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Beyond Blaming
Kramer: That n-word, again
By Rev. Irene Monroe
The racist rant heard nationwide by
Michael Richards, who played the lovable and goofy
character Kramer on the T.V. sit-com Seinfeld,
shocked not only his fans and audience that night at the
Laugh Factory in West Hollywood, but his racist rant
also shocked Americans back to an ugly era in U.S.
history.
While it is easy to get sidetracked
by raising queries about the tenor and intent of
Richards repetitive use of the n- word in the context of
supposed humor or to vilify Richards for his blatant
vile vitriol we must as Americans look at the systemic
problem of what happens when an epithet like the
n-word, that was once hurled at African Americans in
this country and banned from polite conversation, now
has a broad-base cultural acceptance in our society
today.
Popularized by young African
Americans' use of it in hip-hop music the bantering and
bickering over this word today is no longer about who
has been harmed or hurt by its use, but who has the
right to use it which is why Richards was publicly
pulverized.
Our culture's present-day cavalier
use of the n-word speaks less about our rights to free
speech and more about how we as Americans—
both white and black Americans—have
become anesthetized to the damaging and destructive use
of this epithet.
Many African Americans, and not just
the hip-hop generation, state that reclaiming the
n-word serve as an act of group agency and as a form
of resistance against the dominate culture's use of it
and therefore the epithet gives only them a license to
use it.
However, the notion that it is
acceptable for African Americans to refer to each other
using the n-word yet consider it racist for others
outside the race unquestionably sets up a double
standard. Also the notion that one ethnic group has
property rights to the term is a reductio ad absurdum argument,
since language is a public enterprise.
But African Americans’ appropriation
of the n-word as insiders does neither obliterate the
historical baggage fraught with the word nor obliterate
its concomitant social relations among blacks, and
between whites and blacks as well. And because some
African Americans use the term it does not negate also
our long history of self-hatred.
The n-word is firmly embedded in the
lexicon of racist language that was and still is used
to disparage African Americans. However today the
meaning of the n-word is all in how ones spells it. By
dropping the “er’ ending and replacing it with either
an “a” or ‘ah” ending the term morphs into a term of
endearment. But many slaveholders pronounced the n-word
with the “a’ ending, and in the 1920’s many African
Americans used the “a’ ending as a pejorative term to
denote class difference among themselves.
In 2003, the NAACP convinced
Merriam-Webster lexicographers to change the definition
of the n-word in the dictionary to no longer mean
African Americans but instead a racial slur. And while
the battle to change the n-word in the American lexicon
was a long and arduous one our culture’s neo
revisionist use of the n-word makes it even harder to
purge the sting of the word from the American psyche.
Why?
Because language is a representation
of culture. Language reinscribes and perpetuates ideas
and assumptions about race, gender, and sexual
orientation we consciously and unconsciously articulate
in our everyday conversations about ourselves and the
rest of the world, and consequently transmit
generationally.
My enslaved ancestors knew that their
liberation was not only rooted in their acts of social
protests, but it was also rooted in their use of
language, which is why they used the liberation
narrative of the Exodus story in the Old Testament as
their talking-book. The Exodus story was used to rebuke
systemic oppression, racist themes, and negative images
of themselves.
Many activists argue that Richards
repentance should be volunteer work in a predominately
African American community anywhere in the country.
However, he would find there too that many of us keeping
the n-word alive.
But what would work for him and many
in my community is a history lesson because reclaiming
racist words like the n-word does not eradicate its
historical baggage, and its existing racial relations
among us.
Instead it dislodges the word from
its historical context and makes us insensitive and
arrogant to the historical injustice done to a specific
group of Americans. It also allows Americans to become
unconscious and numb in the use and abuse of the power
and currency this racial epithet still has and
thwarts the daily struggle many of us Americans work
hard at in trying to ameliorate race relations.
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 2 December 2006
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