Scratching my memory a bit, I do recall that my grandmother Jarvis did
not put an R on the word. In casual conversation, she said, "Niggah".
But when trying to be proper, she said, "Neeggrah". And she referred
to her Black Nanny as a Neegress. But all that is beside the point.
Grandma Jarvis absolutely knew that she, and her family, were superior
to "The Colored Folk", as she also referred to them. Grandma was not
unkind toward Black people, nor did she order them around like several
of the old ladies living near her. They would go shopping and seek
out the Black clerks just so they could prove how nasty they were.
Then they would all gather at one apartment or another and turn on the
radio to the Pentecostal Preacher, get down on their knees, place
their little miracle healing cloth, that they'd all sent away for, on
their upturned faces, and begin wailing out their love for Jesus. And
all the time they were living in low income, subsidized housing. And
to a person, they hated the meddling Democratic Governor, Albert
Rosellini, who had championed the state's old age pension that they
all existed on.
We are strange and complex animals.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/27/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The word used affectionately for each other by Black people is niggah.
The R sound is left off and those who use it are quite adamant about
that. However, it is clear that the word is derived from the same word
with the R pronounced and with or without the R sound if you are white
you had better avoid it. It is not uncommon that a group will take a
derogatory word for their group and use it acceptably among themselves
to take the sting out of it. A lot of gay people, for example, will call
each other faggot or queer. The point is that if a bigot calls you
something like a faggot you can answer, okay, I'm a faggot, so what.
There is some controversy within the gay community about whether that
should be done though. Other times the attempt to turn a derogatory term
into a neutral word is not completed and the word niggah is an example.
If a white person calls you by that word it is not acceptable. Some
other ethnic groups do the same thing. People of Hungarian descent often
jokingly call each other hunkies, but it is not so easily accepted if
someone else uses the word.
On 6/27/2015 8:19 AM, abdulah aga wrote:
HI
Carle and other folks on list
Now I have question what I couldn't understand sins I cam in USA!
why black people say mostly ich other in joke like what's up my
nigger, but if some body als told them who is not black then is problem?
-----Original Message----- From: Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2015 12:10 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: "It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in
Public...."
First of all, I'd been thinking for some time now that Pat Boone was
dead. I had to quickly resurrect him. Born June 1, 1934, Boone is
about 11 and a half months older than me. But we are millions of
light years apart. The difference between his wealth and mine would
be enough. But that is not the million of light years I am referring
to. It is the difference in how each of us see our fellow human
beings.
But that's not what I set out to talk about. Pat Boone can talk for
himself.
I want to focus on our strange habit of creating a bunch of symbols,
declaring that they have a certain meaning and then keep changing what
that meaning really means.
Take the word Gay, for example. My mother loved her gay coat. It was
a multicolored
cloth coat. Mother took good care of her things, having been a young
mother during the Great Depression. So that coat lasted her for many
years. But she was greatly disturbed when she mentioned to some
friends that she was wearing her Gay Coat. They quietly advised her
not to say that word. "Gay?" mother asked. "What's wrong with Gay?"
Tinker Bell was a little Fairy. Enough said about that. A fagot
referred to a young boy who gathered fire sticks in the forests of
Europe. Later the word was shortened to Fag, meaning a cigarette.
Sort of a short fire stick.
But when I was teaching Braille, one of my students, a young Lesbian,
objected violently to the word Fag in her Braille lesson book.
Naturally, knowing her to be a bright and understanding person, I
believed I could explain the meaning of the word back when the Braille
lesson book was put together. 1960. But it would not do. So I took
my handy Braille eraser and she and I rubbed out one Braille dot from
the "F", turning it into a "B", and the word became, Bag. I did not
tell my student that in the storage room I had an entire shelf of the
identical Braille books.
For me, the hardest word to push out of my mouth was, "Fuck". Four
letters succinctly defining a very fundamental activity. But we
decided that Fuck was a dirty word, while copulate was much "nicer".
Both describe the same activity. But although I write the word here,
I would most likely never say it in a presentation before a mixed
audience.
Nigger is a word that was part of the language of the Old South. That
Old South still exists in many places, and not all of them South of
the Border. But I have to tell you, I am damned sick and fucking
tired of saying, "The N Word". As if that makes it just hunky Dorey.
