01-30-06 Nigger
There has been some flack, I say undue, about an episode of the "cartoon", The Boondocks. The episode at the center of the controversy, is the Martin Luther King, Jr. episode, shown January 14th and 15th on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. For those of U who did not see it, let me give you the backdrop, or my take, as I see it. I like to know what my child is watching, so I make an effort to watch and discuss it with her and sometimes her friends. The way I interpreted what I saw was: Dr. MLK was shot and instead of dying, he lingered in a coma for 40 years and suddenly awakened to find he was tagged a "terrorist" and that his actual, physical image was being used on everything commercial, in order to sell products; even the fast food variety. What I saw and heard, sounded to me like disappointment and frustration that all his sacrifices were ignored and unchallenged, due to the behaviour of some Black folks. U know the ones: booty shakers, substance abusers (although I believe there are a lot of underlying causes for this behaviour), fighting and killing one another over clothes, cars or nothing, etcetera. Matter-of-fact, I had the chance to see it twice and that is still my perception. The "niggers" Dr. King was addressing in frustration, were preoccupied with fighting one another, dancing and drinking, etc. As McGruder is satire and for mature audiences only, hence the issues and many others that are brought up to rankle your feathers and cause controversy. What the King of the 1960's saw, was a vastly different group of African Americans than he saw when he awakened. It is shameful and frustrating to see those who, for whatever reason, are unable to fulfill the dreams of The Promised Land. The portrayal of some Black people behaving negatively, is what has upset a few. I hope we don't major on the minors; this was a cartoon, shown late nights, and AM is known for political commentary. When I say "majoring on the minors", I specifically mean the very things Dr. King did not address, because their were more pressing issues at hand.
With Black people suffering disproportionately throughout the world, we are still allowing "massuh" to taunt us with the word "nigger". And "massuh" is dead! If U place value on it, then U suffer whenever the word is used.
Recently, I saw an Oprah program on, what else, race in America. On this show, were the players in the movie Crash. It was so obvious to me that the use of the word "nigger" or "nigga" as the younger Blacks (p)refer, is a generational gap. Older Blacks find it offensive and painful, as Oprah reiterated. Younger Blacks didn't/don't feel threatened by the "term", as actors Don Cheadle, Terence Howard and rapper Chris (Ludacris) Bridges tried to explain. To me, it appears this is progress in the Black community because it means young Blacks are no longer tormented by the word and have defined for themselves who they are and how they will be perceived. It's as though they are saying "we've come far enough that it doesn't hurt now". Yet, it is also a regression , because Blacks who use it (and we probably all have, White or Black), create division within our ranks. Many who saw the cartoon, saw no one desecrating King's legacy. Of course, I spoke mainly with youngsters and although they understood the message the way I did, there is still some disconnect. The underlying message seemed to be: there is a way to conduct yourseleves and live your lives and other such behaviours should be discouraged because it is interpreted as a disregard for the sacrifices and struggles our ancestors made, so that "the word" no longer hurts. It says to the generation that fought the hard battles, that negative behaviours "dishonors" Dr King's work, as well as all those of others. Dr. King's disgust and frustration was seen as a sign that all his sacrifice was in vain, because some Blacks failed to progress and actually had regressed.
The teens, who all grew up and are schooled with White children, saw no disgrace in this cartoon. I think the point was to be made to a YOUNGER GENERATION. Things have indeed changed. Who let it get that way? These youngsters don't remember what it was like before the civil rights movement. Some of them have parents who weren't even born when Dr. King was assassinated. Probably the only image most younger people have of the civil rights movement, is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If U ask, they mention him first and foremost, and may be Malcolm X and a few said Huey Newton (because of the movie). Not one even knew that Rev. Jesse Jackson was an activist who marched with Dr. King! They were surprised to hear this. Maybe the older generation is not doing their job to remember our past and teach our own, so that we are not all condemned to repeat it.
