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It was Mr. Black, in the ghetto, with....Symbolism.
Jimmy
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http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/09/nword.funeral.ap.ap/index.html
Hundreds of onlookers cheered Monday as the NAACP put to rest a long-standing expression of racism by holding a public burial for the N-word during its annual convention.
The ceremony included a march by delegates from across the country from downtown Detroit's Cobo Center to Hart Plaza. Along the way, two Percheron horses pulled a pine box adorned with a bouquet of fake black roses and a black ribbon printed with a derivation of the word.
The coffin is to be placed at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery and will have a headstone.
"Today we're not just burying the N-word, we're taking it out of our spirit," said Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. "We gather burying all the things that go with the N-word. We have to bury the 'pimps' and the 'hos' that go with it."
He continued: "Die N-word, and we don't want to see you 'round here no more."
The N-word has been used as a slur against blacks for more than a century. It remains a symbol of racism, but also is used by blacks when referring to other blacks, especially in comedy routines and rap and hip-hop music.
"This was the greatest child that racism ever birthed," the Rev. Otis Moss III, assistant pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said in his eulogy.
Public discussion on the word's use increased last year following a tirade by "Seinfeld" actor Michael Richards, who used it repeatedly at a Los Angeles comedy club while responding to a heckler. He later issued a public apology.
The issue about racially insensitive remarks heated up earlier this year after talk show host Don Imus described black members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" on April 4.
NAACP National Board Chairman Julian Bond repeated the call during the opening address Sunday night for the 98th annual convention, which runs through Thursday.
"While we are happy to have sent a certain radio cowboy back to his ranch, we ought to hold ourselves to the same standard," Bond said. "If he can't refer to our women as `hos,' then we shouldn't either."
Black leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have challenged the entertainment industry and the American public to stop using the N-word and other racial slurs.
The NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit in 1944 for Jim Crow, the systematic, mostly Southern practice of discrimination against and segregation of blacks from the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction into the mid-20th century.
So, I dont get it. Did they bury the word itself or the evil connotations behind the word? If they, the NAACP, have abolished the use of the word, what ever will the rappers do? And if they just decided that it doesnt mean the same thing, are we all free to throw it around?
I figure if people hate it that much, attach some fine to its use under a hate law statute or something.
Discuss.
Hundreds of onlookers cheered Monday as the NAACP put to rest a long-standing expression of racism by holding a public burial for the N-word during its annual convention.
The ceremony included a march by delegates from across the country from downtown Detroit's Cobo Center to Hart Plaza. Along the way, two Percheron horses pulled a pine box adorned with a bouquet of fake black roses and a black ribbon printed with a derivation of the word.
The coffin is to be placed at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery and will have a headstone.
"Today we're not just burying the N-word, we're taking it out of our spirit," said Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. "We gather burying all the things that go with the N-word. We have to bury the 'pimps' and the 'hos' that go with it."
He continued: "Die N-word, and we don't want to see you 'round here no more."
The N-word has been used as a slur against blacks for more than a century. It remains a symbol of racism, but also is used by blacks when referring to other blacks, especially in comedy routines and rap and hip-hop music.
"This was the greatest child that racism ever birthed," the Rev. Otis Moss III, assistant pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said in his eulogy.
Public discussion on the word's use increased last year following a tirade by "Seinfeld" actor Michael Richards, who used it repeatedly at a Los Angeles comedy club while responding to a heckler. He later issued a public apology.
The issue about racially insensitive remarks heated up earlier this year after talk show host Don Imus described black members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" on April 4.
NAACP National Board Chairman Julian Bond repeated the call during the opening address Sunday night for the 98th annual convention, which runs through Thursday.
"While we are happy to have sent a certain radio cowboy back to his ranch, we ought to hold ourselves to the same standard," Bond said. "If he can't refer to our women as `hos,' then we shouldn't either."
Black leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have challenged the entertainment industry and the American public to stop using the N-word and other racial slurs.
The NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit in 1944 for Jim Crow, the systematic, mostly Southern practice of discrimination against and segregation of blacks from the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction into the mid-20th century.
So, I dont get it. Did they bury the word itself or the evil connotations behind the word? If they, the NAACP, have abolished the use of the word, what ever will the rappers do? And if they just decided that it doesnt mean the same thing, are we all free to throw it around?
I figure if people hate it that much, attach some fine to its use under a hate law statute or something.
Discuss.
