Not naming names.
The first time I ever used the N word I was four. I was playing in the yard next door with the five year old girl who lived there, and whom I admired. I could barely wait to run home so that I could ask my mother what this new word meant. I remember the moment very clearly. I was barely inside the back door when I inquired, "Mommy, what is a Nigger?" I'll never forget the look of horror on my mom's face - then she composed herself, and very calmly told me what it meant, why it was used, and why I should never use it. "It means a dirty person -- like calling someone a pig....people call 'colored people' that word," she said, "but even the dictionary says it can be any person -- even a white person can be one. " She went on to explain how hurtful the word was to others, how cruel, and that I should never, ever use the word.
I try to be careful with language. I am not always perfect, I am sure, but I understand the connotations of language, I am aware that words connect and disconnect us. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words; the opposite also holds: a word is worth a thousand pictures.
One word can drastically alter my perception of a person. Drastically. I guess I don't really expect than anyone should care about what my perception of them is, or that they should live their lives concerned with pleasing or displeasing me, because after all, who am I?
Who AM I?
Whoever I am, this language awareness and sensitivity that I have? I am not alone in it.
Mel Gibson. Michael Richards. The language of rap Music and Bill O'Reilly. They're all over the news. See also: South Park.
Two weeks ago I went to a an all day Poetry Festival hosted by a an active member of the local and Philadelphia literary communities, art communities, and music industries. He knows a few rappers, a lot of poets, has written professionally for our newspaper, The Atlantic City Press, and works to educate young people so that they might use knowledge instead of violence to fend off the horrors of the world as they feel their way through the bramble of reality that they must cut a path through to reach adulthood relatively unscathed. And life thereafter.
One of the events scheduled for the day was a panel discussion on the use of the "N" word. I was very excited about this, as a portion of my poetry addresses racial issues in general, and the use of the "N" word, in particular.
If you don't know my personal history, I can sum it up by saying that I married a black man and was disowned by my family for seven years. The man and I had a child together, then divorced. I loved him and it broke my heart to force myself to move on, but I did it and my heart mended. My family and I "reconciled."
Who am I? Nigger lover.
Words are very powerful.
Once, someone very close to me said to her son "the colors don't mix" when he asked her what her opinion was on mixed marriage. I love these people with all my heart.
Someone else very close to me left a beach recently because there were "big black boys" there and this made the person feel uncomfortable.
People are going to hate me for this blog.
But I hope not.
I replied to this person, "Big black boys -- you mean like Austin?" (my son).
Maybe that was wrong of me, but was it?
I love these people with all
that is left of
my heart.
Who am I if I remain silent? In my eyes? I am worthless.
Silence is the voice
of complicity.
Words are machetes.
And I'm pretty sure that these people I love love me and mean me no harm.
Once a friend's wife told me that she couldn't work in a beauty salon because she couldn't get used to the idea of washing a black person's hair. It skeeved her. I'm sure it dawned on her after the wine wore off (did it ever dawn on her?) that she was talking to ME. ME.
Who am I?
She then went on to explain that she picked nearly a hundred ticks from her dog the previous night.
But doesn't want to touch a black person's head.
I may be off track here, but I doubt it.
I was a coward. I was the "bigger" person. I could have embarrassed the woman, but I chose to remain silent. Shame on me.
After my divorce, when I began dating again, many of the guys I met who were "feeling me out" would ask "Do you date black men now?" "I date men," I would answer.
"All you are is all that you've been taught. And what you are comfortable with. What we are comfortable with is easier on us than change is, which is why we fall back into old habits or repeat things we've heard from others over and over like puppets. At least it seems that way until change occurs and we realize that sometimes the change brings us more comfort than we thought was possible before."
The above? It's what I tell myself about people every time I hear someone say something hurtful.
Just words.
Nigger. Kike. Jewbag. Spic. Fat. Stupid. Ugly.
The panel discussion on "The N Word" was interesting. One black woman whose son looked to be about ten, maybe eleven, said "he gets called it every day at school, but we haven't told him what it means."
She said, "Don't think that doesn't mean we haven't gone to the school about the matter, we have, but we haven't told him what the word means...." She said she didn't want to give the word any power.
I understand that she thinks she is protecting her child. But my own belief is that pretending a name does not exist is like pretending a place doesn't exist. Next thing you know someone you love goes into the wrong town and is hanging from a tree.
One of the panel members said that he didn't believe in censorship of any kind, and that sometimes, among one another (meaning blacks) the N word was okay.
