President Barack Obama used the N-word during an interview released Monday to make a point that there’s still plenty of room for America to combat racism. “Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public,” Obama said in an interview for the podcast “WTF with Marc Maron.”

“That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.” It is a word with a complex social history (in which Mumbai plays a role). It is also one of those words that has curiously polarised nuances of context, depending on who utters it: It’s one thing, for example, for one young black guy to call another black guy “nigga” – in fact, as any JayZ fan knows, it’s a term of deep affection and brotherhood.

Must Read: Jindal Criticises Obama Over Gay Marriage Views

The History of N-word:

The N-word first emerged, quite innocuously, around the 15th century, when Portuguese sailors first encountered the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa. They, not surprisingly, called them “negro”, a Portuguese word descended from the Latin adjective “niger”, denoting the colour black.

The first time we find it used in America was in the early 1600s, when a businessman named John Rolfe recorded a shipment of “negars”, or African slaves that landed in the Virginia colony. But over the next couple of centuries, the word “negro” evolved, in some circles, especially in the Deep South, into the contemptuously spat out “nigra” Or “nigger”.

Mumbai Connection with N-word:

In the 1890s, the legend goes, Joseph Conrad was a young ship’s officer passing through Mumbai. Staying in a room at the Royal Alfred Sailor’s Home (now the Maharashtra Police Headquarters) in Colaba, he stepped out onto his verandah early one morning and looked out onto the harbour. There he saw, sailing gracefully into sight, a sleek ship named The Narcissus.

That evocative image stuck in his memory, and a few years later, he used that ship as the setting for his tale of James Waite, the West Indian sailor who manipulates the rest of his crew members over the course of a fateful voyage from Mumbai to London.

The book’s title: The Nigger of the Narcissus.

It continued to be published by Penguin under that title, right until circa 2009. But, thanks to its title, the book has had a peculiar history. For starters, when it was first published in the late 1890s, the US publishers refused to use Conrad’s original title, and insisted on changing it to the awkward The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle. It was not for any noble reason, though, that the N-word of the title was rejected: it was simply because the publishers believed that a book about a black man would not sell in the US market.

The new title of the book is “I kid you not”:

WoodBridge Publishing, a small US publishing House, decided to re-publish the book with all the N-words expunged – which, in this case, was perhaps understandable

“WordBridge Publishing has performed a public service in putting Joseph Conrad’s neglected classic into a form accessible to modern readers. This new version addresses the reason for its neglect: the profusion of the so-called n-word throughout its pages. Hence, the introduction of “n-word” throughout the text, to remove this offence to modern sensibilities,” someone explained.

Also Read: School Principal Beaten to Death In Bihar Accused of Killing Two Children

It is great to respect people’s feelings. It is great to try and undo old wrongs, where we can. But I would submit that this needs to be done with a sense of proportion, a certain sensitivity, plus a small modicum of intelligence.

The N***** of the Narcissus was a wonderful piece of literature. The N-word of the Narcissus reduces Conrad’s genius into pure farce.

In any case, it doesn’t solve anything as President Obama said, “… it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”

Source: scroll.in