Being someone's nigger...
I learned that my white friends saw themselves as living in a world that, apparently, didn’t live within them. My white friends thought this country’s history implicated everyone else, except them. My white friends were “exceptional;” my white friends were “special;” my white friends were “better.” Because they were “better,” they assumed our friendship made me better too. They couldn’t have been more wrong—not just about me, but about themselves. Long before I metthem, I met people just like them—and they were not white; they were black.
I suppose we have to get into this, as far as Yahdon Israel is stuck in it, to get to the other side. But in getting to the other side, we will see that he is perpetuating separatism.
ReplyDeleteConsider a "mixed" group, a family. At Christmastime and Kwanzaa, I spend loving time with Mary's family and grandchildren, who have "roots" in various countries in Africa, in India, Japan, Jewish Israel, Spain, Ireland, Portugal. One young brother is darker, the other grandson the family considers can "pass" for white, or be mistaken for Middle Eastern, although I hope if his negroid features start to show, his darker father will be able to help him navigate the racism in the World successfully.
But now, considering Yahdon Israel's social etiquette book, should the darker brother, when he gets older, complain to the lighter brother, not to call him "niggah"? Or, rather, is one going to call the other "niggah" and the other going to call the lighter one "crackah"? When ultimately, everyone is one family -- from all different sides of many different tracks. I would rather, when they get older, not call each other names, but help each other navigate our world with racists people, in a more healthy way.
Turns out, if I read thing right, the brothers, the grandsons I mean, can get away with calling each other "niggah" by Israel's rules. Because socioeconomically, they come from the same side of the tracks, for good or for bad. But let's say these aren't Israel's rules for who can call whom "niggah". Let's say, the lighter-skinned, because he does not currently experience the backlash of being obviously "black", has his white blood showing more than his black, cannot be calling darker-skinned people "niggah" without insulting them? This results in a familly, where, according to Israel's rules, the darker brother and the father may call each other "niggah" but the younger brother may not. It does not, and cannot make sense. It is not okay for anyone to be calling anyone "niggah". What's the resoltion?
Let's step back and solidy Israel's "case" for him, to try to make it okay for him to call a person of African descent "niggah" but not for me. Is it okay for people of Italian descent to call each other "Wapps"? Is it okay for me, a non-Italian to do the same? The answer "seems" to solidify Israel's case. Let's looks at the word "bitch". Is it okay, as she has, for Ellen Degeneres to call Brittney Spears "Britney Bitch"? Not that I want to, but is it okay for me to call them both "bitches"? The answer is "no". Yet, if I wanted to, I would anyway, no matter what they thought my social rules ought to be.
I suppose we have to get into this, as far as Yahdon Israel is stuck in it, to get to the other side. But in getting to the other side, we will see that he is perpetuating separatism.
DeleteConsider a "mixed" group, a family. At Christmastime and Kwanzaa, I spend loving time with Mary's family and grandchildren, who have "roots" in various countries in Africa, in India, Japan, Jewish Israel, Spain, Ireland, Portugal. One young brother is darker, the other grandson the family considers can "pass" for white, or be mistaken for Middle Eastern, although I hope if his negroid features start to show, his darker father will be able to help him navigate the racism in the World successfully.
But now, considering Yahdon Israel's social etiquette book, should the darker brother, when he gets older, complain to the lighter brother, not to call him "niggah"? Or, rather, is one going to call the other "niggah" and the other going to call the lighter one "crackah"? When ultimately, everyone is one family -- from all different sides of many different tracks. I would rather, when they get older, not call each other names, but help each other navigate our world with racists people, in a more healthy way.
Turns out, if I read thing right, the brothers, the grandsons I mean, can get away with calling each other "niggah" by Israel's rules. Because socioeconomically, they come from the same side of the tracks, for good or for bad. But let's say these aren't Israel's rules for who can call whom "niggah". Let's say, the lighter-skinned, because he does not currently experience the backlash of being obviously "black", has his white blood showing more than his black, cannot be calling darker-skinned people "niggah" without insulting them? This results in a familly, where, according to Israel's rules, the darker brother and the father may call each other "niggah" but the younger brother may not. It does not, and cannot make sense. It is not okay for anyone to be calling anyone "niggah". What's the resoltion?