I know, too, that there is a "movement" to take power away from the word by using it so much that it no longer sounds offensive. Maybe that will happen in forty years, I think, but when grown men tell their four year old daughters that it's okay if one of their teachers is black as long "as you don't marry one".....well, maybe in a few hundred years?
A few months ago a black man called his town's occupants "hicks." I found it offensive. He used it over and over until I finally told him that I was uncomfortable with that word in the same way I was uncomfortable with people using the N word.
I've had people say to me "You think about that stuff? Wow. You think about that stuff?"
At the poetry festival, a black writer called my red-headed friend a "blonde" when she did something (I don't even remember what it was now) a bit clumsily. Not everyone at the table heard the remark. But she did, and I did, and he did. Time just froze. For her and for me, anyway. He didn't even realize that he had slurred someone. Blonde jokes were so popular a few years back, and comedy is so hard to resist, especially in awkward situations, that he slipped right into behavior that reflects what he's been surrounded by: blonde jokes. He was actually trying to make her feel better about her mistake when he asked, "having a blonde moment?" She handled it with more grace and good humor than I could have thought quickly enough to muster in such a situation: She wrote a poem about the incident on the spot and then read it to him, getting him to re-examine his response. I'm going to have to ask her for a copy.
I am not the only one who thinks about this stuff. Many great writers have addressed the issue of language and it's power to sway and to persuade, to dominate, to kill.
(Speaking of domination, you do know, don't you -- that women couldn't vote until 1920 and blacks didn't really get to vote until the 1960's?).*
My red-headed friend and the panelist members at the poetry festival, as well as the Network news stations, are all thinking about the way we use language to describe "other".
Obviously, so are the writers of South Park. In "Le Petit Tourette" ?Cartman "discovers the joys of having Tourette's syndrome. Drunk with the power of saying whatever he wants without getting into trouble for it, Cartman lines up national TV coverage to take advantage of his new life with no filters."
If you don't understand that the characters on South Park are not to be emulated, that it is a brilliant political satire combining the most controversial or popular news with comedy to bring about social awareness through the art of entertainment (okay, not all of them, but many!) then you either shouldn't be watching it, or you should, so that you might learn something about the world outside your immediate "arena." Things like it's not really alright to use the words "Jewbag" "Cheap-Ass Jew" "Spic" or "Nigger." That these things resonate and have power over others in ways that you can 't even begin to imagine.
The world is changing. I keep thinking "soon all the bigots will be dead."
But I know I'm wrong. I'm not in denial. I'm humoring myself. They'll be here long after I'm gone.
But I'm here, now. And I can still speak. I just won't name names.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/home.html:
*In May, 1919, the necessary two-thirds vote in favor of the women suffrage amendment was finally mustered in Congress, and the proposed amendment was sent to the states for ratification. By July 1920, with a number of primarily southern states adamantly opposed to the amendment, it all came down to Tennessee. It appeared that the amendment might fail by one vote in the Tennessee house, but twenty-four-year-old Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, "Don't forget to be a good boy" and "vote for suffrage." Women had finally won the vote.
http://www.ontheissues.org/askme/15th_amendment.htm:
In 1789, African-Americans were defined in the Constitution as 3/5 of a person for counting representation, and could not vote at all. (Constitution's Article 1, section 2, and elsewhere)
In 1865, following the Civil War, African-Americans were given the right to vote and the "3/5ths clause" was rescinded. (14th and 15th Amendment). The clause relevant to your question is the 15th Amendment, article 1: "The right... to vote shall not be denied or abridged... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." (the "previous condition of servitude" meant that states couldn't deny the right to vote to those who had been slaves).
For 90 years thereafter, states did all sorts of things to abridge the right to vote for African-Americans. The main means were seemingly "objective" criteria like "literacy laws," which required that a person be able to read before they could register to vote. Since most African-Americans at the time were illiterate, that effectively prevented their voting. There were many cases before the Supreme Court, mostly in southern states, in which means of blocking the vote were removed.
The real change came during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, when the last of the racial restrictions were finally removed. Prior to the 1960s, the Supreme Court had determined that schools could be "separate but equal," which meant there were separate schools for African-Americans. During the 1960s, the Supreme Court enforced the desegregation of the schools on the grounds that "separate is inherently unequal."
Legally speaking, the right to vote came with the 15th amendment. But socially speaking, it took the Civil Rights movement to make it a reality.
