Just Another Dead
Nigger!
by Wise Intelligent
"Until
we find the strength of character to face the environment that created the word
and the attributes of a NIGGER, we are just kidding ourselves."
This article originally Appeared On: Wise Intelligent's Blog.
Recently the NAACP held a ceremonial burying the infamous
word NIGGER! The funeral was complete with horse drawn chariots, mourners,
pallbearers dressed in black and an eerie wooden coffin draped with black
roses. It was like a Reality TV scene out of Tales from the Hood. Add the media
to the equation, and only Puffy Combs could have thrown a bigger party. All
jokes aside, I wonder if the NAACP realizes that their burying of the word
NIGGER is, in fact, late! They are late by about 400 years or so because white
supremacy has long since buried the word NIGGER and all of its connotations and
characteristics in the hearts and minds of America and ALL of its people!
Although I understand the symbolic burying of the
"N" word, I am afraid its just another case of us black people in
America expending our manpower and resources to attack issues that are mere
symptoms of a deeper and greater, more threatening problem. We can post
billboards all over the country, march and hold funerals for dehumanizing words
coming out of the mouths of our people (elders, youth, entertainers, male,
female, etc.) from now into infinity, but until we find the strength of
character to face the environment that created the word and the attributes of a
NIGGER, we are just kidding ourselves, and amusing the rest of the world in the
process!
"Unless we are ready to have another funeral
next week for white supremacy and its entire educational, financial,
scientific, and spiritual systems these mock ceremonies will never produce any
REAL results!"
Hip Hop and/or rappers did not create or embed the word,
epithet or diatribe into the American heart and psyche. The word NIGGER as used
by NWA (who I would give credit for propagating its use in Hip Hop on a
mainstream level), was used to express the prevailing attitude of black people
in this country for centuries before NWA or even Hip Hop were conceived. That
attitude being that regardless of what a black man in America does, achieve, accomplish
or fails to do, he is, in the eyes of the white-power-structure, still a
NIGGER! I mean NWA stood for Niggaz wit Attitudes. Did you ever ask yourself,
what did they have an attitude about? They were pissed off about the poverty,
drugs, gangs, mis-education, joblessness, and police brutality that they were
born and raised in and forced to deal with on a daily basis. So unless we are
ready to have another funeral next week for white supremacy and its entire
educational, financial, scientific, and spiritual systems these mock ceremonies
will never produce any REAL results!
The word Nigger and all of the negative stereotypes that
come with it has been beat into our heads and hearts so much that the belief
held by most black men in America is that whether I'm an athlete, rapper,
actor/actress, professor, doctor, lawyer, beggar or thief, to the white power
structure in which I am embedded, I am just a NIGGER who can run, a NIGGER who
can act, a NIGGER with a degree, habit, or criminal record. All things
considered, in spite of my vocation, I am still just a NIGGER! And this is
another reason they chose the name NWA (Niggaz With an Attitude).
The N-Word is apart of the cancerous disease of
white-supremacy and racism that has yet to be faced and exorcised out of
Americas "inward parts." Why are we so afraid to face this fact? Why
are we so afraid to go beyond the effects and attack the causes? Why can't we
have two groups? One to deal with all the NIGGERS and all of their foul words
and other group to bum rush and burn down the racist American system that
created all of this bullshit from the jump! Symbolic funerals, billboards and
the attached assault on Hip Hop are about as effective as burying your bills
instead of paying them and dealing with your reckless spending habits that got
you into debt in the first place!
Black people of all ages, genders and occupations have been
using the word nigger in the exact same way in which slave-traffickers beat it
into their ancestors for 260 years of chattel slavery, 100 years of lynching,
Jim Crow, etc., ad infinite. The deeper problem, I find when building with
young black youth in America is IDENTITY! This lack of identity is a direct
result of slavery and its institutionalized, systemic method of stripping black
people of their heritage, language culture, families and God. This begs the
question, "If I am not a NIGGER what am I?"
"Symbolic funerals, billboards and the
attached assault on Hip Hop are about as effective as burying your bills
instead of paying them."
Let me just keep this real clean for you: we were not
NIGGERS until we went thru the process of Niggerization at the hands of white
supremacy. We were not even BLACK until we encountered white-men. The same goes
for bywords and proverbs like NEGRO, COLORED, JIGABOO, SAMBO, BUCK, etc. Before
we discovered white-men we donned the names of our ancestors, ancestral place
or places of origin. Lack of identity has caused divisions along frivolously
superficial lines amongst a people who know not from whence they came.