Also, we can thank rappers and comedians for the blase' use of the word "nigger". In Chris Rock's book, Rock This!, he clearly mentions that he "hates niggers, but loves Black folks". Then he breaks it down: Black folks work hard, raise their kids, get an education, take care of their home and community ... and the "others" tear each other down, kill each other and fight and create disharmony" (see the Willie Lynch letter @ African American Images.com). It is a disunity, fo' sho'. Of course, not all people are on the same level of awareness. Some people don't even care.
In my opinion, the 3 greatest threats to Blacks everywhere on the planet are: health, education and homelessness. Blacks suffer from HIV-AIDS at alarming rates worldwide, along with cancers, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Blacks also suffer disproportionately in America from homelessness with either the vast majority of Black men incarcerated or living on the streets. In education, every major news media outlet appears to love reporting year after year about the ever-widening "gap" between Black/Latino students (at all levels; imagine that) as compared to White/Asian students in the US. (One point: I must mention that when it was found that White students lagged behing Asian students in academics, Whites and Asians were suddenly lumped together on these US educational acheivement studies). As Mark Twain so brilliantly stated, "there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy? A "statistic" emblazoned in every publication on a regular basis or a soundbite on every news show. Even though we start out last, we sometimes end up finishing first, so if we don't toot our own horn, we'll have to dance to someone else's music. Let him who has ears hear. (Matthew 13:9)
In general, the US has been systematically "dumbed down" since the 1954 decision of Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education case. That's why Johnny can't read. Outcomes-based education, various assemblies, school psychiatrists, special education and ESOL (where U don't get the hard stuff), psychiatric standardized tests (Stanford-Binet, the Wechsler scale) "new math" and the whole word methods of reading "tripe". Instead of centuries old phonics instruction, arithmetic and classical curricula, students, particularly in poor, "urban" centers, receive a schizophrenic education. Pulbic charter schools and home schooling aren't proliferating for no reason! Don't get me wrong. Multi-cultural and diversity training is a good thing, but it should NOT take the place of HARD learning. I am always amazed that third graders no longer recite the multiplication tables as a class on a daily basis for weeks. Rote learning is now discouraged. Why? Several reasons. One, because it works. Therefore, two, no extra funds are needed for "new methods", "new specialists", "training in new methods by new specialists", on and on. Bureaucaracy in education is a billion $$$ industry. Just as with masters and slaves, social workers and welfare clients, if someone is getting paid to help you, U will never really get help! Because everybody's getting paid off your misfortune, Katrina!
Throughout the years, I check what my daughter and her peers are "learning" and I compare it to what I learned at the same age and grade. US education is being seriously dumbed-down!
Money is one of the biggest problems in educating children. Not too little, too much. A percentage for this program and that program and this teacher and that professional. The focus is taken away from education. Remember Isaiah says "my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge"? What can U do, if U don't know how?
I was blessed to start out my education in wealthy parochial schools in Georgetown and then to Maryland public schools. I also had an insatiable desire to read everything. That's because my mother taught all of us to read before we went to school. Once U know, no one can take it from you.
In a private school, a second grade teacher corrected my daughter's spelling tests as "exallent". Dumbing U.S. down! After four years of grueling 12-month payments of tuition and researching on my own, I took my daughter out of that school. Two years later, she was in another private school, and well, U don't always get what you pay for. The teacher consistently misspelled words that the students had to correct her on. She admitted to me that she had to look in the back of the teacher's guide for the correct answers in math (5th grade math!). She continued to misspell the word 'quarter' as 'quater'. She claimed advanced degrees in Philosophy and in Education. Of course, she turned out to be the director's daughter, so...
Tuition, uniforms, books, meals, aftercare activities and transport are expletively expensive! Then parents of privately schooled children also pay taxes for the local schools. We should expect and work towards a better education.
