Nigga Nigger Nigra Negro Negroid I don’t care how you spell it….

I don’t get offended when people call me a monkey I assume they never fully understood Biology, or understood On the Origin of the Species or environmental adaptation, I was lucky to have fallen in love with Biology that I continually aced it as a child as I wanted to be a scientist, possessing more acumen than a racist isn’t difficult but it has always been the best and most advantageous of defences. So I had never understood why any offence should be taken to a white man putting shoe polish on his face donning a curly wig and doing that finger waggling dance, you made money from singing as a black man? If anything it was quite visionary, the blacks do make vulgar amounts of money within music now, you may notice in certain genres of music that that mimicking hasn’t stopped, they just don’t black up anymore.

I took no offence to the blacking up, as that has always been so embarrassing and cringe worthy to me, even when Ms Upton fashioned a doll on this weird mocking, I still never found this troubling as I never saw it as representation of me, in fact as I recall we had one and quite liked it and laughed at its gullible, naive attempts to undermine us, I think in our household we saw these actions as exposing the vulnerability of a culture unable to handle difference or adapt to change, so their best reaction was to mock it and then call themselves civilised and adroit? Taking people from a primitive culture, chaining them, beating them, then eventually setting them free and spending the time rather than inducting them into their society but comparing them to a community far more developed than their own is like shooting fish in a barrel…”yes of course you can read and write and speak English quite a lot better than I can…I’m from Africa you geniuses but no you carry on blacking up your face which makes you look truly superior and shows ME just how thick I am”.

Being belittled humiliated and ridiculed by another culture is part of the human condition, look around that is why we war ALL the time, even if you take religion and natural resources out of that equation we would still find a way of seeing another as inferior or a threat, I watch it daily all the time with tribalised politics and under their specific paradigms they can take in a number of cultures to blame brutalise and prejudice and then proceed to hypothetically march them out of their countries, it is just what people do. I still don’t get offended though.. BUT

The word or term that does offend me deeply has to be the word

Nigger ~ lack of intelligence and sophistication inferior and less civilized than white people, slavery, inferiority and oppression, uncouth, lazy, a coloured person who has no money,

Urban dictionary ~ Niggers “people who annoy you”

Tupac says
“NIGGER ~ a black man with a slavery chain around his neck.
NIGGA ~ a black man with a gold chain on his neck.”

Tupac ~ a black man with a gravestone upon his neck

Oh yeah we reclaimed that word good. I’m not sure what the black folk were thinking when they first decided to start using the term on themselves considering all the efforts of the civil rights movement to seek equality; cheers gangster rappers, carrying guns calling each other nigger and slapping up yo bitches, has really done wonders for the 21st century image of the black culture, given it such dignity and respect for the work those debased people did for you. Plenty of people have hardship, plenty grow up in poverty, violence and aggression has never been the answer but why bother with that age old book learning? Just go ahead and prove just how lazy you are and shoot each other in the face yelling nigga!  Did they really think that would stop others from saying it in a derogatory way? The fact that black people use it to insult has only served to perpetuate its negative connotations, other cultures look at the dumb blacks calling each other inferior and just see it as business as usual, there is at no time a nice way to use that word, didn’t Blaxploitation teach you anything?

That word should sicken a person as it passes their lips, it should bring fear of retribution to use it to another, a shame should course through them questioning their own existence if it is just to disparage a person to nothing better than a subserviant. To say it should cause the world to stop and stare at them in disgust and summon up within each human being a Herculean restraint not to punish the curd rendering them a stain easily washed away, THAT is how that word should be to us now, as it is a word that will NEVER distance itself from a people that were beaten demeaned and  taken from their country, mocked incessantly about their own culture, not even recognised as people but as animals. Who knows what could have happened to Africa if those people were able to stay and help it develop instead of this forced migration, leaving a people lost angry and displaced for generations after, constantly feeling uncomfortable in their own home, because of it African history was changed forever, imagine if Martin Luther used his dream in Africa?

The civil rights movements were not a hundred years ago, try thirty, the work needed to continue not go backwards. The black people that think saying “yo my nigga” will reclaim the ills of generations of a broken people, have no understanding of the world they live in. If you use the word nigger, then the racist continues to use the word nigger you know why? racists don’t have a moral compass and you aren’t teaching them how to get one. Don’t moan about racism still existing because all you are doing is reinforcing it by using the word nigger which contributes to it. Not to mention the resentment that has grown because of the confusion and division it has caused, for instance, it is only racist when white people use it? But black people can call white people it, give me strength, the word has not improved the culture but diminished it further. And as if by magic I have a stream of sad examples  That word holds a  lot of responsibility, a lot of death, hurt and victory, it is not to be treated or used as some excuse, right of passage or race card, it is not some epic track suited rhapsody about how hard it is now, this isn’t hard, especially if you live in the West, they laid the foundation from “hard” all we had to do was build on it, no, it isn’t easy but apparently life isn’t. And just look outside your own culture and look at all the other cultures that have been crushed by genocide how well did they build from their humiliations? And your genius resolve is to call each other what they dehumanised us with?….yeah……that will show them.

