there were about 12 of us in there in total (I probably saw 40 in total during my week there). But either way, everyone was having a pretty good time.
Especially my friends and I. We were jumping around to all the jams, rapping verses word for word in each other’s faces, even bringing back crumping (terrible idea). While we probably looked crazy, we were having a ball, and that energy was something people around us could feel. And it was something they gravitated to. Literally.
A young Asian woman walked up to us while we were the middle of hopping around and decided it was the perfect time to make new friends.
“Do you guys mind if I hang with you?”
My friends looked at her with a blank stare as she talked, but I said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” I assumed she wanted just to stand there and dance with us. But for some reason, she really wanted to talk.
“So what are your names?” she yelled over the music.
My friend responded with fake monikers: “Cynthia, Brittany, and Tammy.”
“I’m Kim! Nice to meet you.”
And we got back to dancing–until she interrupted us again:
“So where are you guys from?”
“Chicago,” I said, which wasn’t completely a lie. We all grew up there but just so happened to be spread all across the country as adults.
“That’s awesome,” she said.
To keep her from asking too many other questions, my friends and I got back to dancing, just in time for Drake’s “Ni–a We Made It.” And just as we were doing our thing, thrashing our bodies around to the beat, rapping the lyrics, the chorus came up, and I heard “Ni–a, we made it, hey!” come from Kim. And as my friends continued to hop around, I whipped around, stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her. But Kim kept dancing.
Despite being quite taken aback by her use of the N-word around me, I realized that everyone in the club said the N-word at that moment. Did I mention that a majority of the club was NOT Black? And while I was heated, it didn’t feel like the right time for an N-word discussion at that moment. Thankfully, Kim eventually scattered off.
As my friends and I talked on the way home and I told them what happened, they were upset.
“Giiiiirl, you should have told me! I would have gone in!” said one friend.
“That’s unacceptable!” said the other.
And yet, this is something that happens all the time. Some people seem to be more comfortable than ever saying the N-word out in public, hiding behind song lyrics. One of my good friends said that while in a club in Dubai in September, a White man, eager to dance with her circle of friends, dropped the N-bomb while everyone was dancing and rapping to Kendrick Lamar. Her sister had a fit:
“Uh uh! Don’t you dare say that word around me!”
And then there was the time here in New York City (last week actually) while walking with my sister, a Hispanic man and his two White friends were walking down the street. While laughing, the Hispanic guy put his arm around the neck of one of his friends and said, “My ni–a, what’s going on?!” I turned up my eyebrow, again, but said nothing. Two seconds later my sister said, “Did I just hear what I think I heard? What the f–k?!”
And let’s not forget that a picture of two young White students wearing T-shirts that said the Drake lyrics “Ni–a We Made It” on the back made national news for the audacity of it all. As did a photo of a White woman and a friend in a cotton field with the caption, “Our inner ni–er came out today.”
Folks are getting bold.
After my own awkward encounter in the club, I wondered if I handled things wrong. If I should have said something to Kim, who I had known for five minutes, instead of just giving her the death face. But it’s hard to tell one person something when there are a few hundred others around saying the same thing with a glass of alcohol in their hand, sweat on their brow and a smile on their face. Everyone thought it was okay. It’s also hard to say something at a concert full of hundreds of thousands of people when an artist’s lyrics are riddled with the N-word, and they’re asking folks to sing along. Maybe if these were my ill-advised colleagues I could have schooled them, but it’s hard to know what to say and do with complete strangers. It’s complicated. It’s touchy.
But then again, there’s no excuse. You only have to tell me once that something I might have said or done was offensive, and I’ll go out of my way to refrain from doing it again. And yet, for as long as I can remember, many White people I’ve worked with and studied with in school failed to get it: “Why can’t I say it but you guys can?” And sure, people can have whatever opinion they will about Black folks saying the N-word and “taking it back” as some would say, but I think we can all admit that there’s something frightening and maddening about when a White person says it in your presence, especially with glee during a song.
And that’s even more of a reason why I still feel bad that I didn’t say anything at all. Kim, and the hundreds of people in the club who said it in my presence may have thought it was okay, but it definitely was not.
How would you have handled it? And how have you handled it in the past if you’ve been in the presence of a non-Black person saying the N-word?
