Outsiders of the middle-class, nicey-nice, Uncle Tomish world were castigating the word "nigger" for years, Sydney Potier movies our folks used to watch were insisting "Call me, Mister."

But what killed nigger for the racist world, was not Tomism, it was the OG reappropriating the word, the way gay folks reappropriated "queer." Every little brother callin' out "Niggah, where you been?" threw their word of hate back at those folks as a token of pride, Hip-hop Nation pride. And as Rap Music became the anthem of life on the street, from NWA(Niggaz Wit' Attitude,) Ice-T, Tupac, Too Short, the Ebonic music of the streets re-defined words and reclaimed them and made them part of an in-your-face assault on the world of the squares, the police, the racists and the Toms.

The New Jack vocabulary became THE vocabulary of youth. *Everybody's kids* everywhere were suddenly calling themselves niggaz, and being proud of it! If that ain't revolutionary reappropriation at it best, Jeff, you going to have to show me what is...

What a vile and vicious sound that word makes. To utter it is to express the depths of the speaker's hatred and ignorance in one simultaneous burst of filth. How sad it is to think that the citizens of the Hip-hop Nation delude themselves into believing that merely bastardizing the epithet into some kind of mutant hybrid (nigga, niggah, niggaz, et cetera) drains away its centuries of poison and pain.

I've got to admit; it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to proclaim that pejorative stripped of it's disgusting power to degrade an entire race of people and is now a term of endearment between good fellows. What utter bullshit!

Raheem, it is impossible to breathe life into the dead, and the word "nigger" is as dead to the 20th Century Black Psyche as slavery. Slavery was all about the total control and complete subjugation of Blacks by Whites. We've cast off our chains and broken free from our bondage, but some of us are still enslaved to an ancient mindset. Why are the "keeping it real" homies in the Tommy jeans and Lugz boots subjugating their souls to a discredited, decrepit, bigoted slur?

The late, great, feminist, lesbian, radical poet Audre Lorde wisely spoke on the futility of attempting to convert trash into treasure, "The master's tools will never be used to destroy the master's house."

Get the drift, brotherman? Nigger is a passe, archaic word . Left to its own devices it WOULD belong only to the obvious racists and eventually disappear as those scum perish from the Earth. WE keep this word alive. Every time we say it, we perform CPR on a a perversion.

The Hip-hop Nation you speak so glowingly of is alarmingly short of leaders, but lousy with self-promoters, deal makers, hacks, hucksters and hypocrites. There are intellectuals within the Nation but if they deviate from the Group think they're castigated and cast out as "middle-class, nicey-nice, Uncle Toms." How easily you dismiss those that disagree with the myopic world view of neophyte kids whose philosophy comes from rap CD's and sense of history extends no further than last month's chart-topping hit song.

So, the racists can't use the word, "nigger" to bedevil the Black man and woman any longer, huh? For someone who cruises the Internet in search of interesting sites how sheltered an existence you apparently live, my man. Here's a fun thing to do: Log on to Yahoo or some search engine and look up "Nigger." There's a lot of people out there who don't give a damn about the new interpretation and pronunciation of the word. They seem to think the old term works just fine.

Here are a few bouquets off a few of the incalculable Ku Klux Klan, skinhead and other White supremacy websites:

• "I just hung a Nigger in the yard."
• "How much money will our Nigger loving Bill Clinton raise our taxes to save these filthy AIDS carrying jungle savage Niggers?"
• "One night me and the boys were celebratin' the about timely passing of ya'll hero Two Pack Shaker and my buddy Earl noticed that you new fangled rappers are misusing the greatest word in the American language...NIGGER!"

Apparently, somebody didn't get the memo that "nigger" is out of style.

My brother if you want to "revolutionary reappropriate" something then at least make it a goal worthy of the effort.

• Reappropriate a bank that doesn't lend money to Blacks.
• Reappropriate an abandoned house that now only attracts trash, drug addicts and criminals.
• Reappropriate a grocery store in the hood that never has fresh fruit or milk that isn't going bad, but always restocks beer and cigarettes just before the weekend.
• Reappropriate a school that lacks textbooks for all its students and safe playground equipment.
• Reappropriate a TV station or newspaper that depicts Blacks as cracked-out, food stamp swapping psychotics.

No revolutionary act is accomplished simply by declaring it to be so. It requires much toil, much sweat and on occasion, the spilling of blood.

To be a "nigger" has nothing to do with being Black, but to whom else is it directed toward with such malicious intent? It is a word that should die and if it will not die from disuse then we must kill it as a threat to our self-worth as Black people deserving of respect. One does not compromise with a threat; one eliminates it. In any version it is uttered, "nigger" is act of Black-on-Black crime and the charge is assault with a lethal aspersion.