I’m not by any means in the camp of banning literature or Golliwog dolls or erasing the history of this word and all its artifacts, that is not how we should conduct our understanding of our world and its narrative, there should be no denial, we should very much display the ignorance if only to gauge how far we’ve come from it but I switch on Twitter and I can almost guarantee that some racist knuckle dragging, no talent, latent human apology will turn around and throw it bravely across my computer screen and then shortly afterwards some blinkered unconfrontational who hasn’t got an understanding of being picked out of a society and baited will breezily say “you should just ignore them” to which I will reply “because it is that easy is it?”. THAT is a word you must always retaliate against, it is a word that rips into your reflection, your speech, your education, your children, your heart and your very being, to turn away from it doesn’t make you the better person, it makes you a slave, a lesser, a subservient a house nigger and the accuser knows that, so I’ll be damned if I will allow anyone to think of me as that, I AM INFERIOR TO NO ONE.

I implore those black people to stop and realise that the cultural controls are alive and well, I get people telling me it often on-line and I don’t have the luxury of the pampered politicians who have the police watch and then arrest bullies on their behalf, I fight my battles unaided. How? I constantly show off what I have learned in life, I use unusual words and decent grammar, I have the spelling check on as a shadow because they will see it as ill-educated and pounce, trust me ad hominem can be a racists best friend. It is one of the fallouts of growing up in a racist society for me, I am cursed with always trying to better myself (I don’t lie it’s true… finished an MSc and started a Diploma next year another MSc after that a PhD, it really is a weird curse) so I am sick to death of continually representing on behalf of a people that will happily call each other nigga in broken English and text speech, do you know how hard you make it for the rest of us that have to pick up your slack as you blissfully languish in the stereotype?  DO YOU? Next time I’m called nigger I’ll send them to you as you find so much enjoyment from its tarnish.

You see that picture of that pulchritudinous aborigine inquisitively holding that skull, when I see that I think of a beautiful fusion of Hamlet, Othello and Walkabout, the imagery positively excites me, have a click, can you still see that beautiful fusion now? Now click this and watch how the word exudes stupidity, now click this and feel better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 at 16:59. It is filed under Racism and tagged with , , , , .

  • http://twitter.com/BlankMustDie Blank-Graphic Novel

    I’ve always loved the idea that we all come from the same place, the same primordial goop, and yet we call ourselves different. It’s as if culture can manipulate biology, it can’t. WE are all black, we are all white and we are all of the other colors we use to describe race. Beautiful piece Oleuanna! 

    Reply – Quote
  • http://marcusspeh.com/ Marcus Speh

    Most powerful manifesto I’ve read in a long, long time.

    Reply – Quote
  • NubianOR

    I hope more people read this. Thank you.

    Reply – Quote

I don’t get offended when people call me a monkey I assume they never fully understood Biology, or understood On the Origin of the Species or environmental adaptation, I was lucky to have fallen in love with Biology that I continually aced it as a child as I wanted to be a scientist, possessing more acumen than a racist isn’t difficult but it has always been the best and most advantageous of defences. So I had never understood why any offence should be taken to a white man putting shoe polish on his face donning a curly wig and doing that finger waggling dance, you made money from singing as a black man? If anything it was quite visionary, the blacks do make vulgar amounts of money within music now, you may notice in certain genres of music that that mimicking hasn’t stopped, they just don’t black up anymore.

I took no offence to the blacking up, as that has always been so embarrassing and cringe worthy to me, even when Ms Upton fashioned a doll on this weird mocking, I still never found this troubling as I never saw it as representation of me, in fact as I recall we had one and quite liked it and laughed at its gullible, naive attempts to undermine us, I think in our household we saw these actions as exposing the vulnerability of a culture unable to handle difference or adapt to change, so their best reaction was to mock it and then call themselves civilised and adroit? Taking people from a primitive culture, chaining them, beating them, then eventually setting them free and spending the time rather than inducting them into their society but comparing them to a community far more developed than their own is like shooting fish in a barrel…”yes of course you can read and write and speak English quite a lot better than I can…I’m from Africa you geniuses but no you carry on blacking up your face which makes you look truly superior and shows ME just how thick I am”.

Being belittled humiliated and ridiculed by another culture is part of the human condition, look around that is why we war ALL the time, even if you take religion and natural resources out of that equation we would still find a way of seeing another as inferior or a threat, I watch it daily all the time with tribalised politics and under their specific paradigms they can take in a number of cultures to blame brutalise and prejudice and then proceed to hypothetically march them out of their countries, it is just what people do. I still don’t get offended though.. BUT

The word or term that does offend me deeply has to be the word

Nigger ~ lack of intelligence and sophistication inferior and less civilized than white people, slavery, inferiority and oppression, uncouth, lazy, a coloured person who has no money,

Urban dictionary ~ Niggers “people who annoy you”

Tupac says
“NIGGER ~ a black man with a slavery chain around his neck.
NIGGA ~ a black man with a gold chain on his neck.”

