It’s what you answer to.
[Which may explain why the Good Lord doesn’t answer most people’s prayers when they address Him as “Jesus,” but I digress.]
Let’s face it.
Black folks, especially American Black folk, are suffering from quite a few mental health issues and communal maladies, particularly those related to years, even centuries before we were born, of racism that is directly related to white supremacy, amongst other things.
Which brings me to the word NIGGER.
This is one of the many and main issues that continues to rub a sore spot with us, whether we are for it, against it, and everything in between. But many of us prefer to be polite and refer to it as ‘The N-word’ and condemn its use wholesale under any and all circumstances.
I have been attacked with it, even harassed and robbed by some white females in Arizona, who at the time also said that they would “tear my nappy hair out my head and use it for a mop.” Needless to say, this was in a household of white females who were meth-heads, crack abusers, and heroin addicts, to say the very least about their streetwise activities. They were untrained and acting as the ‘wildebeest’, but there I sat in the midst of them, a college-educated Black woman with no known or secretive drug activities, but yet and still dwindling in a high state of depression and internalized self-hatred.
I won’t delve any deeper into why I have such an “issue” with that word, NIGGER-it goes back to my childhood and my first experience in the early ’70s with being spat upon and called that word by whites several times as a child, and that before I even reached the age of 12.
However, I did not first hear the word from white people. The first time I heard it, it came off my maternal grandmother’s lips, with regard to a ‘very loud conversation’ that she was having with her husband, and my grandfather. I was not yet 10 years old and Dr. King was still alive the first time I heard it.
Now comes, years later for me, the opportunity to move outside of myself and ask a white person about it, and I went for it.
My question was very specific (and I am paraphrasing here): “As a woman who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement, a child of the ’70s, I know that I have hated the word ‘nigger’ since I was a child, and that you have been passionate about fighting racism and discrimination and bigotry on all counts. I know that you have taught that people should not use the ‘n-word’, so I was wondering what are your thoughts about Black people using it [the n-word] on one another?”
The answer I got from Ms Jane Elliott was not what I was expecting, but now my eyes are finally fully wide open about ‘that word’ and why it should not ‘pain and trouble us’ as much as it does.
Ms Elliot is now situationally “retired,” but she is also a woman I admire greatly and respect wholeheartedly for putting her life’s work into push-back against societal racism and bigotry, and into teaching others about the nuances of white privilege.
I can’t imagine what she must have gone through as a white woman who has spent her life fighting against racism, but what I do know is that other Black people ‘like us’ are subjected to being called ‘Black fascists’ for so much as speaking out against it. Typically, the purveyors of “reverse racism” are the same types who will terrorize or advocate terrorist activity against other people and then call them ‘terrorists’ for defending themselves.
Time out. Hold up just one minute.
You mean to tell me I’m not supposed to get mad when people say “Nigger” to me?
No, she didn’t say that, exactly; but I was left with an impression that changed my entire attitude about it just that quickly. Be forewarned: I didn’t get the answer I was expecting, but what I did get was the absolute truth.
Suffice it to say that I was given permission by Ms Elliott to use selective quotes that I can attribute to her with regard to freedom of speech and the use of the ‘n-word’. I will use only a few of the highlights of her response, I consider the rest of it “just for me.”
I quote:
“…It behooves us to remember that the ‘n-word’, as we all so delicately put it, was used as a weapon to keep Blacks, particularly Black males in their place for about 200 years. The power in that word, when coming out of a white person’s mouth was indisputable and undeniable. As were the ignorance and the ugliness of the behaviors that accompanied the word. Now, just as white people get all upset about Blacks self-segregating themselves on college campuses, they are also all upset over Blacks taking ownership of one our most powerful tools to keep them in their place: the word Nigger. When Blacks use it, the power, and the meaning behind it are totally different from what it means when whites use it…”
***
“And therein lies the rub; one of the main fears expressed by white people who go through the BE/BE exercise is their fear that, once minorities get power, they will want to do to white folks what white folks have done to them. Consequently, they see the fact that Blacks can use a word that whites are no longer allowed to use as a first step on the road to total loss of their power. Suddenly the n-word has real power and it’s being used to frighten and intimidate the very people who were so proud to use it originally.”
***
“One of the most promising results of the Civil Rights Movement is that suddenly Gays and Lesbians took ownership of the term ‘Queer’; woman took ownership of the term ‘Bitch’, and Blacks took ownership of the word ‘Nigger’. No longer are those who aren’t members of those groups allowed to use those strong and previously offensive words. Those words are now the property of those groups, and woe be unto you who would be so foolish as to use them without the permission of those groups. The power is now in the hands of the formerly powerless and minorities are now defining themselves, instead of being defined by those who know nothing about being a minority.”
Thank you Ms Jane Elliott. I know that you were not endorsing or co-signing the use of the word, even amongst Black people, but nobody can ever offend me with the word NIGGER again: Newly Inspired Group Gladly Educating Rednecks.
References
Joan Gosier: What’s In a Name?
Eddie Griffin: Different Kinds of Black People
Ms Elliott Recommends Also Reading “Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee” by Nat Hentoff
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