It is
always interesting to see all the conniptions into which the use of what they
are pleased to call the “n-word” (i.e. “nigger”) drives a great many people
descended from all the European settlers in North America. (And, by the way, it should never be
forgotten that each and every one of these immigrants was decidedly illegal, from the point of view of the millions whose
numerous groups had already been firmly established here for thousands of years
and who had long since shown themselves to bave been wonderful custodians of
the land, mainly by not doing much of anything with it – a system of land
management that works perfectly every time.
Furthermore these Original Occupants had been quite happy with knowing
absolutely nothing about the existence of all those cross-waving devils on the
other side of the big seas to the east, and it didn’t matter how many Shakers
of Spears, Mozarts, Newtons, Caesars, or Da Vincis they had produced, or even how
much nonsense various shamans among the tribes’ own numbers, having just smoked some bad peyote from
somewhere, had cooked up about the
chance of “white gods” one day showing up from the east.)
Getting
back to good ol’ “nigger,” the latest example of what I started out talking
about is a woman of the lighter persuasion named Paula Deen, who, until
recently, apparently was big on a TV food show of some sort. For some reason she admitted to having said
“nigger” in some context that she said was years ago, and for that she was
promptly dropped from the show, and shortly afterward she was also disconnected
from a couple of other lucrative enterprises as well, and the costs to her for
her verbal indiscretion (or her revealing of it) seemed to keep climbing
sharply.
In response Bill Maher, another TV personality
and well known for his acerbic attitude, which is often pointed in a good
direction though sometimes not, came to her defense, asking plaintively – but
quite rightly – why do people always have to “go away” when they use that word? In other words, what’s happened to American
freedom of speech? And it’s just a
word, isn’t it?
But it
wasn’t at all what Maher said that I found so interesting. Nor was it the attitudes shown in the lengthy
comment section that followed an Internet account of his involvement in this
business, because there wasn’t anything novel about what those people spouted either. They made the same sort of empty and not at
all well-considered remarks that you hear or read after any such article or
whatever on a racial subject, especially when use of the word “nigger” is the
subject. No, the interest arose from
noting how, after all these years (I am now 82), nothing is changed in a great
many Europeno (aka “white”) reactions.
Can it be
that in the matter of those humans, that, in spite of everything, they have
been raised to consider inferior to themselves, large numbers of Europenos are
forever incapable of learning anything or giving any sort of constructive
thought to it, generation after generation?
Instead, if the subject is racism in any context, they just grab the
nearest empty cliche that comes to their minds and hang on to it for dear life,
before going on and with great relief to another topic.
A few
hardier souls among them, however, are not as quick to drop the subject, and
their main thing is pretending to be incensed that the people that they call
“blacks” (but which I call by the much more pleasant and apt term “rainbows”
because they exist in all the hues of the human spectrum in a glorious display
of inclusiveness, whereas the only thing that sets gay people off from the rest
of humankind is their strong gender exclusivity, and I see nothing about that that
merits their waving of prismatic flags) are allowed to call each other
“niggers,” and even in an admiring way, while Europenos, though they’re the
dominant group, strictly are not, in any manner. These dominants consider it the worst kind of
outrage and outright racial discrimination imaginable, that they, though superior
to all others in all situations except basketball games, should be forbidden
anything, and especially – especially! – something that those lowest of the
low, “blacks,” are allowed to indulge in liberally.
This indignation reaches such a bitter and
ridiculous fever pitch that some even demand that if “whites” cannot be allowed
to use the “n-word,” then “blacks” should never be permitted to use it either,
simply because that kind of usage is blatantly discriminatory against “whites,”
and also because “nigger” is such a godawfully terrible epithet, and it is
time, they argue, that “blacks” smarten up enough to realize that fact and to
recognize that every time they hear it used, they should feel inspired to hit,
kick, and even kill.
This is
exactly where, in my expert and long-considered opinion, nearly everyone, of
all pigmentations, completely misses the Big Point that should be involved with
any use of the word “nigger” – a point so large that it is an enormous failure
of collective eyesights to keep overlooking it so completely. This point is not at all the horror of the
word “nigger.” Instead it is the idea
that no effort should be spared to de-fang the word instead, to strip it as
completely as possible of all its vitriol, the same as had long ago already happened
with “black.” To me personally, on a scale of 1 to 10,
achieving this would have merited a resounding 10, whereas being admitted to a
fancy restaurant would have had trouble rating even as high as a 2.