We used to say, Negroes. But we changed to Blacks as the word of
choice by Negroes. I have no idea if that's true or not. My grandma
Jarvis, born in Missouri back in 1874, said, "Niggrah". She talked
about her "Colored wet nurse". And the Black Mammy who cooked for the
family. And the little Pica ninnies, the little children who lived on
the plantation. Did I mention that my grandma Jarvis was raised on a
plantation? And her father had two or three slaves prior to the Civil
War. My own great grandfather Tom Hickman. Judged to be a fair and
kind man, by his family and the other white neighbors. But no one
ever wrote down what his slaves thought him to be. He owned other
human beings, for Gods Sake! And yet, my grandma adored her dad. She
followed him about the plantation, avoiding the Women's work inside
the house. Grandma ended up living on an old age pension, but always
believed she was better than the Niggrahs she lived among.
The word Niggrah was not what made my grandma think the way she did.
Force her to say, "Black People", and she would continue to think of
them as she had been trained to think of them back in the 1880's as a
young girl.
I know blind folk who avoid the word, "blind". But you know what?
They are just as blind as if they used the word. And the entire world
sees them as blind.
While I do not believe we can easily change people's attitudes, that
is the place we must work. And if stopping our use of certain words
or tearing down old rags of Confederate dogma helps, let's do it. But
only as a starting place.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Boardman writes: "An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced
moral
blindness to racist behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian
multi-millionaire musician whose fortune was built on racist
exploitation
of
black music in a racist music industry devoted to catering to America's
white racism."
CNN discusses President Obama's use of the N-word. (photo: CNN)
"It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in Public...."
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
26 June 15
"Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it's not just a matter
of,
uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That's not the
measure of
whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt
discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything
that
happened two to three hundred years prior."
- President Obama, June 22,
on Marc Maron podcast
This piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently, an
experience that illuminates what the President is saying and raises the
question of whether it's polite to say "nigger" in private. My
experience
underscores that what the President is saying is obviously and
profoundly
true, and has been since long before he was born. And my recent
experience
illustrates the abiding armor of denial and determined ignorance that
allows
people to enjoy the advantages of a racist society without having to
acknowledge that it exists.
An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral blindness to
racist
behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian multi-millionaire
musician
whose fortune was built on racist exploitation of black music in a
racist
music industry devoted to catering to America's white racism. Boone's
fundamentalist Christian self-delusions about race appeared on WND (aka
WorldNetDaily), self-described as "an independent news company
dedicated to
uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing
the
role of the free press as a guardian of liberty."
According to Boone, it's President Obama's fault for not preaching that
"racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that our
society
was truly becoming colorblind." Having said that, Boone provided a white
racist analysis of the killing of two black children, Trayvon Martin and
Michael Brown, unarmed and shot by reckless white men. As for
Charleston,
where an avowed white racist killed nine black people in church in
hope of
starting a race war, Boone explains it away as having a "racist
element,"
but being "inspired by Satan"! While blaming Obama for "erasing" God
from
public life, Boone pleads for a return to America as a Christian
nation -
but he does not mention that American Christianity was a powerful
defender
of American slavery.
This mode of thinking, or rather this mode of avoiding real thought, is
endemic to a large section of the American population and has been,
in one
form or another, since before there was a United States. How else do you
get
a Constitution in which slaves don't get to vote, but do get counted as
three-fifths of a person in order to inflate Congressional
representation
of
slave owners? Orwell called it Doublethink in "1984," but it's a much
older
American tradition.
One form of denial is feigned shock that "Obama said the N-word!"
Assorted television babble-heads on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Fox and
elsewhere
got all a-twitter over the President's saying "nigger," which they
sanitized
to "the N-word" with such characterizations as "extremely direct
language"
and "shock value" and "jarring comment" and "electric" and "one of
the most
charged racial slurs in the English language" - all of which are
projections
of the commentators' subjectivity. They are not at all accurate
descriptions
of what the President said, which was detached, measured, analytical,
and
precisely accurate. But who wants to hear that on TV? As Wolf Blitzer
put
it
on CNN, "Many people may find this offensive." CNN's black legal analyst
said the word should never be used. In sharp disagreement, CNN black
anchor
Don Lemon articulately defended adult conversation about difficult
issues
on
television (for example, on Democracy NOW).
By paying attention only to the President's use of the word "nigger" and
not
to his much broader context, television's purveyors of conventional
wisdom
manage to deny the relevance of the President's larger point: that
racism
has been endemic to American (and pre-American) culture for some 300
years
and that racist thinking remains alive and well in many forms.
Focusing on
the President's use of "nigger" as an excuse not to talk about racism in
America is, arguably, just another form of racism in America.
Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show reduced the TV babble to its ultimate
Fox-accusing absurdity, President Obama saying "nigger" in a State of
the
Union speech. Wilmore also played clips of other presidents saying
"nigger,"
albeit in a less thoughtful way than Obama:
. Nixon: "Our niggers are better than their niggers"
. LBJ: "there's more niggers voting there than white folks"
Wilmore also indicated that, while there's apparently no record of
presidents like Washington or Jefferson saying "nigger," they did own
one
or
more.
Another effect of all the empty blather about the President saying
"nigger"
is to distract from the empty gestures about various Confederate flags.
American devotion to the Confederate flag is, literally, insane or
dishonest
or hypocritical, or all three, or pick your word. Why? All Confederate
flags
are symbols of treason against the United States of America, and somehow
it's OK to celebrate them and merchandise them and pretend they're
something
they never were. The Confederacy committed treason as defined by the
Constitution and too many people would do it all over again, for the
same
racist reasons.
What does one young South Carolinian tell us about America today?
So here's the personal experience I mentioned. Over the weekend of June
20-21, I was at a family wedding in northern Maryland. The Sunday before
Obama's podcast became public, I was at a post-wedding cookout with
maybe
20
people of various ages, many in their twenties. It was a definitely
non-political social gathering.
One young man in his mid-twenties was there as the new beau of the
bride's
sister. He was pleasant, attractive, well-spoken, polite, and had
grown up
in South Carolina. During our first conversation with several other
people
in the kitchen, David (not his real name) spoke enthusiastically of his
work
with horses and Brahma cattle. He described a roping gone wrong when
he was
forced to jump his horse over a fallen Brahma cow, whose horn scored his
horse's underbelly. He seemed comfortable and at ease as the
conversation
shifted from person to person. He gave no hint of any socially
disruptive
opinions or behavior. But he was drinking.
Some time later I wandered into a conversation David was having with the
bride's mother on the screen porch. This conversation was already
political.
David was complaining about Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for calling
out
Charleston for having streets named after Civil War generals and
otherwise
ridiculing South Carolina's history. Stewart was about to start a
race war,
David argued, without mentioning Dylann Roof killing nine people. David
said
he was concerned about a race war because someone had already shot at
the
Confederate flag at the Capitol. David said we should just let
history be
history, and besides some people treated their slaves well.
By the time our hostess came into this conversation, David was talking
about
Obama being Kenyan and like that. Our hostess told him firmly not to
talk
like that in her house. When he didn't seem to get the point, I
leaned in
and suggested that maybe we should both be quiet. He admitted he'd been
drinking, but throughout this conversation he remained polite, friendly,
quiet, apparently sincere in beliefs he didn't seem to think anyone
would
find unusual. He came across as a basically sweet kid.
The last thing he said to me, before others took him swimming, he
said with
the same earnest pleasantness. He said, "I don't hate niggers."
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
CNN discusses President Obama's use of the N-word. (photo: CNN)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
"It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in Public...."
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
26 June 15
"Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it's not just a matter
of,
uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That's not the
measure of
whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt
discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything
that
happened two to three hundred years prior."
- President Obama, June 22,
on Marc Maron podcast
his piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently, an
experience that illuminates what the President is saying and raises the
question of whether it's polite to say "nigger" in private. My
experience
underscores that what the President is saying is obviously and
profoundly
true, and has been since long before he was born. And my recent
experience
illustrates the abiding armor of denial and determined ignorance that
allows
people to enjoy the advantages of a racist society without having to
acknowledge that it exists.
An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral blindness to
racist
behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian multi-millionaire
musician
whose fortune was built on racist exploitation of black music in a
racist
music industry devoted to catering to America's white racism. Boone's
fundamentalist Christian self-delusions about race appeared on WND (aka
WorldNetDaily), self-described as "an independent news company
dedicated to
uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing
the
role of the free press as a guardian of liberty."
According to Boone, it's President Obama's fault for not preaching that
"racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that our
society
was truly becoming colorblind." Having said that, Boone provided a white
racist analysis of the killing of two black children, Trayvon Martin and
Michael Brown, unarmed and shot by reckless white men. As for
Charleston,
where an avowed white racist killed nine black people in church in
hope of
starting a race war, Boone explains it away as having a "racist
element,"
but being "inspired by Satan"! While blaming Obama for "erasing" God
from
public life, Boone pleads for a return to America as a Christian
nation -
but he does not mention that American Christianity was a powerful
defender
of American slavery.
