‘Back when we were Negroes’

macon.com ^ | July 31, 2011 | Charles E. Richardson

[ilovesarah2012]

There was a time until the early 1960s when the terms to describe those of African decent, like me -- African-American or Black or Afro-American -- were almost unheard of.

I remember a distinct conversation with a friend discussing descriptive terms for ourselves in 1963 or ’64. The term “black” was just coming into vogue and he didn’t like it one bit. “Call me a Negro,” he said, “but don’t call me black.”

Now, the word “Negro” (publications used a lower case “n”) has almost become a pejorative, so I was a little surprised when my pastor, the Rev. Willie Reid, used it during Thursday’s revival. “Back when we were Negroes,” he said, and listed several things that were different about black life in America back then.

That got me to thinking. Back when we were Negroes in the 1950s, “only 9 percent of black families with children were headed by a single parent,” according to “The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies” by Kay Hymowitz. “Black children had a 52 percent chance of living with both their biological parents until age 17. In 1959, “only 2 percent of black children were reared in households in which the mother never married.” But now that we’re African-Americans, according to Hymowitz, those odds of living with both parents had “dwindled to a mere 6 percent” by the mid-1980s.

[CitizenM]

bump

[WestwardHo]

Ola! (I have now exhausted my Spanish vocabulary.)
I believe there are Spanish variations: nigra, meaning black.

[Venturer]

As a kid I remember black business’s, Black Hotels, and black places of entertainment, black bars and black entrepaneurs.

These places closed up almost the day we integrated white business’s. Blacks invaded places like Glen Echo and Marshall hall they made them untenable for whites, and these places eventually went under.

The black business’s folded and they went under.

Race relations have gone downhill ever since the big desegregation push.

I won’t try to explain why, but the facts are there.

[jobim]

And who would have predicted that the emerging ghetto culture of the 60s would spread like a toxic gas throughout our culture?

1965, I was playing on our Catholic school 8th grade basketball team, and some of our games were in the ghetto where a Catholic school was. We white suburban boys were shocked by the cheerleaders at these schools: bumping, grinding, to raucous music, far too suggestive for our protected sensibilities. Our cheerleaders used pom-poms, and led the crowd with simple cheers, and a bit of coordinated dance - that was all. How tame. But how the future was with those immodest bumpers & grinders, in case some of you haven't been to a high school basketball game recently.

Now we look with remorse at the wholesomeness destroyed by this poisonous gas. It's not that the ghetto mentality so well defined by the gentleman from Georgia here is solely responsible. It's that all of the component parts that formed this mentality got fleshed out across the Republic.

Pope John Paul II's prescient line: As goes the family, so goes the nation, and so goes the world in which we live. When the Federales displaced fatherhood they set in motion this juggernaut that may yet be the undoing of our nation.

[CodeToad]

“Blacks are waking up.”

Really? Then why did 96% of black voters vote for Obama?

[ilovesarah2012]

My daughter is dating a black man. He has been at the same job for 13 years, owns a home, likes hunting and fishing, is not “ghetto” at all. Really nice guy. Wish there were more like him (black and white)!

[ilovesarah2012]

They had to know what would happen.

[caveat emptor]

Check here - Stuff Black People Don't Like - if you want to see what's happening with a significant portion of blacks in large metropolitan areas and to those areas in which they live:



When a great enough percentage of Black people enter a once thriving Whitopia, an exodus begins with whites abandoning this city for another. The Black people - who might be upper-to-middle class - that inherit the city cannot sustain it, with businesses fleeing, the tax-base eroding, schools failing, and property value declining. Soon, the Black Undertow takes over,....

When a city has more youths, gangs of teens, Black people prowling the streets instead of the bikers, joggers, and other pedestrians who once made that community such a desired location to live, you know the Black Undertow has overwhelmed it completely.

One of the best examples of climate change is Clayton County, Georgia. Once a thriving Whitopia county, in less than 20 years Clayton County has become a prime example of what transpires when the Black Undertow usurps power through demographic transformation.

Read more at the link and in his (Paul Kersey) articles.

[ArmyTeach]

I do speak Spanish, and yes, negro in Spanish means exactly that, the color black.

[21twelve]

I was always embarassed when my Norwegian grandmother would use the word nigger. But at 98 years old and me just a kid I wasn’t about to correct her when she would say things like “That nice nigger girl from across the street came over with some muffins, and I made some coffee and we had such a nice time.” (And of course the “girl” was 40 something!)

It was really odd to hear her use such a nasty word in discribing such a nice exchange. (The neighbor gal turned into a good friend over the years.)

[ladyjane]

With you people renaming us all the time it's no wonder our kids don't know who the hell they are.

Right. Blame whitey.

[peteyd]

I like the word “colored”because we all have many hues and shades to our skin.White people are not white,nor are black people black,but the the word colored became a pejorative.
You can’t say someone is colored,but you can say “person of color”.
Gads! What madness.

[peteyd]

Male is “negro”.Female “negra”.

[Mike Darancette]

Mournful numbers.

[Tupelo]

“last thing the new church wants to do is invite the community in.”

That reminds me. Three or four years ago, I had a customer whom I considered a friend. Lee was studying for the ministry and had been offered the pastor ship in a church. I told him I wanted to come hear his first sermon. Lee kinda hemmed and hawed around until his bike was ready, then left. I have not seen or heard from Lee since.
Kinda leaves me to think that White folks just ain't welcome in Black or Afro-American or Afro-American churches.

[Pelham]

“We met people in South Carolina who remember freed slaves that had belonged to their grandparents. They stayed with them until they all passed away. Incredible, wonderful Negroes from another time.”

I’m about your age. When I was in elementary school back in the late 1950s we took a field trip to nearby Arlington National Cemetery. When we got back to school the elderly black janitor stopped a few of us in the hall and asked if we got to see the Custis-Lee Mansion, which is the building you now often see in pictures of the JFK gravesite.

It was the home of Robert E Lee’s father in law, the stepson of George Washington, and he told us that when very young his mother had been a personal maid there to Mrs Robert E Lee. He was very proud of his connection with history and the Lee family. Makes me wonder if any of his children and grandchildren share his sentiment. I suspect if they do they keep it to themselves in this era of South-bashing and political correctness.

[Tuketu]

I do not know if Moynahan was sober when he made those statements, but when drunk, he was a flaming Lib.

My father, who was the fairest man I ever met, used to call some of the guys,as appropriate, with whom he worked, "Colored" guys. He said it with great respect for them and their abilities. When he hired a few of his "Colored" friends, he explained to me, as a small boy, they have families to support just as I do.

I always hated the change to "Black" etc, perhaps it was because of my dad. The term Black etc were epithets, not a description of an individual. All of that said, I could not agree more with the sermon. I just cannot understand why the "group" voted 95%. including Colin Powell, for a Dem like O. Martin Luther King was a Republican and they were freed by a Republican, Lincoln. The Dems gave them the varied titles such as African American, Blacks etc. to divide and conquer, the political scene, and heaping upon them generations of welfare sapping their desire to forge ahead.

The NAACP fights Charter Schools that will benefit the "Colored" People and makes them wards of the state, all for the benefit of the Dem Party. Remember, the Democrats call themselves the Party of the Poor, therefor, they have a vested interest in keeping people poor!

[Pelham]

“Doesn’t negro mean black in Spanish?”

The Latin root is ‘niger’, black. All of the latinate languages have a similar word for black.

[Chode]

Negros had intact families with the father for the most part as the bread winner with the mothers as homemakers raising God fearing productive members of society...

for some reason, that all changed when they became black