What does all this have to do with the "word", U might ask? Fast forward to 2005/2006. My child's school program is preparing a pageant for Black History Month. The epicenter of the pageant is song and dance, and steppin'. With only about 30% of the school program, African American, I felt it should actually have something to do with Black history. So I drafted up a plan for the adults to implement. The idea is for each of the 28 days in February, there should be represented a figure who represents the best and brightest. Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, WEB DuBois, Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Lena Horne, Kwame Nkrumah, Emperor Haile Selassie, Patrice Lumumba, Harriet Tubman. Each student would do research on the person(s) they would portray so that they could introduce themselves to the audience. Hopefully, the pageant should produce pride in the small group of Black students and knowledge for the non-Blacks. I also hope it will create an atmosphere where Black students reach higher for the sake of themselves, their futures and those ancestors who went through so much hell so that we would have opportunities. So that those ancestors do not turn over in their graves, and wish they had all ran to Canada, instead of be an example and fight for what is right.
*FOOTNOTE: (HU)man cannot define who I am. therefore, they cannot control my thoughts. Therefore, I am free.
With Black people suffering disproportionately throughout the world, we are still allowing "massuh" to taunt us with the word "nigger". And "massuh" is dead! If U place value on it, then U suffer whenever the word is used.
Recently, I saw an Oprah program on, what else, race in America. On this show, were the players in the movie Crash. It was so obvious to me that the use of the word "nigger" or "nigga" as the younger Blacks (p)refer, is a generational gap. Older Blacks find it offensive and painful, as Oprah reiterated. Younger Blacks didn't/don't feel threatened by the "term", as actors Don Cheadle, Terence Howard and rapper Chris (Ludacris) Bridges tried to explain. To me, it appears this is progress in the Black community because it means young Blacks are no longer tormented by the word and have defined for themselves who they are and how they will be perceived. It's as though they are saying "we've come far enough that it doesn't hurt now". Yet, it is also a regression , because Blacks who use it (and we probably all have, White or Black), create division within our ranks. Many who saw the cartoon, saw no one desecrating King's legacy. Of course, I spoke mainly with youngsters and although they understood the message the way I did, there is still some disconnect. The underlying message seemed to be: there is a way to conduct yourseleves and live your lives and other such behaviours should be discouraged because it is interpreted as a disregard for the sacrifices and struggles our ancestors made, so that "the word" no longer hurts. It says to the generation that fought the hard battles, that negative behaviours "dishonors" Dr King's work, as well as all those of others. Dr. King's disgust and frustration was seen as a sign that all his sacrifice was in vain, because some Blacks failed to progress and actually had regressed.
The teens, who all grew up and are schooled with White children, saw no disgrace in this cartoon. I think the point was to be made to a YOUNGER GENERATION. Things have indeed changed. Who let it get that way? These youngsters don't remember what it was like before the civil rights movement. Some of them have parents who weren't even born when Dr. King was assassinated. Probably the only image most younger people have of the civil rights movement, is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If U ask, they mention him first and foremost, and may be Malcolm X and a few said Huey Newton (because of the movie). Not one even knew that Rev. Jesse Jackson was an activist who marched with Dr. King! They were surprised to hear this. Maybe the older generation is not doing their job to remember our past and teach our own, so that we are not all condemned to repeat it.
Also, we can thank rappers and comedians for the blase' use of the word "nigger". In Chris Rock's book, Rock This!, he clearly mentions that he "hates niggers, but loves Black folks". Then he breaks it down: Black folks work hard, raise their kids, get an education, take care of their home and community ... and the "others" tear each other down, kill each other and fight and create disharmony" (see the Willie Lynch letter @ African American Images.com). It is a disunity, fo' sho'. Of course, not all people are on the same level of awareness. Some people don't even care.