Dr. Bobby Wright said that "if you don't know where
you're going, any road will get you there." So, when you ask your seven
closest black friends "what's your nationality?" you'll more than
likely get seven different answers: "I'm Black" or "I'm
African" or "I'm African-American" or "I'm Christian"
or "I'm Muslim" or "I'm a Blood" or "I'm a Crip"
- everything from colors to religions. Then there's the cop-out or anxiety
avoidance responses, "race doesn't matter" or "I just don't see
color." We have been turned around and upside down for so long that we
would rather be an abstraction, a non-entity, or invisible before we dare to go
back and claim who we were before Kunta Kinte was forced to call himself Toby!
Black man and woman your race does matter! White-supremacy taught you that YOUR
race does not matter and is in fact worthless in comparison to other races;
especially white ones. This is why they continue to target YOUR race with all
forms of genocide in the form of CIA/COCAINE, Eugenics Programs, Tuskegee
Experiments, Unfair Drug Laws, Prison Industrial Complex, etc. Your race does
not matter and this is why it is on the verge of extinction!
"White-supremacy
taught you that YOUR race does not matter and is in fact worthless in
comparison to other races; especially white ones."
Concerning the issue of IDENTITY or the lack thereof, let's
take our leaders for instance. Being that this article highlights the NAACP's
burying of the "N" word we can use the organization as our first
example. How is it that in 2007 you are still the National Association for the
Advancement of "COLORED" People? The term "colored" was
used by whites to serve the same purpose as the word NIGGER; that is, to
dehumanize and disconnect you from your heritage!
Let's use our well respected elder Al Sharpton for our next
example. Earlier this year when Sharpton discovered that his ancestors were
possibly slaves owned by the racist Strom Thurmond's ancestors he said in an
appearance on The Daily Show with John Stewart concerning the revelation,
"a guy asked me for an autograph: first time in my life I had to think
about the reason I'm named that, is because my great grandfather was owned by
someone named Jefferson Sharpton, who was married to Julia Thurmond Sharpton."
This is a leader of the black community saying that he had not before 2007
thought about the reason his last name was Sharpton?
How can the leader not know? If Al Sharpton, the leader of
the assault on Don Imus and the subsequent assault on Hip Hop for its use of
the word NIGGER, did not know, or ever consider how he came to be Al Sharpton
until February of 2007, how in hell can we expect the average young man, woman,
and child to know who they were before they were called NIGGERS!
What we must admit is that this IDENTITY problem is a
pandemic crisis in the black reality and the root of many, if not all, of our
woes! We know that in order to deal with the real causes of our problems as a
people we must confront our past. And that requires that we confront the
enemies of that past. Our FEAR of confronting those who are responsible for
kidnapping, enslaving, dehumanizing and niggerizing our people is indicated by
our behavior. All the talk about banning the "N" Word, degrading
women and Hip Hop are all cleverly calculated evasions of the deeper problem.
Getting rid of the Joe Camel cigarette ads did not stop people from smoking or
cure the people of lung cancer and burying the N-word will not stop our young
black men and women from seeing themselves and believing that they are NIGGERS!
"All the talk about banning the ‘N' Word,
degrading women and Hip Hop are all cleverly calculated evasions of the deeper
problem."
So now that the movement to destroy the NIGGERS and all of
his offensive words is in full effect, will their be an equally intensive
effort to destroy the NIGGER makers and all of their NIGGER inducing systems?
In other words, after we get rid of Frankenstein are we going to confront and
get rid of Dr. Frankenstein as well? Now that we've buried the N-word, what are
we going to replace it with? Are we ready to go back and find out who and what
we were before the Niggerization process stole our minds, bodies, and souls?
Are we ready to go back to when Hip Hop tried to motivate black youth to call
each other, "Brother," "Sista," "Young Ladies,"
"Beloved," "King," "Queen," "Africans,"
"Gods," "Earths" and "Goddess" back in the late
80's and early 90's?
Are we ready to bury the SICKCO American mentality that
created the NIGGER and all his words to undermine African rebellion,
revolution, unity, revolt, and rebirth? Are we ready to deal with the reality
that it was a tragic mistake to let your enemy teach and train your children?
Are we ready to be about the business of building for ourselves regardless of what
"old-wounds" that may be "re-opened" (although they have
never been closed)? Are we ready to make all efforts to take 100% control of
the education, economics and politics of our people regardless of who that
course of action may offend? Because if we're NOT ready to do all of those
things and MORE after we get back home from the mock funeral for the N-word,
then I'll conclude this with the words of my great aunts, uncles, mother,
father and grandparents... NIGGA PLEASE!
Recording artist Wise
Intelligent can be reached through his blog.