Nigger is a contextual word. When a white person uses it they are using a word who's purpose for most of the white world is to set Black people as less then other members of the human race. When Whites use it at my bar I generally kick them out or tell them that if they can't be civil they will be kicked out, the kick out is if they use it directly the warning is usually if they use it generally. There was White a gentleman at my bar who was being a total asshole one night. He was commonly a belligerent asshole, but rarely to the point of getting kicked out. After he left the bar two men kicked the living shit out of him. He did to some extent have a royal ass beating coming he was an offensive asshole. When he stumbled back into the bar covered in blood he said that some niggers jumped him. The next day when he came in to gather evidence he said that he got his ass beat by some niggers. Basically the whole staff thought that he was a classless piece of shit and rather then help along the investigation we all clammed up. The real selling point in our decision to not help this guy discover his attackers was his use of the word 'nigger' to describe his attackers. Who ever goes around slinging words like nigger shouldn't be surprised to get a beat down. If I were you I would be very reluctant to use the word nigger at all in any company, many people will write you off as a racist piece of shit. I would like to hear what you think a nigger is and how you divorce it from it's origins and contest to use it in a manner that doesn't condemn a race of man. That being said there are some people like the 'The Last Poets' or blacks in general who have licence to use the word. Black people in the U.S. have a long history of reappropriating words that are used in a derogatory way against them and repurposing them, but Whites don't' really get the privileged of using them. I don't use the word with my black friends or around them. The Last Poets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qW3F48s1fQ
Close, but not quite. Our white ancestors are mostly responsible for the socioeconomic classes that we have today. The connection between certain people's behavior and their socioeconomic class is much looser. I grew up in an area comprised mostly of poor to lower-middle class blacks and yes, many of them (a majority) fit into the category described by insomniasexx but there were also many who did not.
This problem makes me think of Irish gypsies and the discrimination they have to deal with. Some people suggest that "we'll stop calling them knackers when they stop acting like knackers."