The N Is For Nigger

OK , either I am just getting too lazy to write, or some of these Inky columnist have been playing "Jedi Mind Games" with me. Because seriously, I have really been feeling some of their articles lately. Like the one below from a sister that really struck a nerve with me. Partly because I am still trying to find myself with this issue, and partly because she just flat out made some damn good points. I don't agree with everything she said, but I certainly think her piece was well thought out and well written. So here goes:

"N-word: Don't play with fire
By Annette John-Hall
Inquirer Columnist~
This country has become obsessed with the word nigger.
Everywhere I go, I hear it. Out of the mouths of blacks and whites alike. From garden-variety bigots and platinum-selling rappers. Kids on the playground. Loose-lipped politicians. Washed-up comedians. It's been heatedly debated and used as a punch line. Spewed in profanity and tossed around in love.
As the word continues to wreak havoc on our cultural consciousness, more and more African Americans are calling for its total banishment because of its enduring legacy as a racist epithet. A couple of months ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Maxine Waters urged people to stop using it, along with comedian Paul Mooney, who had once sprinkled the word liberally through his act.
Now Jet and Ebony, the venerable magazines for African Americans, have picked up the mantle. In the February issue of Ebony, editorial director Bryan Monroe, introducing a package of articles titled "Enough! Why Blacks - and Whites - Should Never Use the 'N-word' Again," writes that the word will no longer appear in his publications, except in unavoidable instances that will be subject to his approval.
(The Inquirer's policy prohibits the use of the word unless it has a "compelling journalistic purpose." Even then, it must be signed off by a top editor.)
I called my friend Bryan, who is also president of the National Association of Black Journalists, and asked him, "Why now?" After all, the controversy over the word is not new.
"It has been something we had talked about for the past few months," he said. Though it was rare for the magazine to print the word, he felt it was important that the biggest publications targeting African Americans take the lead on "such a crucial issue."
Plus, Monroe said, "When the Michael Richards incident happened [www.youtube.com], it created all the more urgency."
Truth is, I took the word out of my vocabulary long ago. See, I'm old enough to have felt the sting of it as a racist pejorative, not as a greeting or a term of endearment, as so many younger African Americans use it today.
Even before my kids started school, my husband and I explained the word to them. We instructed them as our parents instructed us: If anybody assaulted you with that word, all bets were off.
That's why my middle-school daughter retaliated recently with a shove to the head of a white kid, who called her the name on the school bus - with malice, of course. The most troubling part of the incident, apart from my daughter's loss of innocence, is that some of the other white kids couldn't understand why she was so offended.
I do know intention means everything. Look no further than comic Michael Richards' vitriolic attack of a black heckler. It took him three seconds to go from lashing out with the n-word to making lynching references. Interestingly, the punditry afterward was focused on the n-word, not Richards' pleasure in reminding us that "50 years ago we'd have you upside down with a [expletive] fork up your [expletive]."
Such is the enduring power - and offense - of the word.
"If a white person calls me the n-word, supposedly out of some hip-hop kinship, I can't dissociate that from being called that by white kids in the suburbs of Boston when I was a child," asks Imani Perry, a 30-something professor of law at Rutgers-Camden and author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop. "It's not about rules, it is about history. We have a history of white people using the word and backing it up with violence and mistreatment."
While some young folks are trying to flip a historically horrific pejorative into an embraceable form of cultural expression, it doesn't erase its history.
Which is what the Web site www.abolishthenword.com shows in its powerful challenge to visitors to make a personal commitment to rid themselves of the word. Its graphic and searing introduction breaks down the history of the n-word, spliced with a horrific series of photographs of black men being lynched with Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday's mournful protest dirge, in the background.
Blacks who are still debating the use of the word and whites who don't understand why they can't use it, should have a look at the site and ask themselves not just Why would you use the n-word today? but How could you ever use the n-word again?"

True confessions? As recently as a few months ago I found myself using the N word as a term of endearment with some friends of mine. No one noticed, and no one checked me. In fact, as I recall, some of my buddies used it too, and no one checked them. Now I consciously do not use the word for all the reasons articulated in this sisters post, but I still struggle with the some issues pertaining to whether it's right for black leaders to call for an out and out ban of the word. After all, I laugh just as hard as every one else when Katt Williams or some other black comedian uses it in a routine that I find funny. And as a fan of hip hop, I can honestly say that some of the tunes would not be as artistically rich without it. (That "N word) So I am feeling folks like my man Max, over at Free Slave, when he says he struggles with using the word as well, and I can only imagine how many more of us are out there.

So help me folks, I need an education on this one. Miss Annette John-Hall certainly dropped some knowledge on me, and I appreciate it. I am still not totally on board, but I am pretty damn close.

