i don't know where you come from so i may not get it, but where i'm from, the difference between "nigga" and "nigger' is common knowledge among black people, they are not even the same word at this point and clearly divided between non hateful and hateful specifically.
What your arguing, generally what i've seen used as a notion by whites to dismiss any criticisms of white people saying it. 'BLACK PEoPLE SAY IT SO why CANT I SAY IT!?"
I agree with what you're saying in the 2nd paragraph. I've talked about it before here on GAF (The last time it came up was when Piers Morgan was trying to make the same "How come white people can't say it" point people are misguidedly trying to make in THIS thread), so I'm just gonna quote from that convo:
It's said/spelled differently as a means to more closely replicate how the word/phrase is said out loud in speech. It's not a conscious choice that denotes a subtle difference in intent.
It's literally the exact same word, it's just a matter of pronunciation based on the regional dialect you're using - although there are some people who believe the definition of the word DOES change based on its pronunciation, and that seems to have come about based on the continued misunderstanding that what's important is the vowel sound at the end of the word,
and not the race and intent of the person using it. That misunderstanding is often kept afloat by white boys hungry to find a loophole that allows them to say the word they know they shouldn't be saying, pass or no pass.
Usually when the "er" is being used, it's a subtle (maybe even subconscious) means to use correct (i.e. "white") pronunciation to make the usage even more pointed, thus buying into and reinforcing (even on a small scale) the power structure that caused the word to be used, and the need for the word to be reclaimed in the first place.This feeds back into
ingrained bullshit people have been taught at a young age regarding which races are allowed to speak english "correctly" without fear of social repercussion - but that doesn't change the fact the word is exactly the same regardless the pronunciation. It's a matter of who is using it, and the manner in which they're using it.
What we're talking about here is the idea that pronouncing the word correctly is considered "talking like a white person." That's why the word tends to take on a harsher tone when it's pronounced correctly, because it sounds like it did coming out of the white people in power who made sure to keep the black populace of America as uneducated as they possibly could.
The focus on the different spelling/pronunciation only really came about once hip hop albums started purposefully misspelling words (including that one) in song titles and album names as a way to make the titles stand out/be stylized. It didn't make the words new words because they were being purposefully misspelled, though.
A LOT of white kids who wanted to be down and appropriate that culture saw the fact it was spelled differently, heard the fact it was pronounced differently,
as their "in" towards using that word without getting their shit wrecked for it. From there, this false distinction has been further confused and even adopted by some people as legitimate reasoning, not too different from the people who believe fag has to do with burning gay people, or that sagging your pants is an invitation to get topped.
Black people are expected to have their own, race-specific dialect regardless of what region they live in, and that expectation has been grown and fostered over a century now. That expectation is very tightly intertwined with this country's lowered regard for minorities in general.
It's in and of itself an example of internalized, ingrained racism. "Black people talk like this, white people talk like this," ba-dum tisshhh.
White people would like for "nigga" to mean something different than "Nigger" because then it means it's easier for them to appropriate that culture so they can feel cool. Nobody feels cool being an outright racist, so if they can believe (and get others to believe) that the word doesn't mean the same thing simply because it has a different pronunciation, then they get to take part in the reclamation of the term without any of the discomfort that can and SHOULD go along with a white person using it.