The n-word functions as shorthand for a life less valued.

Evidence

In my more hopeful moments, I believe that the little boy who played Tonka trucks with me in Moss Point—now old enough to have his own son or daughter—doesn’t think of black children as niggers like his father did. Times have changed, and the blatant signs of white supremacy have been dismantled. But I am less optimistic about whether he believes that poor black children need a social safety net or decent schools or that those children’s parents deserve an equal opportunity to earn a living wage and to own a home without a subprime loan. Or that they deserve to grow up in neighborhoods where they aren’t always under suspicion or under surveillance, where jails or prisons or premature death do not cut short any reason for them to dream. Given that, I suppose I still believe he thinks, like his dad, that I am a nigger. For what else does the word mean? It is just shorthand for a life less valued. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 502

Categorization

• DEFINE: Glaude defines the n-word functionally: shorthand for a life less valued, which operationalizes the value gap as a present-tense phenomenon surviving the dismantling of overt white supremacy.
• XREF: The ‘life less valued’ definition of the n-word connects to the value gap thesis and its origins in the legacy of slavery — relevant to Glaude’s whole argument about the value premise.