If you’ve been reading BLOOD &
INK on a regular basis (and if not, then whyain’tcha?) The you’ll have noticed
that from time to time I’ll post something here that has been written by one of
the most extraordinarily talented artists it’s been my pleasure to work with; Sean
E. Ali.
Sean has a habit of writing these
amazingly perceptive and on point essays on his Facebook wall that should be
read by a wider audience. But Sean is truly a modest man and resists all my suggestions
that he should start a blog or something where these thoughts can saved and
savored and not lost in the blur of Facebooks posts. Sean’s a deep thinker who truly has something
worth saying about some very important societal topics affecting all of us
today.
Fortunately he has a friend like me
who has no shame at all in reposting his insightful words on his own blog.
Okay, I’ve run my mouth far too much
already. I now turn the floor over to Mr. Ali…
So let me
get this straight...
The people
upset most that the President used the word "nigger" in an
interview...
...are the
very people who have been calling him that in one form or another since '08...
...or
wasn't Cornell West using it to describe the President's avoidance of the
subject he was confronting when he used the word...
...or are
people of color who use it as a part of their daily speech when referring to
themselves or people they know who think that tossing a bunch of different
vowels and consonants on at the end somehow makes the word something other than
what it was?
Uh huh...
If that
ain't a "nigger moment", I don't know what is...
For the
record, I'm going for the Queen's English version of that word which denotes an
"ignorant person"...
The word
long before it was a racial slur was used to describe a lack of intelligence,
an ignorance of things that were obvious.
In short,
there is no positive spin for the word.
Sorry,
Chris Rock, I know you want to resurrect it after the NAACP did that whole
symbolic burial thing, but really it's not the kind of word that meant
"Freedom" in Swahili, it's still ignorant even when it's not racial.
For the
youngsters and the hip hop community and those folks who think they are down
when they use it as a greeting or expression of friendship.
It isn't.
It never was no matter how many times you add "az", "uh",
"a", "ruh", or whatever else you come up with, you're still
calling someone ignorant, you're still insulting someone's intelligence even
when race isn't a factor...
But when
you do it to one another and then lose your minds because someone who isn't you
or yours uses the term...
...then
it's racial and stupid, and you're a hypocrite.
If the word
is wrong, it's wrong all the way around. You can't pick and choose the moments
it's okay to speak a slur or insult, because it's a slur and an insult all the
time. You can dress it up if you like, but it is what it is all the time...
At least
the President used it as a proper example of the ingrained nature of racism in
American culture and the difficulty of erasing nearly six hundred years (if you
take in the total time of Africans sending their own to the Europeans who then
bound them over into slavery overseas to well, now) of racial inequality in a
weekend when it's got that large a head start, is an accurate assessment and
summary of what he said.
And FOX
Newsertainment wants to act like what he said was somehow the most horrible
thing ever uttered by a president...
....despite
their long track record of profiling people of certain ethnic groups and hiding
behind the new "nigger" trigger word of "thug"...
All of you
need to take a breath and listen to yourselves before you start jumping on
someone else for using the EXACT SAME WORD YOU USE AND REFUSE TO LET GO OF in a
context that offends you...
...probably
because what was said is true.
And how
Black people can sit around demanding the removal of the Confederate battle
flag and not abandon the use of a word which is linked to that flag and that
era like a guy with a burning cross and a white hood on his head is one of
those things I'm not understanding...
Maybe the
Johnny Reb isn't the only thing that needs to be left in the past...
Something
to consider, friends.
