Posted on 06/03/2004 5:17:32 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Some people are particularly disturbed by my use of the word Negro as opposed to the latest fashionable label. I am not bothered by such people, but I am disturbed by the reliance on cosmetic identity that has become so important to black people over the last 35 or 40 years.
More than a few people were actually taken in by the obsession with naming that came out of the Nation of Islam, when Malcolm X, chief heckler for Elijah Muhammad, inspired many to begin responding to the word "Negro" as if it were the dirtiest of insults.
The argument was that "Negro" separated black people from their African identity. It did not acknowledge the greatness of Africa, wonderful Africa, that lost paradise where everything was perfect. It did not recognize that black people had not always been slaves - that they were, in fact, a separate nation descended from kings and queens.
Hmm. No one, of course, ever considered that if most of the millions of black Americans really were descended from kings and queens, one would have needed a lot more land than Africa provided to support all that royalty. Millions of kingdoms definitely present a challenge.
It was, at best, cult thinking. But it was also a way of getting people to think of themselves as perpetual victims who were oppressed at every turn. That seems to me the greatest impact of believing that the history connected to the name Negro was all second-class travail and injustice.
Some 40 years ago, Malcolm X said: "You're not an American, you're a victim of Americanism."
That's too crude and simpleminded. But the crude and simpleminded are not unusual when the subject is the Negro. While such statements might sound good on a podium, they miss a great and substantial truth.
Black Americans have had an enormous impact on American history. Almost every important effort to better the position of people in this nation has its roots in the Negro-American story. Consider the history of the labor movement, for one.
Being called something other than Negro will not better the state of the people who now walk around challenging others to call them African-Americans. They think that to be proud and effective, people with dark skins of a certain pedigree need to know they are connected to the grandeur of Africa, the fountain of civilization. Hogwash.
Clearly, knowing that they are Africans has done nothing special for Africans themselves, as we can see in the massacres in Rwanda during the 1990s, the many brutal African dictatorships and the abundance on the continent of backward ideas about women, slavery and a number of other things.
People can call themselves whatever they want. But the challenges facing this nation and its darker ethnic group will not be solved by anything other than deep thinking and hard work. Pride comes from accomplishment. Cosmetic nonsense will not get it.
On top of that, he gives us his Turducken recipe every Thanksgiving...
I think there is a reason for it. I call it 'quantum logic' - the ability of a progressive to occupy multiple states of mind at one and the same time. If you guess wrong, and believe me, you will ALWAYS guess wrong when in the presence of the superior intellect (sarcasm) of a postmodern progressive ultraliberal, you are an 'insensitive racist' also known as a 'compassionate conservative.' It gives them a sense of power and total control over every conceivable situation.
The word you are looking for is African which is more like Frenchman. Negro was a way to separate blacks from "our race".
I am now browsing through an original 1856 printing of the 383 page pro-slavery apologia “An Essay on Liberty and Slavery” written by Albert Taylor Bledsoe .
The following terms are interchangeably used in Bledsoe's book:
"the African"......."justify the servitude in which the providence of God has placed the African."
"the African race"......."the case with the African race in its present condition....."
"the blacks"......."elevation of the blacks by Southern slavery..."
"the black men"......."We shall refuse to head a conspiracy against the good order , the security, the morals and the very lives of both the white and the black men of the South."
"negro"......."An independent negro state was thus established in Hayti."
The pro-slavery arguments of the time (and Bledsoe wrote 383 pages of them) did not claim that (blacks, Africans, negroes) were "not human". The pro-slavery arguments of the time claimed that that they were humans created by God with a lack of industry and morals and therefore needed the control of the master just as a child needed the control of the parent.
In short, the terms "balcks", "Africans" and "negro" were used interchangeably with no difference in meaning between them, there was no connotation of "human" vs "non-human", only "African" was capitalized, and "negro" was used to describe both a slave and an independent negro republic.
I like that.
Turducken???
Oh, gee. I've been chastized. [rolling eyes] Am I supposed to be hurt by that? Feh.
A properly dressed (and preferably boned) chicken, slathered with a sausage stuffing outside, and trussed up inside a (likewise boned) duck, which is then slathered with more dressing and trussed up inside a turkey.
It's expensive, but if done right, incredibly tasty!
hehehehe chanty will learn that the only disciplinarian in your life is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.
WOW thanks :)
Indeed. There is no fury like that of a black woman (especially my wife) when she is mad...
I didn’t mean it like that, I was using the same terminology you were using. That why sometimes conversating online is not the best because facial expressions and the tone in which something is said makes that much difference . . . But anyhow life is life
The more I learn / I am mindful that there's a lot more that I do not know / and I realize that in fact / I know nothing ...
LOL! I lived in a largely black neighborhood in the 50s for a few years (age 9-13); "colored" was the word polite people used, "Negro" being too high-falutin' and the "n" word, of course, unthinkable!
You will like it here. I've made good friends off of FR.
Interesting. Just one response so far. I've often wondered that but no one has been able to tell me.
It refers more accurately to a flavor and not a people(?????)
Turkey, which is stuffed with a duck, which is stuffed with a chicken. I believe the whole package is then deep fried, but will leave Mr. King to the details!
HOT D***!!!
This is clarity.
Retro is Cool.
Retro is In.
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