Michael Richards Racist Tirade.

My mother didn't allow the use of the term "nigger" in our home. Not as a term of endearment; not a brother to brother recognition; and not to describe a person in that playful yet indignant way that some older blacks from the South enjoy.

It was forbidden. And the few times "nigger" crept under our front door, it was immediately reprimanded, or shunned.

I heard the term "nigger" used a lot in my lifetime. I've heard it mostly from family and friends who are African-American.

My father's mother once described her absentee father as a "no good red nigga". Recently, my oldest brother was reminiscing about our maternal grandfather and in reverence said, "that nigga made me weak". My cousin was once described her hyper-gifted, super creative 8 year old daughter as "that little nigga". Once, after returning home from living in San Francisco, wearing second-hand jeans, uncombed hair and spouting literary philosophies of Audre Lorde and Henry Dumas, a childhood friend said to me, "don't' come in here acting like you're all of that. you know you're still nothing but a nigga from Cincinnati." I can even recall as child, growing up on the wooded outskirts of Cincinnati, cows mooing in the distance, crabapples blooming into pink perfection, and the word "nigger" flying from the mouths of children as often as summer rain.

The term "nigger" was used to help dehumanize the perfect humanity of African people in the New World. Somewhere after the fall of indentured servitude and the expansion of black slavery, the "term" nigger took flight and has yet to land or crash or dissolve. African people were called and described as "niggers" so often that they began to believe it was what they were. They were no longer allowed to be Mandinka or Fulani or half Ashanti and half Cherokee, or part English and mostly Ibo, they were simply described as "Niggers". A group of people described as inferior in mind and spirit and living without a recognizable culture.

And now we have this: young and old African-Americans using the term "nigger" as often as they drink water. And it is in my opinion that by using that term is a recognition and acceptance of our inferiority. An inferiority placed on us to keep us dehumazined and controlled. It is an acceptance that no matter how gifted or loved or complicated or spiritual or accomplished, we will always be "niggers"... to each other.

But there is hope: African-Americans must pull the term "Nigger" from our historical closets, place it in the middle of the floor and really look at. Pick it apart. Ask it what it means; what it wants. Show it to everyone you know. Put it in their faces. Make them smell it, taste it. Tell it's a violation against humanity. An imperialistic attack. An invasion.

If African-American people begin to do that, then maybe we can reclaim how we see ourselves. We can define ourselves.
And if someone like Michael Richards steps out on a limb and spouts racist epithets, he'll get a little more than a hand-slapping.

Until next time,

Keith