I guess if you pick the fight>>>pick the participants>>pick the tools of war>>>the place of war>>>and make sure you are always hidden behind darkness>>tools of destruction>>>and ignorance…you can rest in your position of “taking care of yaself”…

It is unfortunate that men and women such as Samuel L. Jackson embrace the “N” word with open arms and no disdain what-so-ever. To say that he is a modern day Steppin Fetchet however does not totally explain he and others who emrace the use of the “N” word. For one thing the music and film industries have by rewarding those that use it encouraged its usage by rewarding those who were Black and dared to do with opportunities for riches and fame. The old lead the donkey by the carrot stick trick.

In 1995, after I returned from the Million Man March I became conscious. I never had been a user of the “N” word. As a child growing up in Los Angeles that word was banned in my house. The kids would use it though and I heard it so often that I began to accept its use by others as a way of life. I may have even used it on sometimes by myself. The point being that I became conscious after attending the Million Man March and I realized that using the “N” word was a bad thing for African descended people. I felt so strongly about it that I went into my own meager coffers and wrote, directed and produced a PSA against its use, “Respect the Sacrifices of Your Ancestors – Don’t Use the “N” Word”. At the time rap groups and movies were marketing the “N” word to the world with glee and wreaping great financial benefit for doing so. This little PSA was about all that existed in the marketplace in defiance of the use of that word.

Here is a link to my award winning PSA on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTBN0DioYEA

Yes, Eric I’ve been at this for several years and since then I’ve seen some encouraging signs of how our people are slowly but surely beginning to wake up.

It is incredible how there are those amongst us who encourage use of the n-word and this is supposed to be acceptable; lead a campaign against use of the term and all hell breaks loose. Why is that?

Consider this scenario: if one’s immediate family member was being bludgeon to death with a hammer by an assailant, would that individual start wearing the symbol of a hammer in honor or remembrance of that person’s ruthlessly murdered family member? Of course not, fore it symbolizes the savage and barbaric—and likely senseless— killing of that individual’s kinship.

Ironically enough, however, if one was programmed and conditioned over a period of 300 years to wear that hammer as a symbol, many would as that is what they have been taught within and without the community. This scenario is analogous to the behavior Blacks model today with their use of the n-word.
The n-word is the HAMMER associated with a brutal social system that denied Black Americans their God-given humanity. The word n**ger/n**ga has serious implications in American history as a method of dehumanizing, categorizing, stereotyping, insulting, and oppressing black people. For many African-American ancestors, it was the last word they heard before they were senselessly hung or burned to death. Millions of Black/African Americans—men, women, AND children—were beaten, raped, castrated and/or murdered; and being categorized as the n-word (n**ga/n**ger), that sanctioned such actions.

And this is how we acknowledge their precious memories…embracing the very HAMMER that dehumanized them. There is something terribly wrong with such a sick mindset.

Johann Wolfgang von Gothe (1749-1832) once said that “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

You can prove just how free you really are by honoring the precious memories of your forefathers and stop supporting use of the incorrigible n-word (n**ga). Anything less is inexcusable and must be looked upon as an abominable and blasphemous act

Beautifully put.

H. Lewis – The biggest problem that I have with your argument and post not previously detailed is the fact that you make everything a ZERO SUM or ALL OR NOTHING game.

For example, in your last direct response to me you said, “No sense of racial pride, dignity, honor or self-respect is exhibited by the Black Americans who advocate use of the n-word.”

Again, a zero sum game…NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Black American who advocates the use of the n-word is showing any of those things (pride, dignity, etc.).

You create an irrational position based upon a narrow vision of how one interprets the word.

As I mentioned before about linguistics. The meanings of words are not objective nor are they static. Words are mutable, they change with time, with culture, and with social influences.

Linguistically, words are symbols for ideas and concepts that only have value to the degree in which they convey a shared meaning between two or more people. For example, if Nigga in Chinese was a term for a rose would you be offended if you heard that word by a Chinese florist talking to a client? No, because intuitively you recognize that the ‘sound’ of the letters is not reflective of the content that the letters convey.

So from a linguistics perspective, we give value to words, and we confer shared meaning to the sounds that words make so that we can thereby communicate. If right now you and I agreed that the word bobbledencrom meant Black unity, then that word would now mean Black unity to us.

All of that to say that nigga is an idiomatic expression that is not static nor necessarily reflective of a negative self-concept of Black people who use it. This is how the term culturally evolved and it should be viewed as that, and not in the reductionistic ALL OR NOTHING reflection of Black consciousness and self esteem you suggest it is.

I’m sorry about the typos in my last response. In the last sentence make that “sore” instead of “soar.”

Well, let me go directly to the issue. WE HAVE FAR TOO MANY SERIOUS ISSUES THAT WE NEED TO BE ADDRESSING IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY TO BE OBSSESSING OVER A WORD. It’s not only a distraction, and gross waste of time, but you’re not going to change people’s vocabulary anyway, in spite of all your efforts. You know what kind of response you’re going to get from people who use the word? – “What is that nigga talkin’ about?” Then they’re gonna fall out laughing. So the only people you’re getting through to are people of like mind – in short, you’re preaching to the choir.
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You’ve been on this crusade for the five or six years I’ve known you, and just as many people are calling each other niggas as the day I met you. So it seems to me that you would be asking yourself, “What other areas of the Black experience could I be lending my considerable talents to that would be more productively fruitful?” Because the fact is, you’re spitting into a hurricane here when you should be building barriers. You’re trying to treat the soar instead of the cancer that’s causing it.

