Michael Eric Dyson - the Happy Boot!

"Historically, African Americans didn't start using the word “Nigger” first. Rather, it was used by both slave captors and the racist, cowardly mob as they attacked 1 or 2 African-American individuals, as a "term of endearment" among themselves regarding us"



Dear friends,

it is a false abstraction for African American people to continue to defend the use of the word "Nigger" as one of endearment. For example, Michael Eric Dyson, from both a lack of time and experience in this movement other than being an endorsed spokesman for the rulers, continues to play intellectual acrobatics and misinform our youth. In fact, if the word is something of which to be proud, then why call it the N-word? Why not just say "Nigger"? I'll tell you why. Because "Nigger" is a vulgar expression!

Historically, African Americans didn't start using the word “Nigger” first. Rather, it was used by both slave captors and the racist, cowardly mob as they attacked 1 or 2 African-American individuals, as a "term of endearment" among themselves regarding us.. The internalization of our oppression like straightening our hair and dying our skin is directly related to our self-degradation, by finding humor in our own inadequacy of being designated as “inferior”. So Dyson and his ilk remain "happy boots".

Liberation!

G. Djata Bumpus

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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 Read full post

Re-visiting Mark Twain's use of the N - word

"Why have we never seen a book that uses the term 'cracker' (or even heard it used) anywhere in broad circulation in this country?..."
(originally posted 3/21/11)
Dear friends,

Last night (Sunday, March 20, 2011), I saw a piece on 60 Minutes about Mark Twain and his use of the word "nigger" in the novel entitled The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The station used a young, I presume, African American male as the interviewer and a Black college professor from Oregon who, get this, claimed that he was proud of both being and being called a nigger (but couldn’t even pronounce the pejorative term comfortably), as the expert being interviewed. Wow!

Anyway, this professor reminded me of Clarence Thomas and other such noted Black intellectuals who the television stations always seem to locate. They must have a list. After all, why didn’t they call someone like my longtime friend and colleague Cornel West who would have made a better account of himself and our people? Worse yet, this Oregon guy even seemed, like Thomas, to have a wife who is a member of the Tea Party. You know the type. Still, at least to me, the real question is: Why have we never seen a book that uses the term cracker (or even heard it used), anywhere in broad circulation in this country? Duh?

Moreover, if racism is defined as simply some type of xenophobia, as opposed to its original meaning which is White Supremacy, then those who practice racism can claim the same moral status as the victims of it. Neat trick. Eh? Of course, the term racism was made popular by African and African American scholars/activists, from Kwame Nkrumah and Franz Fanon to Malcolm x and Huey P. Newton.

Therefore, the idea that Mark Twain is pointing out the inhumanity of slavery is contradicted by his insistence upon the use of the word white. For example, for almost the past three generations, the overwhelming majority of the people who call themselves white, in this country, are those of Irish descent. Yet, the Irish are only of recent whiteness.

For example, in the Boltwood Collection of Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, local genealogist and historian James A. Smith makes an interesting point in his work titled Black People in Early Amherst, in relation to the designation of "whiteness" in the historical town. You see, less than 100 years or four generations ago, Smith writes: The town vital records show an undeveloped and random method of describing racial identities...clerks sometimes listed the person as being Irish in the section used to list race other than white.

Lo and behold! Irish people, surely the single largest group of European Americans in this country, are only of recent "whiteness" - according to their own "race".

Published in nearby Greenfield, almost 200 years or eight generations ago, Howe's Almanac, the only periodical distributed in the area at the time, featured a regular "humor" section in the back of each issue. The following two passages give further evidence to the way that the ruling class' media in this country have consistently been used as instruments for shaping public opinion (in favor of ruling class ideas, of course), as opposed to being the organs of objective journalism that they profess to be.

"An Irishman looking around the horizon, observed with a grave countenance, 'It looks fair for foul weather.'

And

"An Irishman on being asked whether his Sister, (who had gotten to bed) had a son or a daughter; - Answered, 'I cannot tell yet, whether I am an Uncle or Aunt.'"

This is all very confusing, isn't it? Actually, none of the aforementioned passages should be a surprise. Historically, British rulers practiced this sort of "racism" against the Irish, long before English pirates like John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake even thought of the Americas. In an essay called "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the U.S.A.", Barbara Jeanne Fields indicates: "...the rationale that the English developed for suppressing the 'barbarous' Irish later served nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and indigenous American Indians."

But why isn’t any of the aforementioned material about the Irish taught in either public or private schools in North America? Why isn’t it taught that slavery was a class institution, not a race one, and that there were thousands of Black slave masters, especially, in the antebellum South whose descendants today are called Hip=hop moguls, along with the makers/actors of obnoxious Black plays and films – like those produced by Tyler Perry.

Still, some argue that Mark Twain's book is a classic. Therefore, it should be left unchanged. Really? The Holy Bible has been read far more than any book in history. Yet, there are many versions of that book that have been published, since the original English vernacular  tome was published under the name "King James version" (a book about which that monarch didn't even know, until two years after its publication). Did someone say, "Racism"? But racists and their cowardly Black stooges argue, "But the Bible isn't a work of art, like Twain's work." That's interesting, because the 54 scholars who were commissioned by Queen Elizabeth 1st, for the most part, didn't know a lot of Hebrew. Consequently, they had to be quite artsy in translating what would eventually become a book. Besides, since when is any kind of published writing not an art? One has to use techniques that involve metering and phrasing, even doing expository writing.

Finally, what did Twain’s contemporaries like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tibman think of Mark Twain’s work? To be sure, that would be a better starting point than having some idiot "professor" from Oregon calling himself the unthinkable.

"Dare to struggle – dare to win", Frederick Douglass
G. Djata Bumpus Read full post