Oh, before I go, I would like to leave you with a little poem:

"Ten little nigger boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were Nine.
Nine little nigger boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were Eight.
Eight little nigger boys travelling in Devon;
One said he’d stay there and then there were Seven.
Seven little nigger boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were Six.
Six little nigger boys playing with a hive;
A bumble bee stung one and then there were Five.
Five little nigger boys going in for law;
One got into chancery and then there were Four.
Four little nigger boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three.
Three little nigger boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were Two.
Two little nigger boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was One.
One little nigger boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were None… "

So if we banned the word, does that mean some folks wouldn't say this little poem anymore?

Mmmmmmm.

Some White Folks Get It

"Unconventional Wisdom Listen up, white folks: Your racism cuts deeper
By Alfred Lubrano
Inquirer Columnist

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about white racism. What about black racism?, dozens of you wrote me.
How come I didn't mention the inappropriateness of ESPN analyst Michael Irvin's opining that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (of Mexican descent) must have had an ancestor who copulated with a black man to account for his superior skills?
Irvin, who is African American, is foolish , but that's hardly the point. I didn't think I had to say this because it's so obvious:
America is a white-majority country. When one group has substantially more power than all others, its biases, prejudices, and mouth filth matter more.
And if whites possess the keys to the White House, the executive suite, the law firm, the construction company - not to mention the gun lockers in the police stations - then what they think about black people has greater weight and consequence than what black people think about them.
Of course, black people can be as prejudiced as whites. I've lived it. On a day I thought would be my last, a group of black guys beat me down on a New York subway train; years later, black demonstrators spit on me and opened my head with rocks. In both cases, my only sin was skin color.
But lots more black people than whites have endured systemic, organized violence in this country. And my ancestors walked off the boats that brought them here unchained.
From when I was a kid, the croaks of racists slimed my ears. Today, neighbors in rural South Jersey take me for a coconspirator, referring to "them people" and identifying certain farm weeds as N-word-heads. In white neighborhoods everywhere, you can hear far worse.
Crime. Unwed mothers. Dope. Black problems, right? When I tell people that the white Appalachian neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, I once covered had the precise same pathologies, they stare at me dumbly.
It's poverty, not melanin. It's class-based misery. It's watching your kids crawl around without Pampers or hope. It's sucking down Ho Hos and malt liquor because the sugar and the buzz feel better than the boredom and terror of each day.
White working-class people I know erroneously believe that government programs such as affirmative action give African Americans unfair advantages.
If they had a genie's wish, I ask white folks, would they beg for their kids to turn black so they could enjoy all those goodies?
I lived below the poverty line for four years in New York and I still had it better than lots of black people.
It is true that working-class white people live tough American lives.
But store owners don't automatically think they're criminals, and their kids don't have to be warned not to mouth off to cops for fear of getting tortured with a plunger.
Some psychologists of race will go so far as to say that white prejudice is proactive, while black prejudice is reactive. America began with whites thinking of blacks as animals and property. U.S. history then moved to cross burnings.
We've since progressed, but if your people get lynched and shot enough times, you might develop suspicion of all the guys with the ropes and guns.
Today, lots of people are learning to interact. But racism is a hard-to-kill bacterium. How do I know? Many of you readers told me so, with acid e-mails and racist phone messages.
You hate that a white guy is saying this. White people have to say this. Or we're not getting anywhere."

Folks, whenever I read a column like the one above, I realize that there is hope for our country, and that there are white folks in this country who really do get it. I almost never lift an entire article but this one from my home town paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, was too good not to share with the rest of you. Yes, I loved the article, and I also loved this letter to the editor from a lady by the name of Laura Modon from Havertown, Pennsylvania:

"Your article gave me hope for the future of this country and the world.

In my estimation, you are one of a minute group of men with white skin who 'get it' and who have the courage to say so. (The others who come to mind: former President Jimmy Carter;Bono; former President Bill Clinton; professor and author Jared Diamond.)

In everyday life, there are fewer still whom I have met; my own father was one. You constitute a tiny minority of pale skinned males who acknowledge the understand that the poisons of hatred and bigotry- ignited by greed and ignorance, and initially released over 400 years ago in the forms of conquest and slavery-still permeate this land.

Talk about toxic waste. But their exists a cure; the necessary 'superfund cleanup' is very simple. It is truth, and its vaccine is education."

Damn that was deep. Right on Ms. Mondon, how soon can you open a school to bring others to that place where you are? Your sh** was profound!

The field is heading out of town for a few days for a little R&R and of course the Christmas holiday. I will bring my laptop of course. Hopefully, I will be able to do the whole mobile blogging thing while I am on the road. We will see.

Enjoy your Christmas, and go Eagles!!!!!