Let's step back and solidy Israel's "case" for him, to try to make it okay for him to call a person of African descent "niggah" but not for me. Is it okay for people of Italian descent to call each other "Wapps"? Is it okay for me, a non-Italian to do the same? The answer "seems" to solidify Israel's case. Let's looks at the word "bitch". Is it okay, as she has, for Ellen Degeneres to call Brittney Spears "Britney Bitch"? Not that I want to, but is it okay for me to call them both "bitches"? The answer is "no". Yet, if I wanted to, I would anyway, no matter what they thought my social rules ought to be.
The logic in self-derogatory name-calling is, that the group that has been discriminated against, by owning the social situation this discrimination has placed them into, gets to name it, and then what, rise above it? No, certainly to never rise above it. If I think they are bitches, then they have solidified my prejudice of them. If I do not think they are bitches, then they have insulted me. Is it to toughen themselves up for the discrimination to come, to define the social situation? Yes, this is where and only where it works. But this point cannot justify the entire name-calling argument.
DeleteOther social groups navigate this differently. To call a person of Irish descent a "mick" becomes okay for everyone who wants to, after the Irish call them selves micks. (It may even be okay with Britney Spears, if anyone else called her "Britney Bitch" as she wears it as such a badge of celebrity and attitude.) If, not having a speck of Irish DNA in you, tell an Irish joke to an Irish man, he is bound to top you with three funnier than yours. My Irish shows, by the way, in that I am not white, nor am I beige, what is foolishly called "flesh colered" by crayon companies, but I am pink, for all the world to see. Mary is not black, and no person with negroid features can insist on me calling them black, when they are different true flesh-tone shades and hues. It's more an overall feature thing than a color thing anyway.
Remember the black muslim movement? The men were taught, not to call each other "niggah" but to hold themselves with what too often might have been a too-proud demeaner, when it's done wrongly. We see this in Moslem men. There can be a near arrogance to how they display themselves and their families in public, even a reckless prejudice displayed. Yet, if the man learns what this is suppose to be, carrying yourself in the world with at least a modicum of "pride", you might go places in this world of ours. You might impress more ladies, get higher-paying jobs, be more respected and better-remembered by your children.
Respect yourself, as the song goes. What's missing from many Muslim men is that they do not respect others, and this is the key. As applied to "niggah", to assume that all so-called "white" people are only others and not brothers, is to insult too may white brothers. This is discrimination. But what could be the fallout of this, when it angers some white brothers, and all white others?
I was recently unfriended on Facebook by a man I know personally, who was displaying the confederate flag as a backdrop to his profile picture. His surname reveals Italian in his family. He further espouses causes for Native Americans, is a Facebook activist, who writes of the atrocities done by people waving the American flag here in America. I called him on his usage of such a symbol, the confederate flag, that the origins of the flag were in people being able to enslave other people. He responded with a point about being free to choose, about how liberals are bad this way and what he calls the conservative side is better, and I responded again saying that he cannot ignore the genesis of the confederate flag, that being opposed to it has nothing to do with being conservative of liberal. This is where he unfriends me.
ReplyDeleteIf I read the situation right, and I will see him around town to ask him what was he could not face in the discussion, but if I read it right, it is okay to insult people of African descent, because they are insulting him. If I were to meet him again, I believe he would be hard pressed to bite his tongue of the word "niggah" as my other half is of Cape Verdian descent.
He is a so-called "white" man who feels as disenfranchised by the same establishment that any "black" person does. Yes, understood, he has the "white" privilege of being able to go into neighborhoods that "non-passable" dark people dare not pass into. He probably feels that there is "reverse discrimination". He sees the attitudes of the Yahdon Israel's of this world as representative of some "Black Nation" that is opposed to his inclusion, but that is also framing the situation somehow incorrectly. There's no "white badge" for him to wear that includes any political or socio-economical establishment or privilege. He is as impoverished as anyone on any side of any town's tracks. He has been disenfranchised by the same people who have slaughtered his First Nation brothers. If he indeed has shades of First Nation DNA, he "passes for white" easily.
~~~~~