Tupac ~ a black man with a gravestone upon his neck

Oh yeah we reclaimed that word good. I’m not sure what the black folk were thinking when they first decided to start using the term on themselves considering all the efforts of the civil rights movement to seek equality; cheers gangster rappers, carrying guns calling each other nigger and slapping up yo bitches, has really done wonders for the 21st century image of the black culture, given it such dignity and respect for the work those debased people did for you. Plenty of people have hardship, plenty grow up in poverty, violence and aggression has never been the answer but why bother with that age old book learning? Just go ahead and prove just how lazy you are and shoot each other in the face yelling nigga!  Did they really think that would stop others from saying it in a derogatory way? The fact that black people use it to insult has only served to perpetuate its negative connotations, other cultures look at the dumb blacks calling each other inferior and just see it as business as usual, there is at no time a nice way to use that word, didn’t Blaxploitation teach you anything?

That word should sicken a person as it passes their lips, it should bring fear of retribution to use it to another, a shame should course through them questioning their own existence if it is just to disparage a person to nothing better than a subserviant. To say it should cause the world to stop and stare at them in disgust and summon up within each human being a Herculean restraint not to punish the curd rendering them a stain easily washed away, THAT is how that word should be to us now, as it is a word that will NEVER distance itself from a people that were beaten demeaned and  taken from their country, mocked incessantly about their own culture, not even recognised as people but as animals. Who knows what could have happened to Africa if those people were able to stay and help it develop instead of this forced migration, leaving a people lost angry and displaced for generations after, constantly feeling uncomfortable in their own home, because of it African history was changed forever, imagine if Martin Luther used his dream in Africa?

The civil rights movements were not a hundred years ago, try thirty, the work needed to continue not go backwards. The black people that think saying “yo my nigga” will reclaim the ills of generations of a broken people, have no understanding of the world they live in. If you use the word nigger, then the racist continues to use the word nigger you know why? racists don’t have a moral compass and you aren’t teaching them how to get one. Don’t moan about racism still existing because all you are doing is reinforcing it by using the word nigger which contributes to it. Not to mention the resentment that has grown because of the confusion and division it has caused, for instance, it is only racist when white people use it? But black people can call white people it, give me strength, the word has not improved the culture but diminished it further. And as if by magic I have a stream of sad examples  That word holds a  lot of responsibility, a lot of death, hurt and victory, it is not to be treated or used as some excuse, right of passage or race card, it is not some epic track suited rhapsody about how hard it is now, this isn’t hard, especially if you live in the West, they laid the foundation from “hard” all we had to do was build on it, no, it isn’t easy but apparently life isn’t. And just look outside your own culture and look at all the other cultures that have been crushed by genocide how well did they build from their humiliations? And your genius resolve is to call each other what they dehumanised us with?….yeah……that will show them.

I’m not by any means in the camp of banning literature or Golliwog dolls or erasing the history of this word and all its artifacts, that is not how we should conduct our understanding of our world and its narrative, there should be no denial, we should very much display the ignorance if only to gauge how far we’ve come from it but I switch on Twitter and I can almost guarantee that some racist knuckle dragging, no talent, latent human apology will turn around and throw it bravely across my computer screen and then shortly afterwards some blinkered unconfrontational who hasn’t got an understanding of being picked out of a society and baited will breezily say “you should just ignore them” to which I will reply “because it is that easy is it?”. THAT is a word you must always retaliate against, it is a word that rips into your reflection, your speech, your education, your children, your heart and your very being, to turn away from it doesn’t make you the better person, it makes you a slave, a lesser, a subservient a house nigger and the accuser knows that, so I’ll be damned if I will allow anyone to think of me as that, I AM INFERIOR TO NO ONE.

I implore those black people to stop and realise that the cultural controls are alive and well, I get people telling me it often on-line and I don’t have the luxury of the pampered politicians who have the police watch and then arrest bullies on their behalf, I fight my battles unaided. How? I constantly show off what I have learned in life, I use unusual words and decent grammar, I have the spelling check on as a shadow because they will see it as ill-educated and pounce, trust me ad hominem can be a racists best friend. It is one of the fallouts of growing up in a racist society for me, I am cursed with always trying to better myself (I don’t lie it’s true… finished an MSc and started a Diploma next year another MSc after that a PhD, it really is a weird curse) so I am sick to death of continually representing on behalf of a people that will happily call each other nigga in broken English and text speech, do you know how hard you make it for the rest of us that have to pick up your slack as you blissfully languish in the stereotype?  DO YOU? Next time I’m called nigger I’ll send them to you as you find so much enjoyment from its tarnish.

You see that picture of that pulchritudinous aborigine inquisitively holding that skull, when I see that I think of a beautiful fusion of Hamlet, Othello and Walkabout, the imagery positively excites me, have a click, can you still see that beautiful fusion now? Now click this and watch how the word exudes stupidity, now click this and feel better.