Jimmy on
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I hope all of this includes that smart ass Clemens and an NAACP-backed Adventures of Huckleberry Finn book ban in school libraries. Wait... a good ol' fashioned book burning would be even better--Literature Funeral Pyre, FTW.
:roll:
Seriously though, this is pretty retarded...even for a symbolic, meaningless press/P.R. event.
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I wish a was a rapper just so I could do this now.
Well, they're not banning a word. They don't have the power to, nor does anyone else. It's an entirely symbolic thing.
Who cares what the founding fathers are doing. It's a symbolic thing, they're not actually attempting to ban the world.
I wish I was black right now for the same reason.
Also, if we have a retread of all the stupid comments about the N word that the Imus thread sparked, I may have to stab people. Saying that "rappers say it all the time" doesn't give anyone the excuse to ignore a social taboo that is abundantly clear to everyone, and then expect to not have any consequences. Neither does the fact that black people say it amongst themselves without taking much offense.
Oh ok, I thought this was related to that NYC attempt to ban the word.
The point is that it would be a concise and elegent way to illustrate how completely ineffectual this is. Sorry if the subtlety was lost on you.
You know, if you're going to decry racism, don't do it in your own fucking speech.
Edit: Shit, nevermind, the fucker actually is a cowboy.
It was a symbolic gesture, which is by nature ineffectual. Your subtlety was unnecessary for anyone with any common sense. And I said all of that to hopefully cut off the dumb comments that always come up when the N word is mentioned around here.
Does not parse.
"Our women"?
Am I out of touch, or is this putting the cart before the horse somewhat?
Youtube sketch with John Oliver and Larry Wilmore on the banning of the word in question.
<.<
>.>
In all honesty, though, this is a nice gesture, but that's ALL it is, a gesture. And it's an empty gesture atthat, because it's not going to even end the use of the word. The people who are burying it aren't the ones who use it.
The problem I have with black people (I get the award for the worst way to start a sentance EVER) is that they don't seem to be able to figure out how to pull themselves up out of the hole that so many of them are in. I empathize deeply with "the black struggle" because I come from a background thathas had it's own share of hardships. The difference, though, is that my people were able to come together and work at actually improving their quality of life. They didn't hold funerals for the word "kike", they didn't lobby to have an official "Jewish History month", they didn't try to divorce themselves, upon becoming successful, from others of their community who were still in harm's way. I am not saying that every black individual is guilty of this, but these are what the general trends become. Do the Jews have idiotic organizations that go around making empty gestures, and special Jewish television networks, etc. Yes, we do NOW, but that is only after we have pulled ourselves up, and when there is a time that there is a serious issue to be dealt with, such as the immigration of many impoverished Soviet Jews during the early nineties, we actually come together and raise them up to where we are too. Moving beyond just that, many of the most active non-black leaders of the civil rights movement were Jewish. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the more notable Rabbis of recent times, was a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And just, for the record, the ONLY white guy in the Wu Tang Clan is a Jew (Remedy Ross, whohasa rap song about the Holocaust.)
This is not meant as a criticism of black people or culture, or to saythat black people are somehow inferior to my people because oftheir actions. This is a message of frustration, from one member of a minority which has seen a great deal of oppression but has mostly risen above it, over the situation that another minorityfindsthemselves in, and can't seem to work their way out of. Part of the difference can be attributed to relative size discrepancies; it's a lot easier to come together as a collective whenthere are less people to be organized, and it's a lot easier to help others if there are less people to be worried about. Part of it, though, is simply that I see organizations like the NAACP focussed, all too often, on things like the n-word, or the most recent celebrity to make a racial faux pas, or some other trivial matter when there are MUCH larger issues that are much more important. We don't need to worry about some frat house hanging a skeleton from a tree, we need to worry about the illiteracy rates amongst the black population and both the emphasis towards, and the quality of education which is lacking from many black communities. We don't need to worry about whether or not the response to Hurricane Katrina was some how a race issue (which it wasn't; it was a class issue), we need to be concerned with the health discrepancies between the black community andthe american community as a whole, some of which is caused by lifestyle, and some of which is caused by ACTUAL discrimination, not percieved discrimination.
Burrying the n-word doesn't do any of this. It may make the black communityfeel empowered, which would be great if the next step was to channel that empowerment towards fixing the very real issues thatthey face, but it isn't. Words, by themselves, are meaningless, and it is not like black people are any less guilty of racial slurs, besides.
During his campaign, Jesse Jackson reffered to New York as "Himey Town". If Michael Richardsdeserves to be burned in effigy, then doesn't Jesse Jackson?
