Margarita Smith, Ethnic Studies

Daniel Rosenburg, Mentor
Martin Summers, Mentor

Why There Will Never Be a Nigger Eye for the White Guy: The Intersections of Race, Sexuality, and Consumption

In the early 1990s two parallel movements occurred in popular culture: black hip-hop artists reclaiming the pejorative nigger and the gay community reclaiming the pejorative queer. The intent of both linguistic shifts was to neutralize the power of the invective and to create an encompassing sense of community for underrepresented groups. Through a critical analysis of recent cultural texts, this paper will explore the overt shifts in usage as well as the implicit associations in popular representations of the words nigger and queer. These texts demonstrate that representations seeking to subvert the pejorative often reinforce longstanding stereotypes.