One night two winters ago I was hanging out at my crappy retail job with a customer whose sense of humour was sharper and more flippant than mine (that never ever happens). Impressed with him, I called him “my nigga.” I’m actually very nerdy and square, so this was out of character for me. But I did it anyway, because I felt like it.

A white coworker who overheard me told me never to use that word. Instinctively, I thought who the hell is this chick that she can tell me how to talk to other black people? But then I thought long and hard aboujt the word, its painful past and the confusion tangled up with it today, and I very compassionately told that girl to GROW UP. This, for me, was what it’s about: on what basis is she judging me? What gives her or anyone else the authority?

It’s patently obvious that the word today carries several meanings. In order for that girl’s indignation to be valid, she has to commit a huge equivocation, making it out that the word means something different and far more offensive than I, the speaker, actually meant, which is also something my girlfriend does when we argue, and it’s just annoying.

The word’s Black detractors, too, fuming with memories of invective heaped upon them from decades past, insist that calling your buddy “my nigga” forgets the painful history behind the word. No disrespect intended, but that’s rubbish. We are reminded of the meaning and the history all the time. Even using it playfully: “my nigga;” even this only conveys a modern sense of cameraderie only because of its dark past, no pun intended.

Black or white, you and your nigga together are the ultimate outlaws. Not many other words carry that sense of absolutely not belonging where you are; of feeling the loathing of the entire world, like a sunburn on your exposed parts, whenever anybody looks at you. A friendship based on ‘we are outsiders together’ is a bond for the ages. You’ve gone where no one else can go; your loyalty is so strong, so primal as to be superhuman. A mighty oak of an endearment, growing out of the dung, the fertilizer of one of the most vile insults this great nation can imagine — which is one way of saying we’ve got no imagination.

It would really be something, wouldn’t it: a good word coming out of a bad one. On the other hand, it’s also the most normal thing in the world. It happens all the time. THIS IS HOW LANGUAGE WORKS. It’s a linguistic inevitability. Words shift meanings.

The biggest and most cited example is the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community’s reclaiming of the word ‘queer.’ My personal favorite is the word jazz. It was based on a West African sexual term and originally used by the white musical establishment to slander the type of music niggers liked. Then suddenly everyone liked it! It’s no longer slander! Being jazzy isn’t crude sexual innuendo. It’s the paragon of artful class and technique and charm and fun. The word jazz is everywhere! The language is much richer for it. Because the language itself is jazzy. To insist that this one world has one meaning and one meaning only is patently ridiculous.

If we continue down this hysterical path, the following will happen: two years from now, Fox News will air some stunning expose. “This is how black guys talk when they think white people aren’t listening!” And it will be white people enforcing this. Rules are rules, after all. The dudes they “expose” will have to hire publicists and apologize to America on Larry King. “We’re really making some racial progress,” litigious-minded white hacks will say to themselves, smugly. And this type of verbal policemanship reminds me of Orwellian newspeak — eliminating colourful words from language as a means of controlling thought, which is not very jazzy at all.

Why must we get our collective thongs in a bunch over this one word, of all things? When Boondocks’ creator Aaron McGruder visited my university, he was asked about his characters’ use of the “n-word.” He responded, “I’d rather people say ‘nigga’ than say ‘n-word’ because n-word is stupid. It’s fundamentally immature, like saying ‘dookie’ among first-graders; like we are running from a truth we all know is there.”

“I certainly understand the sensitivity and power behind it,” he continued. But it’s vapid and pointless to huff and puff all your outrage on that. “There are lots of people whose job it is to keep the conversation of race at the level of ‘we shouldn’t use the n-word on TV’,” he said, which keeps us from finding any real resolutions to real social problems.

We have more important things to worry about. This is a single word. This word itself is not racism. The fact of saying the word, in and of itself, is not racist. White people have said evil things; condescending things; fearful, sinister things, but not one has ever said the word ‘nigger’ directly to me. That’s the way it works: a backhanded pearl, so subtle, so well-placed; it doesn’t say ‘nigger’ so much as insinuating it. This has happened to me. But no one has actually said the word. I have occasionally pictured how it would happen. I’d be working behind the counter at Blockbuster. Some cranky, middle-aged Brentwood housewife, juiced on Starbucks’ caffeine and late-fee rage, sneers at me across the counter, then turns away, muttering “nig-ger,” just loudly enough for me and no one else to hear, leaning into the first syllable like she wants the word to bend over and topple on me.

Coming from her, would the word carry enough weight to crush me? I doubt it. The forties are over. I’d probably just laugh it off. I certainly wouldn’t feign indignation or even surprise. There’s a certain type of white person who, whenever his mouth is open for more than 30 seconds, let’s face it: you feel like he might say “nigger” or “faggot” at any moment. He probably wouldn’t even mean anything by it. He could be recommending an accountant. “This one Jap handles my taxes. He’s terrific!”