Us & Them: Lovers, Haters and Bombs
I love my Black self-my Black skin, my Black ass, my big Black mouth, my thick nappy Black hair. I love the feel of the sun on my Black shoulders. I love Black so much that in my own lexicon I have promoted it to a proper noun. I get a small thrill out of contemplating my naked reflection in the mirror.
& it is not merely my own corporeal Blackness that I am so enamored of. I love Black people hard. I love the sound of subs booming Kanye down my block on a Saturday afternoon. Love the sight of my sister pushing her baby down the sidewalk in a stroller, with her doorknockers swinging to and fro and her braids bundled together at the nape of her neck. I love the look of the high yella gal sucking her teeth at some boy trying to get some play on the MTA. I love the blue black boy across from me on the train talking to his baby mama on his two-way about how he is on his way, is only two train stops away from her and is coming to get the baby so she can finally go get her hair did. I love the woman who started up a conversation with me in the grocery line last week about locs and the best Black hair products for them. & I love how she loved my locs, but still had the respect and the restraint not to touch them, just adore them with her eyes. I love how Black people love each other from time to time. I also love how we can be each other’s harshest critics and rarely hesitate to call one another out on our shit. I love my department’s grad secretary who angrily expressed to me (and anyone else who would listen) her hatred of “The White Rapper Show.” I love listening to her describe all the good Jamaican food her husband cooks for her. I love the way she commiserates with me about raising kids who have to step out of line from time to time. I love the way she appreciates a good piece of pecan pie that I brought her after Thanksgiving. I love the way she will chastise my kids as if they are her own, because she loves us too. I love how Black people got my back. & I got theirs too.
But all that love, I think is born from a history when no one would love us but our own. & so our love always had to be more intense. It had to be thicker than water, thicker than blood even. Like the way that when I was a child I was subject to every adult in my neighborhood. & woe unto me if anyone saw me step out of line blocks away from home, because before I could run home my grandmama would have gotten countless calls telling what I had done. But that was just because they knew that deep down I was a good girl, and they just wanted to make sure I didn’t stray too far. There were lots of pitfalls out there for little Black children then. There are many still now.
I know that Black people are not the only people that have a history of struggle. But it is the history that I am most well acquainted with. & it continues to be my struggle. I get so mad with people that talk about racism like it is all over. I have no patience for people who claim not to see racism functioning and are surprised by my anger. I can’t even imagine what rock one must be living under to think that it is not an issue. I suppose there is some part of me that is, for lack of a better word, envious too. As much as I love my Blackness, sometime it is exhausting when the object of your love is hated by some in a measure that is equal to-and sometimes seemingly greater than-the intensity of your love. Maybe the intensity of the hate is not greater than my love. I know I love Blackness enough to kill for it. Maybe more than someone else hates it enough to kill to see it gone.
There has been a pain in my heart for months now. It has always been there I think, but it remained subdued enough that I could move around in the world. I could keep myself busy and not notice it, except in those still moments before falling asleep, or perhaps briefly over a morning cup of coffee. Lately, though, this pain has grown, is welling up inside of me and looking for a place to escape. It is too heavy for my legs to carry, too heavy for my mind to let alone.
I think it was first thrust to my attention when Michael Richards went on his tirade at an L.A. comedy club. It wasn’t even that he had said it that touched me so. I have had worse said to me. I know there are people within whom racist hatred is bubbling under the surface and they are just waiting for an excuse to let it boil over. But what really got under my skin about the Michael Richards thing was the ease with which he was allowed off the proverbial hook. He made an appearance on Letterman, apologized to Jesse Jackson and it was suddenly all good. Al Sharpton was rebuked for not accepting his apology. Now mark this: a white man says this most hateful thing-repeatedly-- about Black people and a Black man is rebuked for not accepting his apology.
Then I saw Borat, which was hilarious, but should have been subtitled, “The Secret Lives of White People in America”. This confirmed what I had suspected; that white people-in many instances-only behave in the way that is expected, and often harbor more nefarious feelings in their minds.
This is the part where I pause to gently pat my gentle white reader on the hand and say, “Oh, dearheart, you know I don’t mean you!” There will be a shitstorm anyway, but I will say it straight out. I know that not every white person is a latent Klansman or secret Neo-Nazi. I’m just saying that when you see all these examples of the hateful things that some white people think in secret, you never do know which white people are harboring hate. You can’t help but wonder, and all along wondering just wears you down.
