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I have heard for many years how everything right down to our language is against the "black man". I'm personally rather sick of it. I find myself hesitating to direct someone to "the black guy over there" when it's obvious that he's black and there's five white guys in the vicinity. It's pretty obvious what feature can be used to quickly identify him but I hesitate. Should I say "black man", "African-American man", "Afro-American man", or should I peer over there and try and find some other distinguishing characteristic? If it were a female it would be no problem to say the lady over there. Do black people have the same problem pointing out the white guy in a crew of black guys? Does this whole post make me some sort of racist bigot? What are the rules? I want to friggin' know! I'm sick of walking on eggshells!
Anyway, here's a few terms that appear to be put in a double standard with relation to race:
Black man: "Hey white boy!" (completely fine)
White man: "Hey black boy!" (I ain't your BOY!)
White man: "You're the black man" (usually fine)
Black man: "You're the white man" (Are you trying to say I'm oppressing you?)
Black man: "Cracker" (Excuse me? Are you trying to say something?)
White man: "Cracker" (No thanks. I'm on a low-carb diet.)
Black man: "Wassup nigga!" (Wassup G')
White man: "Wassup nigga!" (Aww,...look at the stupid white boy. Lets kick his ass.)
NAACP = Justified
NAAWP = Racist
Black Panthers = rebel activist
KKK = racist murderers
Does anyone see what I'm trying to get at here? Who made these double standards? This crap is just plain stupid! I started thinking about this because of a website, The Black Commentator. I have nothing against the site. I just thought to myself: What does Black have to do with it? Why not just "The Commentator". Both commentator.com and thecommentator.com are available domains, why the need to exclude other races? (try not to go to either of them though, unless you want to change your homepage to Seeq.com) How about B.E.T. (Black Entertainment Television)? How about just entertainment television or R & B Television so as not to compete with the other E.T.?
A post I found from Dan at BushWhackedUSA's blog saying "I'm waiting for someone in the GOP to stand up and say, "I'm a bigoted American, and proud of it." ". What makes me a bigoted american? What the hell did I do? Is Bush a bigot or a racist because he didn't speak at any NAACP functions? Would it mean he hates white people because he didn't attend any NAAWP meetings? Is halting affirmative action a negative action? As far as I know he hasn't attended any terrorist rallies, would that make him hate all muslims? I know that last one was a bit much but where's the line?
Please Hide children's eye's Here (color changed for non-discriminating eyes, highlight to discriminate)
Anyway, back on the language thing: When did the word nigger become worse than the word fuck? Both of these words are horribly bad words and would not suggest using either of them but it's worse to use the nigger than fuck. If you used the fuck you're just a potty mouth. If you say nigger you're a racist. I first really paid attention to the change when I saw Brendan Frasier in "Blast from the Past" and hear the line "Oh my lucky stars a Negro!" "Say What?". If they'd have made the move 10 years earlier they would not have said negro. Let's go back ten years or more shall we? Lets take Cleavon Little and the great film "Blazing Saddles". "Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) "Nobody move or the nigger gets it!" This was okay language then. Now they bleep the crap out of the whole film. I do not use either of these terms and would prefer if the black community would refrain from using them as well. In fact I say this because of the fact that it is okay for the black community to use these words. Here's a good essay on the word nigger.
To try and point out a few inconsistencies, a friend of mine, a black lady, pointed out a list of terms that referred to black in the negative. I think I'd seen them before somewhere but can't remember where. Anyway, here's my list:
Black balled
Black listed
Black Ops
black cat
black hole
black lung
black head
etc.
There are many more but that doesn't really matter. Here's a list of POSITIVE black associated words:
in the black
ebony
chocolate
black tie affair
(Edward C. Smith even pointed out here: "the most important, for me at least, is that black is the universal color of the printed word; the paper is white."
So again; what does BLACK have to do with it?