They Might Call Me a "Nigger"
In all probability you wouldn't, but in their more guarded and less generous moments, a member or two of your family, and some of your friends, and certainly a number of your neighbors, might, on seeing me in person, call me a "nigger."
I like to think that even if they did it to my face, I wouldn't really be offended. Actually, however, I've had no real chance to test that out. I am now in my eighth decade, and in all but one of those I have been around large numbers of people of European descent of many sorts and in widely varying situations, and in all that time only once has one of them ever called me that, to my hearing. And that was just another little boy about my age, standing in his yard one morning while my sister and I were merely minding our own business walking past to catch the bus to school. We just ignored him, and it merely struck me as being curious. By then I had already detected that throughout the realm of my fellow kids -- of all ancestries -- were those who had trouble figuring out what to do with themselves.
The fact is that I think we of recent African descent have been badly remiss in not taking that terrible sting out of the word "nigger." That was done with "black."
When I was young, to be called "black" was, in ordinary circles, a very pejorative word, while it wasn't at all unusual for "nigger" to be used as a term of endearment. But in the 1960's, the "black militants" -- Stokeley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and the others -- accomplished something truly remarkable, but also, in one respect, only halfass. While doing nothing about "nigger," in almost a blink of an eye they changed "black" from being a cuss word to a word denoting true racial pride.
--That is, for all except me and my creative writing teacher at Howard University, the illustrious Sterling Brown. In his last years, Brown, best known as a poet, folklorist and one of the authors of the distinguished collection of writing called "The Negro Caravan," and who had spent a lifetime promoting and teaching the literature mainly of the folk transported from Africa, proclaimed to one and all in that stentorian tone of his, "I DO NOT use the word 'black.'"
I don't know the reasons for his abhorrence of that usage -- I had long since fallen out of touch with him by then -- but I definitely know mine.
Mine stem mainly from the fact that I try to be precise in my use of that wonderful tool called "language," and I see "black" as applied to people as being merely a sloppy, lazy, inexact, and ultimately malevolent misuse of the word. So is "white." So instead I have long thought that Americans of recent African descent should be called "rainbows," while people whose ancestors marched out of the Serengeti somewhat longer ago and ended up north of the Mediterranean with a severe and unlucky drop of their melanin count should be called "euchils," short for "European children."
I am trying to keep my posts to a reasonable length. So I'll save the rest that I have on this subject till a little later.
I'll just ask to say a word.
I like to think that even if they did it to my face, I wouldn't really be offended. Actually, however, I've had no real chance to test that out. I am now in my eighth decade, and in all but one of those I have been around large numbers of people of European descent of many sorts and in widely varying situations, and in all that time only once has one of them ever called me that, to my hearing. And that was just another little boy about my age, standing in his yard one morning while my sister and I were merely minding our own business walking past to catch the bus to school. We just ignored him, and it merely struck me as being curious. By then I had already detected that throughout the realm of my fellow kids -- of all ancestries -- were those who had trouble figuring out what to do with themselves.
The fact is that I think we of recent African descent have been badly remiss in not taking that terrible sting out of the word "nigger." That was done with "black."
When I was young, to be called "black" was, in ordinary circles, a very pejorative word, while it wasn't at all unusual for "nigger" to be used as a term of endearment. But in the 1960's, the "black militants" -- Stokeley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and the others -- accomplished something truly remarkable, but also, in one respect, only halfass. While doing nothing about "nigger," in almost a blink of an eye they changed "black" from being a cuss word to a word denoting true racial pride.
--That is, for all except me and my creative writing teacher at Howard University, the illustrious Sterling Brown. In his last years, Brown, best known as a poet, folklorist and one of the authors of the distinguished collection of writing called "The Negro Caravan," and who had spent a lifetime promoting and teaching the literature mainly of the folk transported from Africa, proclaimed to one and all in that stentorian tone of his, "I DO NOT use the word 'black.'"
I don't know the reasons for his abhorrence of that usage -- I had long since fallen out of touch with him by then -- but I definitely know mine.
Mine stem mainly from the fact that I try to be precise in my use of that wonderful tool called "language," and I see "black" as applied to people as being merely a sloppy, lazy, inexact, and ultimately malevolent misuse of the word. So is "white." So instead I have long thought that Americans of recent African descent should be called "rainbows," while people whose ancestors marched out of the Serengeti somewhat longer ago and ended up north of the Mediterranean with a severe and unlucky drop of their melanin count should be called "euchils," short for "European children."
I am trying to keep my posts to a reasonable length. So I'll save the rest that I have on this subject till a little later.
I'll just ask to say a word.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home