I don’t even know why I feel compelled to ease people’s minds. After all this is inspired by a post by a white woman (formerly) on my friend’s list who made a post that used the word “nigger” no less than 16 times. In a follow up post, she claimed that she was essaying towards “white people integrating [themselves] into black culture” and apparently her goal was to “up the revolution.” Frankly, that did not come across, even remotely. It was an incoherent screed that seemed to connect child sex abuse with a taste for black men, imply that black people’s primary contributions to society were as entertainers and that somehow, it was really, such a beautiful thing really, to be a nigger. It’s greatest failure was that it ultimately reiterated the paradigms that its author claims that she was writing against. In a follow up post, it seems clear that this writer will not stop using this word, she will just take more care to use it only in front of people that won’t problematize the use of the word for her. She will just be better at concealing this ugly little secret.
Straight up, I don’t think there is ever a circumstance when it is okay for a white person to refer to another person as a nigger. I’m really not so cool with black people doing it, but I also believe that there is a huge distinction between “those niggers” and “my niggers.” I don’t even care if it is one white person referring to another white person as nigger, which seems to be the new frat boy vogue. I don’t want to hear the word nigger uttered from a white person's mouth or typed from a white person's fingers. Someone might argue that “yall say it to each other all the time,” or even, as someone has already argued, it is just a word being employed as a literary device. I think those are both empty justifications. That word is too old and its meaning runs too deep. Even if you try to lay some kind of multiculturalist loving intention over it, that word uttered from white mouths is still too closely tied to centuries of hatred and oppression. Even if a white woman is saying nigger to express to me how much she loves her so-called nigger husband and her half nigger children, it resonates more closely with the way that Scarlett loved Mammy, which is not love, merely the way that the oppressor becomes reliant on the presence of the subaltern subject.
& I don’t want to engage in any discussion about why I am more opposed to a white person saying this word that I typed so much in the last paragraph (although certainly I will be compelled to-and possibly flamed). Like I said, I love Black people fiercely and that is inextricably tied to my own hard love of my own Blackness. I made a point of creating some context in which to discuss the word. The person who wrote the entry that this is a response to did not. As one of my early writing instructors once told me, “context is everything.”
I have written in this space before that it seems like we are in the midst of a long season of white people revealing all their secrets. This just keeps getting confirmed for me. The OP in my example responded to one commenter that she doesn’t use this word “in the real world.” I think to make the distinction between the blogosphere and the “real world” is a cop out at the least, and a lie in the extreme. What are we here, except people that move in the world, even if we never interact with the people who we write to-and those whose words we read? While I know there are people that feel that this is a place where they can let their ideological hair down or whatever, sometimes, although most of the people on my friends’ list live far away from me, I read things that make me wonder if the apparently nice white woman smiling in my face has a blog that reveals to people in some other part of the world what is really behind that smile.
& it is not merely my own corporeal Blackness that I am so enamored of. I love Black people hard. I love the sound of subs booming Kanye down my block on a Saturday afternoon. Love the sight of my sister pushing her baby down the sidewalk in a stroller, with her doorknockers swinging to and fro and her braids bundled together at the nape of her neck. I love the look of the high yella gal sucking her teeth at some boy trying to get some play on the MTA. I love the blue black boy across from me on the train talking to his baby mama on his two-way about how he is on his way, is only two train stops away from her and is coming to get the baby so she can finally go get her hair did. I love the woman who started up a conversation with me in the grocery line last week about locs and the best Black hair products for them. & I love how she loved my locs, but still had the respect and the restraint not to touch them, just adore them with her eyes. I love how Black people love each other from time to time. I also love how we can be each other’s harshest critics and rarely hesitate to call one another out on our shit. I love my department’s grad secretary who angrily expressed to me (and anyone else who would listen) her hatred of “The White Rapper Show.” I love listening to her describe all the good Jamaican food her husband cooks for her. I love the way she commiserates with me about raising kids who have to step out of line from time to time. I love the way she appreciates a good piece of pecan pie that I brought her after Thanksgiving. I love the way she will chastise my kids as if they are her own, because she loves us too. I love how Black people got my back. & I got theirs too.
But all that love, I think is born from a history when no one would love us but our own. & so our love always had to be more intense. It had to be thicker than water, thicker than blood even. Like the way that when I was a child I was subject to every adult in my neighborhood. & woe unto me if anyone saw me step out of line blocks away from home, because before I could run home my grandmama would have gotten countless calls telling what I had done. But that was just because they knew that deep down I was a good girl, and they just wanted to make sure I didn’t stray too far. There were lots of pitfalls out there for little Black children then. There are many still now.
I know that Black people are not the only people that have a history of struggle. But it is the history that I am most well acquainted with. & it continues to be my struggle. I get so mad with people that talk about racism like it is all over. I have no patience for people who claim not to see racism functioning and are surprised by my anger. I can’t even imagine what rock one must be living under to think that it is not an issue. I suppose there is some part of me that is, for lack of a better word, envious too. As much as I love my Blackness, sometime it is exhausting when the object of your love is hated by some in a measure that is equal to-and sometimes seemingly greater than-the intensity of your love. Maybe the intensity of the hate is not greater than my love. I know I love Blackness enough to kill for it. Maybe more than someone else hates it enough to kill to see it gone.