This mode of thinking, or rather this mode of avoiding real thought, is
endemic to a large section of the American population and has been,
in one
form or another, since before there was a United States. How else do you
get
a Constitution in which slaves don't get to vote, but do get counted as
three-fifths of a person in order to inflate Congressional
representation
of
slave owners? Orwell called it Doublethink in "1984," but it's a much
older
American tradition.
One form of denial is feigned shock that "Obama said the N-word!"
Assorted television babble-heads on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Fox and
elsewhere
got all a-twitter over the President's saying "nigger," which they
sanitized
to "the N-word" with such characterizations as "extremely direct
language"
and "shock value" and "jarring comment" and "electric" and "one of
the most
charged racial slurs in the English language" - all of which are
projections
of the commentators' subjectivity. They are not at all accurate
descriptions
of what the President said, which was detached, measured, analytical,
and
precisely accurate. But who wants to hear that on TV? As Wolf Blitzer
put
it
on CNN, "Many people may find this offensive." CNN's black legal analyst
said the word should never be used. In sharp disagreement, CNN black
anchor
Don Lemon articulately defended adult conversation about difficult
issues
on
television (for example, on Democracy NOW).
By paying attention only to the President's use of the word "nigger" and
not
to his much broader context, television's purveyors of conventional
wisdom
manage to deny the relevance of the President's larger point: that
racism
has been endemic to American (and pre-American) culture for some 300
years
and that racist thinking remains alive and well in many forms.
Focusing on
the President's use of "nigger" as an excuse not to talk about racism in
America is, arguably, just another form of racism in America.
Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show reduced the TV babble to its ultimate
Fox-accusing absurdity, President Obama saying "nigger" in a State of
the
Union speech. Wilmore also played clips of other presidents saying
"nigger,"
albeit in a less thoughtful way than Obama:
. Nixon: "Our niggers are better than their niggers"
. LBJ: "there's more niggers voting there than white folks"
Wilmore also indicated that, while there's apparently no record of
presidents like Washington or Jefferson saying "nigger," they did own
one
or
more.
Another effect of all the empty blather about the President saying
"nigger"
is to distract from the empty gestures about various Confederate flags.
American devotion to the Confederate flag is, literally, insane or
dishonest
or hypocritical, or all three, or pick your word. Why? All Confederate
flags
are symbols of treason against the United States of America, and somehow
it's OK to celebrate them and merchandise them and pretend they're
something
they never were. The Confederacy committed treason as defined by the
Constitution and too many people would do it all over again, for the
same
racist reasons.
What does one young South Carolinian tell us about America today?
So here's the personal experience I mentioned. Over the weekend of June
20-21, I was at a family wedding in northern Maryland. The Sunday before
Obama's podcast became public, I was at a post-wedding cookout with
maybe
20
people of various ages, many in their twenties. It was a definitely
non-political social gathering.
One young man in his mid-twenties was there as the new beau of the
bride's
sister. He was pleasant, attractive, well-spoken, polite, and had
grown up
in South Carolina. During our first conversation with several other
people
in the kitchen, David (not his real name) spoke enthusiastically of his
work
with horses and Brahma cattle. He described a roping gone wrong when
he was
forced to jump his horse over a fallen Brahma cow, whose horn scored his
horse's underbelly. He seemed comfortable and at ease as the
conversation
shifted from person to person. He gave no hint of any socially
disruptive
opinions or behavior. But he was drinking.
Some time later I wandered into a conversation David was having with the
bride's mother on the screen porch. This conversation was already
political.
David was complaining about Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for calling
out
Charleston for having streets named after Civil War generals and
otherwise
ridiculing South Carolina's history. Stewart was about to start a
race war,
David argued, without mentioning Dylann Roof killing nine people. David
said
he was concerned about a race war because someone had already shot at
the
Confederate flag at the Capitol. David said we should just let
history be
history, and besides some people treated their slaves well.
By the time our hostess came into this conversation, David was talking
about
Obama being Kenyan and like that. Our hostess told him firmly not to
talk
like that in her house. When he didn't seem to get the point, I
leaned in
and suggested that maybe we should both be quiet. He admitted he'd been
drinking, but throughout this conversation he remained polite, friendly,
quiet, apparently sincere in beliefs he didn't seem to think anyone
would
find unusual. He came across as a basically sweet kid.
The last thing he said to me, before others took him swimming, he
said with
the same earnest pleasantness. He said, "I don't hate niggers."
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
