I spoke to University Sunrise Rotary this morning about my personal view on race and thought I’d re-post this article in conjunction with that event. This article was originally posted July 22, 2013.
It was a sunny Thursday morning, I parked my car behind my office; I felt good. My Rotary meeting had gone better than expected; I enjoyed being president of the organization. I walked around the corner from Sunnyside to 45th and took a side glance at myself in the bakery storefront window. I barely noticed the dirty and disheveled man coming towards me as we passed each other I spoke “hello”; he responded with “Hello Nigger”. I stopped in front to my office door, watched the man amble down the street, and thought, am I going to run down the street and get in to a confrontation with some homeless person? Not in my suit. I opened the door and started my business day.
We forget that Nigger was/is an all-encompassing word it’s a name, a description of property, a torment, an expression of concern, lament, a unifier, an excuse for whatever was needed (rape, beating, branding, lynching). Whatever we say today Nigger is a functional word. It makes us angry when white folks call, refer, or treat us like Niggers. It’s convenient when the black kids down the street don’t dress the way we think is proper and “Why are those Niggers so loud”? It’s a word (protected by the First Amendment) that helps violent hip hop and gangster rap music cross over to white audiences (Who do you think is buying all of those albums?). I’m no longer surprised when I hear young Asians or Latinos or Whiggers call each other Nigger.
Oh, lest we forget there are other words which also work: coon, zig-a-boo, darky, Boy, Gal, Uncle, monkey, mud men, Jungle bunny, Tar Baby, Rastus, spook … you can add your own from here. We don’t often think about the entrenchment of the pain inflicted by “Eenie, Meanie, Minie, Mo catch a Nigger by his toe”; or better yet, are your holidays brightened by a fresh bowl of “Nigger Toes” (Brazil nuts). The significance of the words, the names, is the power to define. People of color must insist on the right to define ourselves not only by what we accomplish but what we are called. Names like Nigger are place holders, place holders to remind people who they are in case they forget their place. Placeholders signifying less than. Black people use the word for the same reason, to make sure we don’t forget who we are: No one likes “Uppity Niggers”.
Talking about race is difficult because it requires being honest, given our history, I doubt that is possible without a significant acknowledgement of the depths of historical racism in America and the exploration of what that has done to each of us. At one point I used Lenny Bruce’s “Nigger” as a hand out for my interracial discussion classes and Institutional racism classes. In conjunction with the “Power to Define” such names symbolize a 400 year old history of shame and pain. What do you think?
Watch this clip of Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in the movie “Lenny”