There has been a pain in my heart for months now. It has always been there I think, but it remained subdued enough that I could move around in the world. I could keep myself busy and not notice it, except in those still moments before falling asleep, or perhaps briefly over a morning cup of coffee. Lately, though, this pain has grown, is welling up inside of me and looking for a place to escape. It is too heavy for my legs to carry, too heavy for my mind to let alone.
I think it was first thrust to my attention when Michael Richards went on his tirade at an L.A. comedy club. It wasn’t even that he had said it that touched me so. I have had worse said to me. I know there are people within whom racist hatred is bubbling under the surface and they are just waiting for an excuse to let it boil over. But what really got under my skin about the Michael Richards thing was the ease with which he was allowed off the proverbial hook. He made an appearance on Letterman, apologized to Jesse Jackson and it was suddenly all good. Al Sharpton was rebuked for not accepting his apology. Now mark this: a white man says this most hateful thing-repeatedly-- about Black people and a Black man is rebuked for not accepting his apology.
Then I saw Borat, which was hilarious, but should have been subtitled, “The Secret Lives of White People in America”. This confirmed what I had suspected; that white people-in many instances-only behave in the way that is expected, and often harbor more nefarious feelings in their minds.
This is the part where I pause to gently pat my gentle white reader on the hand and say, “Oh, dearheart, you know I don’t mean you!” There will be a shitstorm anyway, but I will say it straight out. I know that not every white person is a latent Klansman or secret Neo-Nazi. I’m just saying that when you see all these examples of the hateful things that some white people think in secret, you never do know which white people are harboring hate. You can’t help but wonder, and all along wondering just wears you down.
I don’t even know why I feel compelled to ease people’s minds. After all this is inspired by a post by a white woman (formerly) on my friend’s list who made a post that used the word “nigger” no less than 16 times. In a follow up post, she claimed that she was essaying towards “white people integrating [themselves] into black culture” and apparently her goal was to “up the revolution.” Frankly, that did not come across, even remotely. It was an incoherent screed that seemed to connect child sex abuse with a taste for black men, imply that black people’s primary contributions to society were as entertainers and that somehow, it was really, such a beautiful thing really, to be a nigger. It’s greatest failure was that it ultimately reiterated the paradigms that its author claims that she was writing against. In a follow up post, it seems clear that this writer will not stop using this word, she will just take more care to use it only in front of people that won’t problematize the use of the word for her. She will just be better at concealing this ugly little secret.
Straight up, I don’t think there is ever a circumstance when it is okay for a white person to refer to another person as a nigger. I’m really not so cool with black people doing it, but I also believe that there is a huge distinction between “those niggers” and “my niggers.” I don’t even care if it is one white person referring to another white person as nigger, which seems to be the new frat boy vogue. I don’t want to hear the word nigger uttered from a white person's mouth or typed from a white person's fingers. Someone might argue that “yall say it to each other all the time,” or even, as someone has already argued, it is just a word being employed as a literary device. I think those are both empty justifications. That word is too old and its meaning runs too deep. Even if you try to lay some kind of multiculturalist loving intention over it, that word uttered from white mouths is still too closely tied to centuries of hatred and oppression. Even if a white woman is saying nigger to express to me how much she loves her so-called nigger husband and her half nigger children, it resonates more closely with the way that Scarlett loved Mammy, which is not love, merely the way that the oppressor becomes reliant on the presence of the subaltern subject.
& I don’t want to engage in any discussion about why I am more opposed to a white person saying this word that I typed so much in the last paragraph (although certainly I will be compelled to-and possibly flamed). Like I said, I love Black people fiercely and that is inextricably tied to my own hard love of my own Blackness. I made a point of creating some context in which to discuss the word. The person who wrote the entry that this is a response to did not. As one of my early writing instructors once told me, “context is everything.”
I have written in this space before that it seems like we are in the midst of a long season of white people revealing all their secrets. This just keeps getting confirmed for me. The OP in my example responded to one commenter that she doesn’t use this word “in the real world.” I think to make the distinction between the blogosphere and the “real world” is a cop out at the least, and a lie in the extreme. What are we here, except people that move in the world, even if we never interact with the people who we write to-and those whose words we read? While I know there are people that feel that this is a place where they can let their ideological hair down or whatever, sometimes, although most of the people on my friends’ list live far away from me, I read things that make me wonder if the apparently nice white woman smiling in my face has a blog that reveals to people in some other part of the world what is really behind that smile.