So little
is known of even the latest chapters of “black” history that few if any will
believe me when I say that as recently as my younger days, from 1931 up to
about 1965, to the descendants of the
slaves brought over from Africa “black” was a pejorative word and just as
lethal to us as “nigger” (coming out of the wrong mouths), so much so that even
today I am highly uncomfortable with being called “black” by anyone or on hearing
people like me being referred to as “blacks,” as the most notorious member of the Supreme Court conspicuously
did just the other day.
But at the same time that Reverend King and
his allies were doing all their good work in bringing about a number of civil
rights, competitors of theirs in much the same cause, the “black militants,”
accomplished a language miracle, by pushing the (at times overblown) concept of
“black pride” so hard that in just a few years, some time in the mid 1960’s,
the word “black” completely lost its sting and instead gained a usage status
wherein today it is considered to be an always harmless if not always laudatory
term – as short-fallen as I still see that idea as being. And I’ve never seen any reason why it was
that the “black” militants like Stokeley Carmichael, Huey Newton, H. Rap Brown,
and the others were not able to do the same thing and more with “nigger” and
why people of all kinds cannot unite in doing so today.
Correction. Of course, I do see exactly why that is so
hard to accomplish, and every time somebody – almost always a Europeno -- “slips”
and uses the word “nigger” in any spirit at all, it is all too easy to see the
cavalry and the infantry being instantly drawn up to make sure that that term never loses one particle of its
punch and poison, and to see that any attempts to sanitize it are stamped out
without delay . And you will see all
that false fire and fury being raised hardly at all by rainbows but instead
almost solely by members of the pale-visaged brethren. It is all in the cause of “white” racism,
unconscious or not.
Here we
should always remind ourselves of two interesting things in this matter. One is that there is no word denoting
“white” people that is anywhere near as virulent as “nigger” is supposed (and
hoped) to be, and Majority America couldn’t be happier with that circumstance –
while disregarding the all too obvious fact that this suggests only that the “white”
capacity for extreme hatred far outstrips “black” abilities in the same
direction. My question is, how can the
dominants be happy with that?
Another key aspect of all this is that usage
of the word “nigger” by rainbows is part of their never-ending struggle against
their much stronger and more numerous opponents, dating from slavery days,
when, lacking any other means of defense and retaliation, those chained imports
from Africa hit on ways to express themselves that would not be easily comprehensible
to their oppressors. That was not hard to do, because, like the
millions of George Zimmermans today, by their very nature,those oppressors were
not the brightest bulbs in the world. One
way to do this was to stand language on its head and to give words meanings that
were exactly opposite to how they were commonly understood
In my
earliest days the most obvious instance of this was to say that something was
“bad” when all the listeners of your color instantly understood that you were
saying that the thing was actually “good,” and even more often it meant “great”
and “fabulous.” There were other such
inversions of usage, but that is the one that pops quickest to my now ancient
mind.
This
standing language on its head is exactly the reason why, when applied by one
rainbow to another, “nigger” can be an expression of great approval and
friendship, instead of being a curse word.
It also serves the purpose of reducing
to a state of near apoplexy those who want to see that epithet having quite another
effect, and this is why it is actually so laughable when someone in a comment
section demands that rainbows stop using the word “nigger” altogether. That critic has no claim to the word,
especially if the bulk of his ancestors came from north of the Mediterranean. He
doesn’t own that word in any sense, because an epithet, once used, like a
bullet from a gun, belongs ever afterward exclusively to the target of the
fusillade, instead of to the shooter.
This turning
of things on their heads is not peculiar to rainbows, and you have to suspect
the motives of those who are so outraged at any use of the word “nigger” when
you have such an experience as I did, in coming from a largely rainbow world to
the newly integrated Air Force in the early 1950’s, when I quickly noticed that
guys of Italian descent were quite fond of referring to themselves as “dagoes.”
Before then I had been given the idea
that calling somebody a “dago” was highly offensive, and I had no trouble
sensing that those men didn’t accept anyone of a different ethnicity using that
term in a playful or any other sense.
I didn’t
run into enough Latinos or Jews to know whether they felt the same about terms
like “spics” and “hebes,” but I suspect that they did, just as, if movies hold
any truth, Irish guys, among each other, are not above calling themselves
“micks.” Yet, unlike the frequent cases
of “the n-word,” you seldom if ever hear similar bursts of outrage on behalf of
the “offended groups going up all over the media, with widespread suggestions
instead of substitutes like “the d-word,”
“the s-word, “the h-word,” or “the m-word.”
Funny,
that – though not actually. I suppose
that we rainbows are supposed to feel gratified by such displays of indignation
that appear to be on our behalf but actually amount to being quite the opposite.
