'N' is for the word not allowed in New York

America may be the land of free speech but, as of yesterday, a single word with well-documented racial associations was officially rendered taboo across New York City - but don't imagine for a moment that it will never be heard on the streets of Gotham again.

With a non-binding motion passed unanimously, members of the city council have decreed that the "n-word" - such is the squeamishness over its use that neither politicians nor most of the American media can bring themselves to spell it out - should no longer be uttered by residents of the metropolis.

The word is "nigger", and the reason for it being branded a no-no barely needs explaining. Yet while its roots in slavery are no mystery, it has gained its own currency as a term not of racial hatred but something close to endearment, especially among young urban blacks. Critics of the motion argue that blacks have, in fact, empowered themselves by reclaiming the word as their own.

But that, and its appearance in the lexicon of popular hip-hop performers and black comedians, is precisely what bothers leaders of the movement to expunge it from urban vernacular.

"People are using it out of context," said Leroy Comrie, a black councillor who sponsored the measure. "People are also denigrating themselves by using the word, and disrespecting their history."

The motion carries no threat of punishment. But Mr Comrie and his allies plan to take their campaign further, urging the Recording Academy to resist awarding Grammys to artists using the word. They have also approached Black Entertainment Television, the cable network, about excising it from its programming.

The effort was kick-started nearly a year ago by two Brooklyn film-makers, Kovon Flowers, 37, and his wife Jill, 39, who launched www.abolishthenword.com.

Similar motions have already been passed in the US, including by the New York state legislature. A university in Alabama recently held a four-day conference on the place of "nigger" in modern discourse.

National debate on the issue was fuelled last year after Michael Richards, who played Kramer in Seinfeld, spewed the slur repeatedly at the Los Angeles Laugh Factory after being heckled by blacks in his audience. He later apologised.

"The Michael Richards incident really brought it to another level," Mr Comrie explained after the motion's passage. "It has forced people to express their outrage. Many people had been seething quietly."

Another councillor, Albert Vann, said: "This could be the beginning of a movement. I forgive those young people who do not know their history, and I blame myself and my generation for not preparing you. But today we are going to know our history. We are not going to refer to ourselves by anything negative, the way the slave master referred to black people, using the n-word."

Not everyone is impressed, however. Shooting hoops at a playground in the Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Manhattan yesterday, Derrell Hall, 19, was almost amused by the council's action. "It's a word that I don't use with just other African-Americans but with all my friends. It's a word that we have taken and turned it around to mean something else. To me, it's just 'dude' or 'what's up?'"

His friend, Sean O'Reilly, 19, agrees. "I use it all the time, and it doesn't matter who it's coming from, blacks or whites. You can tell if it's being used disrespectfully."

Among black celebrities weighing in on the debate, Jamie Foxx, the Oscar-winning actor, said he wouldn't stop using the word, calling it appropriate within black circles. Chris Rock, the comedian, made a joke of it. "What, is there a fine? Am I going to get a ticket?" he said. "Do judges say, '10 years, nigger!'"

Mr Rock, who often resorted to black-versus-white humour as host of last year's Oscars, argued there were more pressing priorities for politicians. "Enough real bad things happen in this city to worry about how I am going to use the word."

There has been a similarly cool reaction from the Recording Academy about penalising artists who use it. A spokesman said: "They are not going to be supportive of something that excludes someone simply because they are using a word that is offensive."

* The origins of the word 'nigger' can be traced back as far as the Latin for black (niger) but its use as a term for black people almost certainly entered common usage in 18th- century America. White traders would refer to slaves as 'negros', from the Portuguese for black, which then turned into 'nigger'. Used by both blacks and whites in the 19th century, the term began to be seen as a racial slur. As the emancipation movement gained pace, 'nigger' became an increasingly less acceptable word, particularly in the northern American states after the Civil War. The civil rights movement of the Sixties tried to eliminate the word from common usage but, thanks to hip-hop artists, the use of the word 'nigger' between blacks has become more synonymous with friendship than it has with America's long history of racial abuse.