No, he doesn't. Ultimately the words are meaningless, and burrying them is the same as burrying an empty box. If burrying an empty box gives you the strength to go out and fight for the real causes, then by all means, go out and do it. But when you view burrying an empty box as an end in and of itself, you have lost your way, and need to regroup, and fight for the things that REALLY matter.
Your analysis is simplistic at best and woefully historically ignorant at worst :?
Many/most American Jews could pass as non-Jewish in a crowd because the vast majority of American Jews have European ancestry. Relatively few African-Americans have light enough skin and/or other physical features that would allow them to pass as white.
Please don't interpret this post as suggesting that, because they're mostly white, American Jews have therefore had an easier time with discrimination; rather, I'm pointing out that it's a comparison of apples and oranges.
Did you not read what I said?
Jews worried about the important stuff BEFORE letting the wacky groups say silly things.
Blacks are letting the wacky groups say silly things BEFORE worrying about the important stuff.
The latter is in essence the TL;DR of my post.
Edit: not to mention that I stated explicitly that I wasn't talking about all black people, but about general culture and statistics. If you don't want to read all of my post, that's fine, but don't assume that because the section that you read left out a point that the point existed no where else in the post.
Apples and Oranges are both fruit, though.
There are racial differences besides skin color. It is also easier to tell a Jew by their name than it is a black person (more historically true than it is anymore, based on recent naming trends amongst the black communities.) This could mean the difference of being denied a jobor a loan, etcetera, outright, before even being allowed to come in for an interview. My last name is Rosenberg. I've never lost the chance ata job or a loan, etc., because of that to my knowledge, but that is because of the time that I live in. My father, on the other hand, has stories or being turned away at job interviews as soon as they heard his name. Like a said, skin color isn't the only thing in the world.
More over, the idea that a Jew has a different situation assumes that it is easier for Jews to hide amongst white people. This, then, suggests that hiding is the proper thing to do, or at the very least says it is okay. The very idea that the way to deal with discrimination is through hiding, though, is honestly complete rubbish. To suggest, even unthinkingly, that hiding is somehow an acceptable way to deal with discrimination is offensiveto anyone who is proud of their heritage. I am not calling you out, or anything, just suggesting that you look deeper into the implications of what you are saying, because even if you don't mean that it is somehow easier to have a lighter skin color, you still cannot make any differentiation there without implying thatsome degree of "hiding" is okay. Is it right to saythat Gay people can deal with discrimination by not holding hands in public, etc.?
I am not so religious that I wear a Yarmulkeh, but were I, what would my skin color matter then? Furthermore, should some one notice my Jewish necklace, or should I wear a shirt with Jewish symbols, etc., the same differentiation occurs. The idea that because I look white my minority situation is somehow different ignores the fact that, because of the fact that I am outside of the majority, my minority situation is somehow the same. Things do not have to be identical to share similarities.
Regardless, my comments are not only about discrimination, but also about community coming together to deal with their problems. It doesn't even matter if you want to claim that the black community has WORSE problems to face than Jews ever had (even though I would disagree, and tell you that you were comparing apples to autonomy, the things, not the words :P) The fact is that I am frustrated by the fact that I see the black community often focussing on the wrong issues, and worrying about words when it should be worrying about health, or education, etc.
Honestly, the whole Jewish thing is irrelevant to my point. I used it merely as a way to relate to the issue at hand, and as an example of another oppressed minority who DID pull themselves out of trouble. I'm not saying "Jews are great, and blacks are lousy." I'm saying "Black leaders and black communities needs to focus on the real problems that they face, not symbolism, because they have far more immediate threats." Had I more experience with various Asian communities, or over communities, I might have used them as an example, but like the old cliche, I go with what I know.
It's ok, it sounds pretty hilarious that way.
Like what you did there. Nice.
That's such an awkward use of that word. I said "niggard" once in high school and got suspended for a week after one of the black guys in the class punched me in the back of the head. He got a day's detention.
I fucking hate this country sometimes.
You should look into the long history of Jewish oppression in Europe. Jews were, for a long time, denied citizenship in any landsin which they lived, governments turned a blind eye on anti-Jewish violence, and in some cases even encouraged it.
DO you know where the term "ghetto" comes from? It is the term that was used for the small areas that Jews were FORCED to live in during the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe.
Look at the Jewish character in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. You mayor may not be aware, but by the time of Shakespeare's writing of that the Jews of England had already been expelled, so the character was based simply on what public perception of a Jew was.
