Re-visiting Harry Reid's Remark about the "Negro dialect" (originally posted 1/13/10)

"Think about it. Have you ever listened to an ordinary European American person do a voice impression of an African American? No matter what the voice of the latter actually sounds like, the European American just mentioned ALWAYS imitates the 'Southern twang'."

Dear friends,

Imagine. This whole media frenzy is all about Harry Reid using the term “Negro dialect”. What is the Negro dialect? For example, the so-called Southern dialect or twang, as it were, is simply the evolution of the vocal expression of West African captives as they tried to communicate with Europeans. (see Melville Herskovits’ New World Negro)

Think about it. Have you ever listened to an ordinary European American person do a voice impression of an African American? No matter what the voice of the latter actually sounds like, the European American just mentioned ALWAYS imitates the “Southern twang”.

Therefore, considering the above, many European Americans, especially Southerners, speak the “Negro dialect” - each moment of their lives.

So why all of the ruckus over a typical, stupid, inept Washington pol’s faux pas? Does the issue of “race” still fire people up - especially those who embrace the moniker “white”? In fact, who are “white” people? After all, not only people of European descent, but many Asians as well as many Latinos call themselves “white” too. Why is that? What does being “white” do for a person?

Well, by calling yourself “white”, you become part of an artificial “majority” group that mean-spiritedly pits itself against a body of then smaller groups who are labeled “minorities”. Moreover. the artificial group mentioned above automatically inherits privilege over the so-called “minority” groups.

But what if the “whites” started calling themselves Irish American, or Polish American, or Italian American instead? Except for the Irish Americans who, by the way, have only been considered “whites” for a few generations, Polish Americans and Italian Americans each, by themselves, would become a “minority”, at least compared to either the African American or Latino population. Consequently, they would lose privilege. That also means that calling one’s self “white” is in and of itself discriminatory, because it deprives African Americans the same privileges, particularly, equally so, in many areas of our lives. If that is not true, then why do people who call themselves “white” feel that they are being disempowered if they stop identifying themselves that way?

Considering all of this here-to-mentioned, it’s fairly easy to understand why the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. insisted: Discrimination is a hell-hound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Have you seen a McDonald’s commercial lately?

G. Djata Bumpus