Obama Said “Nigger”
White people decrying the fact that Racism killed Trayvon Martin in an Atlanta Rally in 2012. Photo Credits: Harold Michael Harvey
ATLANTA, GA (CASCADE PRESS) President Barack Obama said “Nigger” the other day.
I just be damn.
Like everything he eats, drinks, wears, thinks and does, it is causing quite a controversy.
What’s new about that?
I just be damned.
It is not like the President called anybody a “Nigger.” It is not that he denigrated anyone with the use of the word “Nigger.” He did not use the term to prove he was superior to a so-called “Nigger.” He did not say “Nigger” in such a way that you knew with a degree of specificity that Obama hated “Niggers.”
I just be damned.
Obama said that we have to realize that racism is more than calling someone “Nigger.”
You know what?
Obama is right. He should know.
I am sure growing up with white people he, like every black American I know in his age range, was called a “Nigger” multiple times by people wanting to impress their superior status over him. For a guy with half white DNA, that really has to sting.
When I was in junior high school, I had a white teacher who called me “Nigger” everyday. I knew with a certainty that she was belittling me and my parentage. Although she has long since rotted in her grave, I rather still dislike her today for the sting that word produced in my soul each day she pronounced to the world that I was a “Nigger. ”
Then there were the times when my black classmates and I walked from football practice through a white neighborhood and encountered a group of white men, probably in their mid-twenties, drinking beer under a tree.
As my group passed them, someone often yell out, “Nigger.” Looking over our shoulders we could see the group with their menacing stare daring us to turn and fight. Fighting would be futile. If we managed to beat them out of their drunken racist minds, they would lie and say we were trying to break into a home in the area.
I know the sting of the word “Nigger.” The manner in which President Obama said “Nigger” the other day does not carry the same sting, nor did he intend it too. This is the crux of the matter. Racism, Obama properly opined, is more than a word.
While we are on the subject of words with sharp meanings, I like soup. I like to have saltine crackers with my soup. Then one day my doctor took me off crackers. I now hate crackers. I won’t touch a cracker and I won’t go near a cracker. The only thing a cracker can do for me is point me in the direction of some sweet potato chips.
I just be damned, I just said crackers. I just said I hate crackers.
I just be damned.
Oh my gosh, there is that word again, damn. Damn becomes profane when you say “damn you,” or worst when one damns God. Otherwise it is just a word that denotes a doomed state.
Political correctness, I just be damned.
Harold Michael Harvey, is the author of the legal thriller “Paper Puzzle,” and “Justice in the Round: Essays on the American Jury System,” available at Amazon and at haroldmichaelharvey.com. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
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Mister Harvey, this is marvelously well put. I have thought since we somehow managed to ban it in any context, that if we couldn’t use the word “nigger” in discussion of racism and how words can dominate us, the word itself controlled our conversation. This foolishness gives cover to the racist lackwits who would ask me why black people can call each other “nigger,” but they can’t. I suddenly found it hard to explain what I thought should be obvious. It gives cover to the fools who would insist that “reverse racism” exists as an evil equal to white racism in this country. My logic abandons me in these gotcha moments and I just want to be a drill sergeant again and scream at them that they are fools and idiots from an inch away. I am mindful of a teacher who lost, or nearly lost, his position because he was apparently the only person in his entire school, students, faculty and administration, who knew what “niggardly” meant, and used it correctly in a comment on a student’s paper. I think the paroxysm of Faux outrage President Obama’s studied use of “nigger” provoked is absolute proof that we’ve lost balance entirely on how we view and use discourse to deal with difference in America.
Well said, Mr. Larlham. To which I can add little.