In my opinion, the 3 greatest threats to Blacks everywhere on the planet are: health, education and homelessness. Blacks suffer from HIV-AIDS at alarming rates worldwide, along with cancers, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Blacks also suffer disproportionately in America from homelessness with either the vast majority of Black men incarcerated or living on the streets. In education, every major news media outlet appears to love reporting year after year about the ever-widening "gap" between Black/Latino students (at all levels; imagine that) as compared to White/Asian students in the US. (One point: I must mention that when it was found that White students lagged behing Asian students in academics, Whites and Asians were suddenly lumped together on these US educational acheivement studies). As Mark Twain so brilliantly stated, "there are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy? A "statistic" emblazoned in every publication on a regular basis or a soundbite on every news show. Even though we start out last, we sometimes end up finishing first, so if we don't toot our own horn, we'll have to dance to someone else's music. Let him who has ears hear. (Matthew 13:9)
In general, the US has been systematically "dumbed down" since the 1954 decision of Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education case. That's why Johnny can't read. Outcomes-based education, various assemblies, school psychiatrists, special education and ESOL (where U don't get the hard stuff), psychiatric standardized tests (Stanford-Binet, the Wechsler scale) "new math" and the whole word methods of reading "tripe". Instead of centuries old phonics instruction, arithmetic and classical curricula, students, particularly in poor, "urban" centers, receive a schizophrenic education. Pulbic charter schools and home schooling aren't proliferating for no reason! Don't get me wrong. Multi-cultural and diversity training is a good thing, but it should NOT take the place of HARD learning. I am always amazed that third graders no longer recite the multiplication tables as a class on a daily basis for weeks. Rote learning is now discouraged. Why? Several reasons. One, because it works. Therefore, two, no extra funds are needed for "new methods", "new specialists", "training in new methods by new specialists", on and on. Bureaucaracy in education is a billion $$$ industry. Just as with masters and slaves, social workers and welfare clients, if someone is getting paid to help you, U will never really get help! Because everybody's getting paid off your misfortune, Katrina!
Throughout the years, I check what my daughter and her peers are "learning" and I compare it to what I learned at the same age and grade. US education is being seriously dumbed-down!
Money is one of the biggest problems in educating children. Not too little, too much. A percentage for this program and that program and this teacher and that professional. The focus is taken away from education. Remember Isaiah says "my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge"? What can U do, if U don't know how?
I was blessed to start out my education in wealthy parochial schools in Georgetown and then to Maryland public schools. I also had an insatiable desire to read everything. That's because my mother taught all of us to read before we went to school. Once U know, no one can take it from you.
In a private school, a second grade teacher corrected my daughter's spelling tests as "exallent". Dumbing U.S. down! After four years of grueling 12-month payments of tuition and researching on my own, I took my daughter out of that school. Two years later, she was in another private school, and well, U don't always get what you pay for. The teacher consistently misspelled words that the students had to correct her on. She admitted to me that she had to look in the back of the teacher's guide for the correct answers in math (5th grade math!). She continued to misspell the word 'quarter' as 'quater'. She claimed advanced degrees in Philosophy and in Education. Of course, she turned out to be the director's daughter, so...
Tuition, uniforms, books, meals, aftercare activities and transport are expletively expensive! Then parents of privately schooled children also pay taxes for the local schools. We should expect and work towards a better education.
What does all this have to do with the "word", U might ask? Fast forward to 2005/2006. My child's school program is preparing a pageant for Black History Month. The epicenter of the pageant is song and dance, and steppin'. With only about 30% of the school program, African American, I felt it should actually have something to do with Black history. So I drafted up a plan for the adults to implement. The idea is for each of the 28 days in February, there should be represented a figure who represents the best and brightest. Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, WEB DuBois, Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Lena Horne, Kwame Nkrumah, Emperor Haile Selassie, Patrice Lumumba, Harriet Tubman. Each student would do research on the person(s) they would portray so that they could introduce themselves to the audience. Hopefully, the pageant should produce pride in the small group of Black students and knowledge for the non-Blacks. I also hope it will create an atmosphere where Black students reach higher for the sake of themselves, their futures and those ancestors who went through so much hell so that we would have opportunities. So that those ancestors do not turn over in their graves, and wish they had all ran to Canada, instead of be an example and fight for what is right.
*FOOTNOTE: (HU)man cannot define who I am. therefore, they cannot control my thoughts. Therefore, I am free.
posted by Constance at 10:36 AM
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