Insofar, as non-blacks use of the term that too is a matter all unto itself, and is not the topic that’s being dealt with here. If you wish to address the issues as outlined in my message to you and Marcus Vessey as it pertains to the n-word (n**ga) and Black/African Americans bondage to the term it would put us back on track.

“A truly free person would never want to wear the name given to him by someone who enslaved him.”

That’s what’s called a factoid – a lie that’s been told so often that it’s accepted as true. I’m a free as they come, yet, I don’t have no problem whatsoever with the last name “Wattree,” even though I know that it was given to my family by slave owners. The reason for that is I love who I am, I’m quite comfortable with who I am, and the slavery in my history is what goes into making me who I am. You see, every experience in life, including cultural experiences, is a source of knowledge. So the slavery – and all of the adversity in my life that’s attendant to the Black experience – makes me more, not less. So I take great pride in everything my people have endured.

So I wear my slave name as a badge of honor. It honors what my family has been through, and it also honors the blood, sweat, and tears of the slaves whose sacrifices are responsible for my being here today. So if a White man calls me a nigga it gives me an opportunity to strike a blow for all the slaves in my past by dragging his ass through the mud. After one such experience I followed up by asking the racist, “Now, tell me, how does it feel to now you’re intellectually inferior to a nigga?” I couldn’t have made him feel worse if I had shot him.

So the key to healthy self-esteem is not to dwell on trying to prove what you’re not, but to in vest in what you are. In short, excellence in the best revenge. That’s what racists – both black and white racists – hate President Obama. He is obviously so far superior to them that his very presence represents a pie in the face of their delusions of grandeur. Achieving that kind of excellence is what our intellectual energies should be directed towards. Our energies shouldn’t be wasted on trying to prove to fools that we’re not inferior, but rather, invested in making yourself your own hero. You should even be interested in what fools who were beneath you called you 200 years ago:

A SLAVES PRAYER

I was stole from Eden, an innocent soul,
crossed seas and centuries, chained and cold;
My mother was raped and beaten to death,
my daddy was sold, and my sister is kept.
How they praise God and brag dat they free,
and sing songs about freedom, ‘din look upon me?

I was chained to ‘dis land, ‘dis “Land of the free,”
by people with a God, who sho must can’t see.
But a change is a comin’, Tho I won’t no mo be,
but when it get here, Dear Lord,
please let my soul see.
*

I NOW STAND FIRM

I Now stand firm. My dedication to the power of knowledge is the platform upon which my podium rests. I stand firm, strong, and now free–free of anger, free of self-delusion, free of the folly of empty vanity, and free of the pernicious bane of meaningless pride without substance.

I now stand free to look upon the eyes of other men, reflecting dignity over sorrow, and accomplishment over pain; I stand with a burning passion, fueled by the very flame that forged ancestral shackles, with a deep sense of pride, and a pride that flows deep.

I now stand erect! The steel that once degraded my father, that chained him in bondage to this bitter Earth, now reinforce my character, making me more, rather than less; and the blood and sweat that once drenched his brow, and oozed from the yoke around his neck, now rage with resolve and a sense of purpose, and tremble with passion, within my burning breast.

I now stand as a new being–-neither simply African, nor simply American, but a hybrid forced to transcend the sum of my parts; no longer simply African, since being torn away from the African motherland to suffer and toil in the fields of America, and more than simply American, after being forced to be more than simply American, Just to survive within the bowels of this prosperous land.

Thus, I stand now armed—-armed with the wisdom of deprivation, the courage of my conviction, and a deep conviction of my courage; and fortified–with the confidence of a survivor, the empowerment of knowledge, and a ravishing hunger for greatness.

I now stand the product of love, struggle, and sacrifice; a witness to man’s inhumanity to man, and a monument to the hopes and dreams of a million slaves. I stand embraced by my creator, as God now smiles upon my people.

Yes, I Now Stand Firm–Firm, Black, and Free.
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http://wattree.blogspot.com/2009/01/slaves-prayer.html

Eric, my friend its good go see you weighing in on the merits of the use of the n-word (N**ga). We pretty much share the same philosophies on matters all accept the ambiguous n-word. You imply that I hate the word, no that isn’t entirely true, what I hate is to see and hear Black/African Americans voluntarily apply the pejorative term to themselves as if they are completely incapable of thinking for themselves, after all the term didn’t originate amongst them. I say them because I and many others like me do not associate ourselves or members of our race with the contemptible term.

A truly free person would never want to wear the name given to him by someone who enslaved him, and that bears repeating…A TRULY FREE PERSON would never want to wear the name given to him by someone who enslaved him especially a moniker such as the n-word and all the baggage that comes along with it.

So why on earth would I search for some pseudo-intellectual reason to refer to myself as such, unless I’m still mentally enslaved?

You have always been given permission and freedom to refer to one another with the N-word. However, freedom is being able to FREE yourself from the word not ADHERE to it.

The use of the N-word is a passively slick form of psychological, social, mental, and spiritual abuse. It’s unfathomable, the number of people who have been desensitized and have become immune to hearing and saying the N-word as if it is the normal thing to do – not good at all.

Slaves were descendants of those responsible for arts, science and use of speech and the creation of tremendous civilizations, the greatest and most developed civilizations, occupied highest pinnacle of human greatness. So how did the Black race go from being kings and queens to being n**gas (sub-human and 3/5 of a being.)?

Whether or not you accept any of the information given to you, you must realize that since being brought in chains to America before you were humanized, you were categorized…categorized as a n**ga/n**ger, with a specific purpose in mind.

Other than the Black/African American no other racial groups are encouraged and expected to accept base commonalities as a lifestyle. Wake-up my brothers!!