same way one might refer to a disobedient pet, by saying “bad dog”. For the slaves, the “bad nigger” was the person who refused to be the created nigger-object.
The bad nigger created a duality for society; he exercised something that by law was not his, yet by nature couldn’t be owned by another – that was his will. Over time, proud men stopped referring to themselves as bad niggers, as they knew that they were not the animals slavery tried to create. Also, over time, the image of the man/woman who stood against a system for justice and autonomy, was lost and only the term would remain.
Neither emancipation, assimilation, nor the Civil Rights Act enfranchised African Americans into the system of liberty. Thus, the image reemerged as a pessimistic outlook in the identity of the “nigga” in an effort to reject the system and self-identify.
Rather than the proud, and whole human being, today’s bad nigga has fallen to the apparatus in such a way that it reproduces the system and its expectations rather than defy it.
Modernized commodification of black inferiority appears with minstrel-like animalistic stereotypes of black bodies by black people. In order for oppressive systems to