“Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling niggas how to behave."-- Jesse Jackson, who had officiated at the silly NAACP funeral for "the 'n' word," as reported on Media Bistro.com.
“Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling niggas how to behave."
I hate the expressions 'n-word', and 'c-word', for that matter.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds being a kid and telling on my Dad to my Mom - "Dad used the 'F-word'". I feel so childish when it comes out of my mouth
But I have to say, I am too much of coward to use the words in their correct pronunication - which probably also relates somehow to what my Mom would think.
It is interesting that whites were educated not to use the n-word, and now may whites want to forbid its use by blacks. The message is that blacks should learn to be well behaved like whites. Doesn't that just make the point - it is all about maintaining power and control and telling people what to do? Now I hear a black woman on The View saying ' i just don't want to hear it come out of your (white) mouth'. Really!? Well, what if it offends me to hear anyone say it. Can I tell you what to do now? When does this end?!. As a white man I learned, I once believed the correct lesson, to be repulsed by the word. So am I to unlearn that?! ( I have an idea about that coming up) i guess many whites just expected that blacks would feel relief or something and have no desire to say it. But it seems that the more whites didn't want to hear it, the more blacks wanted to be sure they said it. I don't think that is entirely the case. The feelings associated with the n-word continue in the black community, so it is a pretty concise way for a black person to communicate how they are feeling about an experience they share with other blacks.
A white person just can't say that about the n-word. What feeling does it evoke for me as a white person, other than shame in saying it, or if I am a racist - hatred so as to hurt someone with it. Hearing it reminds any white person, racist or not, of the separation and alienation from black people. So how do we - black k and white - deal?
For what it is worth, my 'favorite use' of the word, and I think it really ends the debate if you get what he means, is Frank Zappa's use of it in his song You Are What You Is. He is singing about a black guy trying to be white, and ends by saying: "I ain't no "nigger" no more. " The lead singer in that song is Ike Willis (right?), a black man, yet Frank gets the honor of saying 'nigger'. The way he says is just funny as shit to me. . Zappa keeps me laughing at this stupid ass word. Thanks to Frank, I'm all shits and giggles while everyone else is fucking constipated over this word, or in the case of the likes of Jesse Jackson - shits and oops!