Prometheus 6

AlphaPatriot has a long post reacting to Dr Cosby and his overhearing a conversation at McDonalds. In the process he has the very reaction warned about at Get In Where Ya Fit In

Here's the AlphaPatriot:

So if "nigger" is not the derogatory term that it once was, then everyone should be able to use it. I should have been able to turn to the kids and say, "He's right. If you're going to be a nigger you should be a straight up nigger!" and they would laugh and I would smile and wave. But I can't. Had I done so there may have been bloodshed. Because had I done so I would now be in jail for shooting one or two people as they would almost certainly have turned on me with hate-filled eyes, animus in their hearts and malice in their souls.

And rightly so, for it is a word filled with hate that should never be used.

People, if you don't want me to say it then don't use the word. More importantly, if you don't want your peers of other races to say it, then don't use it. You can't be mad if they do. You mustn't.

Why "mustn't" we? And why is it "more important" to make sure our peers of other races don't use the term?

Because it's so frustrating to white folks not to be able to do something Black folks can, that for other minorities to do so would simply compound the frustration?

This is a typical case of speaking to "issues with minorities to be dealt with" as opposed to "issues minorities must deal with."

A-P isn't the first to insist that Black folks deal with racism as defined by white folks rather than as experienced by us. Won't be the last. And I won't even go into the curiosity of a self-identified middle aged white man hanging at BET looking for Black folk's reaction to being yelled at. But you should think about it when you get the time.

Anyway, so no one has to go searching, here's the PREsponse from Get In Where Ya Fit In::

So I get a lot of hesitant, and probing questions like; "Ummm... Mark, I was just wondering .... Umm.... Why do uh ..... black people you know...... call each other.... ummm.... Nigger?". Well first of all, no black person I've ever heard of calls anybody a Nigger. We use the term nigga. It's taking a word and re-branding it. Second, I'm assuming the majority of white people know the answer but I'll explain it to the one's who don't since I still occasionally get the question. Since blacks were treated so awfully in this country for so long, that word was a potent symbol of all that discrimination and oppression. When the time came for a lot of lifting of the most heinous of these forms of racism, the word was turned back in on itself and used as a badge of honor and repudiation. Basically saying, I've taken your worst and survived it. You can't use that word as a weapon to bludgeon us anymore. Kinda noble in a way. Let's call that the "old school nigga" but I'll get back to that. I occasionally use the term in the "old school" way by which I simply mean a person who lived through the hard times of racism and overcame it and what that communal experience entailed.

Now once that is answered, (inexplicably in my mind) the next question is always well since you guys say it, why can't I? The sentence is never phrased that way of course. It's always asked in another context, but that's what is really meant. Why are you able to say something I can't?

And AlphaPatriot isn't all bad. Actually demonstrated some reasonableness by linking in a Boston Globe editorial before I got to it. Here's his reference:

Update: The Boston Globe has an excellent take on why this is not just black America's problem:

From a white perspective, it is easy to cheer on Cosby then smugly write off his words as a long-overdue wake-up call for black America. It's their problem, not ours, right?

Their problem it may be, but the big issue -- declining values and standards -- isn't limited to one ethnicity or neighborhood.

Today the American minivan is hip-hopping along the way to soccer games and baseball practice. The beat is a better pickup than caffeine, but listen to the lyrics and the message is a real downer. Not to sound like Tipper Gore, but after a while you realize you are singing about shaking your "tailfeather," "milking the cow," and "double-Ds," with the n-word thrown around as generously as the Beatles used "yeah, yeah, yeah." White boys can't jump, but many of them want to be Kobe Bryant or, short of that, Ja Rule. They want the money, the cars, and the bootylicious babes, and they see no connection between those goals and reading "A Separate Peace." (Incidentally, it is difficult to explain why a certain ethnic slur is unacceptable when they hear their rap idols singing it on their favorite CDs.)...

The hip-hop generation is not all black. White America just likes to believe it is.

Read it all.

I believe AlphaPatriot's understanding of the Black communities to be flawed. But it's obviously not evil…if you get all the way to the bottom of the page.