The Sad Case of Black Self-Stereotyping
I don’t know why we (yes I’m including myself) Black people are insistent upon embracing negativism.
And what makes it even harder for me to grasp is it’s negative connotations, references, and stereotypes of ourselves that we walk right into and get comfortable with. Then proceed to wear this stuff as some sort of badge of honor.
Take that word Nigger. Yes I said it. Nigger — no need tap dancing around it with that “N-word” politically correct bullshit.
It’s a word steeped in the storied history of Blacks that just wont go away.
It won’t go away because we are the very ones that keep breathing life into that word.
Rappers, scriptwriters, artists have made millions off of a word that got its start as an noun that shouted hate.
Artists made millions off of the word because we pay them which pretty much substantiates the notion we co-sign the use of it.
Then we go to spitting nails when someone from another ethic group (usually the white one) uses the word. We keep having these long in-depth conversations to get at the bottom of why the word won’t go away. These conversations are really unnecessary because we already know why the word won’t die. We won’t let it die.
There’s no multitude of white people running around saying Nigger.
There might be a multitude of them thinking it — that know better than to say it-but I digress.
#blacklivesmatter.
Here’s a hashtag for your ass. #niggersdon’tmatter, because there are no niggers.
Nigger is a word it is NOT a human.
The late Redd Foxx (those still shitting yellow and eating Gerber might know him as Fred Sanford) made a stunning observation to the misconception that the word nigger somehow means a human breathing person.
I’ll paraphrase.
“You have a box of crayons. Inside the box there’s 96 colors and a nigger is nowhere to be found.”
Some Blacks attempt to reconcile using the word Nigger by offering the explanation that it’s ours to embrace as a term of endearment, camaraderie, brother and sisterhood because it endorses our relationship to historic slavery and oppression.
Look y’all.
Our ancestral relatives fought and some even died for the complete erosion of slavery and all of the oppressive rhetoric surrounding it to die, not for us to be around here today reviving the shit.
Consider this.
In the pre civil rights era there was a racial epithet that was hurled at Whites by Blacks.
Cracker, soda cracker, saltine. That epithet was short lived and was returned to the dictionary beside what it really meant because White people didn’t own it, they didn’t embrace it. When was the last time anybody can bear witness to someone calling a white person a cracker?
I have never heard a white person say,
“Me and my crackers are going to hit the block”.
“That’s my cracker”.
Never heard one say it. They didn’t own it, and for the most part paid it no mind and the result is when the word cracker is mentioned today it’s usually preceded by the two words peanut butter, or soup or just stands alone as the image of a dry ass square of whatever.
Another word we Blacks have claimed, that we really have no damn right to claim because it was a white thing from jump street.
Ghetto.
I hate to disappoint you all that want to charge the stereotyped ratchedness associated with living in a poor neighborhood with Blacks, but Blacks didn’t get the Ghetto thing going. We for reasons that escape me showed up and want to own it as a part of our culture.
Fact. The Jews beat you to that one. And they promptly shed the moniker.
Yep.
Ghettos have been documented back as 1084, as a segregated area of a town where Jews resided. And it wasn’t all impoverished Jews either.
Its been recorded that some affluent families resided in those Ghettos.
Now think, Jews aren’t associated with Ghettos today are they?
Hell no.
Why?
It’s because they didn’t adopt them as a way of life or as a definition of who they were.
Blacks took ownership of the ghetto.
“I’m ghetto, girl you so ghetto, I’m from the ghetto baby”.
The language technicians in the ghetto have crafted an upscale reference to the term ghetto too.
That word would be “hood”.
They’ve just completely removed the word neighbor and thrown it away.*’Might as well get rid of the word neighbor my nigger because we don’t plan on being these ghetto hood rat’s neighbor.”
I’m not poking fun at the ones that are guilty of this. It’s not funny and I don’t believe most of them realize how they’re boxing themselves in by adopting words, phrases, and lifestyles that are steeped in negativism and ridicule.
To be real (what’s that term? Keeping it real, yeah that’s it) by embracing and trying to live the negative stereotypes about ourselves we are in effect permeating to others the contexts for our character profile portrait.
We’ve already profiled ourselves, everyone else is just reacting to what we’ve shown them.
We are at the point where we have to get serious about the resume we write for ourselves as a people.
Character resumes that provide references that solicit responses of ignorant, self-anathema, irresponsibility, and gaudy materialism, have to be trashed and burned because that is not who we are.
Take this with you when you click to your next web page.
When we let our social or economic status define who we are, we cosign to being identified by all of the stereotypes and perceptions that others have of the abstract of that context. The richest person should be bigger than their bank account and certainly the poorest among us are bigger than what some statement says their net value is.
We have to be adamant in separating ourselves from being defined by conditions, oppressive references and demand we be defined and and evaluated on our character. But we have to build a character of value and worth.
Blacks can start the process by ceasing to embrace the negative connotations about themselves.
Just because you’re charged doesn’t mean you’re guilty. Don’t own it.
There’s no eternal condemnation to to being in a predicament unless you endorse it and submit to it.
#niggersdon’tmatter
because
#therearenoniggers
Take that with you.
