Why Do So Many Indonesians Think It's Cool to Say the 'N Word'?

It's time to talk about a serious problem in Indonesia: the totally casual use of "the N word" by people who, by all accounts, should seriously know better. Look, it doesn't matter if you're singing along to Kanye or trying to sound "street" in front of your friends—it's never OK.

I recently returned to Indonesia after spending eight years in the US and Singapore and the transition has, at times, been a bit… well… difficult. I have to quickly admit that spending that much time abroad left me with a serious blind spot about Indonesian pop culture. It's impossible to keep up with slang. The trend of swapping syllables, or reversing the spelling of words, is just way too much of a tongue twister. Who the hell can remember to say giting, hacep, or kuy anyway?

But the biggest shock definitely has to be just how often Indonesians use "the N word" in daily conversation. Some people are so blind to how offensive this word actually is that someone thought it was OK to name their chocolate-flavored spread this:

Yeah. Seriously. The company later took the product down and issued a half-hearted apology claiming that went, "We named the product after the N-word because our product is black, and based on our perspective the N-word has been shifted in meaning, so it isn't always in negative meaning." Sure, the meaning of the word has shifted, but it's all about context and identity, two things this snack company doesn't seem to understand. (Plus, come on, the meaning hasn't shifted that much.)

The word comes with a deep and painful history in the United States. It was, and still is, a hateful slur that has historically been used to degrade and oppress African Americans for generations. And if anything recent events in the US show us today, it's that these feelings of hate are still very much an issue. The word is so vile, so soaked in more than a century of hate, that some academics argue that no effort to re-appropriate the term by the African American community will ever wash it clean.

"We know that as early as the 17th century, "negro" evolved to "n***er" as intentionally derogatory, and it has never been able to shed that baggage since then—even when black people talk about appropriating and re-appropriating it," explained Neal Lester, an English professor at Arizona State University, in an interview with Teaching Tolerance Magazine. "The poison is still there. No degree of appropriating can rid it of that blood-soaked history."

So then why do Indonesians feel so comfortable using such a hateful word? Because context, and history, tend to vanish when words cross cultural lines.

"Many Indonesians, because of their fascination with the [black] culture, use the N word with a certain gaze," said Teraya Parametha, a PhD student in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. "My hypothesis is that many Indonesians are very distant from the American historical context.They're using the gaze of admiration. They admire hip-hop culture. But this is misleading and problematic in a way because this is also an exotification [a culture]."

Teraya said this exotification "limits a more complete and complex view of a culture, reducing it only to trivial fascinations and fetishization, which is a racial micro-aggression."

Yes, Indonesians are people of color, but that doesn't make us immune from the ills of cultural appropriation or any less prone to exotifying other cultures and people. We don't get a pass just because a lot of us are brown. So what about Rich Chigga? Brian Immanuel (his real name) has repeatedly told US media that, in hindsight, he regrets his choice of a name. He told Fader that it was his friend's idea to "pick the most controversial shit ever" for a stage name. And, of course, it's attracted plenty of criticism and questions from the US hip-hop community.

In the same interview, Brian also quoted Tyler the Creator, who said that he wanted to "take the power out of" the word so that "it doesn't mean anything." And surely other Indonesians may feel the same way. But remember here that Tyler the Creator is African American. Brian is not. You can't reclaim a word that was never used to discriminate against you in the first place.

But Teraya isn't so hard on the teenaged rapper.

"It's important to understand where he's coming from," she said. "He's Indonesian and he's very young. This is my hypothesis, but, at such age, it's more likely for them to have this admiration and exoticizing gaze.

"It's normal, we all went through that. And when we like a culture, or when we idolize people at that age, we are more likely to want to be like that. It becomes your influence, and you'll try your best to become like that."

So what are we supposed to do? It's pretty simple. The next time you feel the urge to say a racial slur while singing along to Kendrick, or the next time you want to greet your friends with an affectionate "my n**ga" just don't. Yeah. Just. Don't. Easy right?