There is also much persecution of Jews by the Romans, and by the Mideval church, and by various governments. You should also look into the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the history of its fabrication. Will Eisner's last original work, the graphic novel entitled "The Protocols" is an excellent read."
So, have the Jews ever been considered property by white people? No. Have they been declared to be non-citizens in the lands in whichthey lived, or second class citizens, or sub-humans? Have they been systematically persecuted by their governments? Havethey been focibly expelled from their homes? have they been the victims of organized racial violence? Have they been scapegoated for everything from the black death to unfair media coverage? Yes.
Some one will read this post and say that Jews don't have to deal with most of that stuff any more. That is, in effect, my point.
I have to laugh because I was almost suspended for using the word "niggardly" in high school.
Personally, I think they are going about this the wrong way. When such a big deal is made about a word, you are giving the word power. I think its better to adopt the word, de-claw it, and make it your own.
When I was growing up, queer used to be a big slur. Hell, we even played a game called "Smear the Queer" (is it still played today) where tackled and beat the shit out of the "queer". It's fun when you only know that it rhymes, but it's quite a different thing if you attach meaning to it.
Nowadays the word queer is adopted by homosexuals as their own term, and there's no teeth left in it. It's not a slur anymore, and people who want to disparage homosexuals have to go back to using "faggot", which is a dumb word. This other word is so taboo that you can't even type it out in this forum. That empowers the word to be above any other word, granting it status on par with nothing.
I've never seen a usage of "niggard" (which is at least understandably misheard, although a simple clarification is the appropriate response, not suspension.)
I do remember when a local government employee was fired for using the word "niggardly". There was actually backlash to that, thankfully, but the fact that it happened in the first place is rather upsetting.
You do understand that there is a world of difference between getting denied citizenship and being traded as something akin to livestock?
It's easy to say "you're wrong"
How about explaining how i'm wrong? If I am "woefully" lacking in historic knowledge then, by all means, enlighten me.
I think the point is things like the Jim Crow laws were only abolished around fifty years ago. I also don't believe your examples of Jewish oppression are quite as relevant to American race relations.
I think you're appealing too much to emotion here. First of all, the ammount that one is oppressed doesn't make a difference when discussing effortsto overcome oppression. Secondly, denial of citizenship is far from the worstthing that Jews have had to deal with. Systematic government encouraged violence, or the declarations by religious leaders that you are the ones who murdered a diety (and the consequences thereof) or multiply forced expulsions from your homelands, or being laden with the burden of blame for all manner of calamity that might befall your country (and the consequences thereof) or the declaration of yourstatus as being subhuman, and the government continuing on to systematically murder your people, these are all things that Jews have dealt with.
I am not attempting to declare one as being worse than the other, as I've said, magnitudes of hardship are irrelevant when the discussion is merely about hardship in general. There ARE some specific parallels between the struggles of both groups, though. Segregation, civilian discrimination, denial of voting rights, etc. If you take the Bible as a historical source. Jews were also forced into slave labor, albeit for a shorter period (I am not talking about ancient Egypt, but rather, the labor camps under the Nazi regime.)
What I am saying is that trying to label one experience as being worse than the other is not relevant to the discussion of methods of pulling oneself above it all. Nominal details do not matter in the face of a larger discussion. Is slavery somehow less reprehensible because it was practicesd within some regions of Africa before the white man arrived there, and many African slaves were actually sold to the white men by other black Africans? Of course not, because it was still slavery.
Pretty much. I think a better approach for the NAACP would be putting together or supporting some type of structured school program(s) or town meetings (for lack of a better term)... I'm thinking possibly lecture series or maybe some type of Q&A/debate where the word was used openly and honestly, in contemporary and historical contexts. Get school kids to sit down with teachers, parents, community leaders and possibly historians, sociologists or other academic folks. Foster an environment where folks can truly learn what the word is and represents. Confront it with facts and open conversation--don't just tell people, "don't use bad word."
What the NAACP is doing with this little event is effectively trying to sweep shit under the rug. Give people the word and let them take their own power over the word in an informed way rather than going with this symbolic, pseudo thought police approach.
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Plus Jim Crow was just the blatant and overt contempt of the south towards blacks bleeding into their governments. Structural racism, which was and is more prevalent in the 'North', was impossible to protest against or be stricken down by the courts. Daley beat MLK and things have hardly improved upon this front in the decades since then. Depending on the city/town things have improved thanks to less racists being put in powerful positions and good intentioned reforms of varying successes, but the system itself is still more or less allied against black upward mobility.