Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: "Nigger" DIs and "Nigger" Dat
From: GRIIVEA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 17:55:02 EST
Organization: Yale University

How sad;
Ronald viewed the public exchange between Aaron and myself
through the occluded lens of victim ideology and so mistakenly projected
his own discomfort with the word "nigger" onto Aaron. That's why Ronald
was convinced that only a "MORON" could think Aaron's misquote was the
result of a mental lapse, rather than a genteel moral reticence.
 
How sad;
Aaron congradulates himself for having so throughly
repressed the hated signified that he routinely represses the signifier.
 
How sad;
Ronald felt that his ideological squeamishness about what he
believes to be a pejorative group lable, licensed his use of a
pejorative personal lable.
 
     What makes all of this particularly ironic is that the special
brilliance of B(lazing) S(addles) is it's brutal
subversion/deconstruction of streotypes through naive restatement and
repetition.  Just repeat after me: she's a nigger, he's a nigger,
i'm a nigger,they are niggers wouldn't you want to be a nigger too.
Now that wasn't so hard, now was it.
 
     "Nigger" is not an essence.  "Nigger" is an abitrary sign for a
collection of socially constructed socio-cultural attributes.
Yes, it is a socially selected cultural reduction, but at least it has
a cultural content.  And to that extent, as an ethnic
identity, it is more positive than "race."
 
     "Race" is taxonomically non-existent.
"Race" has a connotative subtext of blood and breeding,
but it has no standing in the biological sciences.  "Race" is
an e(ras)ure of culture/ethnicity.
 
     The primary function of "race" is to define a group of men and
women in such a way that physical characteristics become the paramount
symbol of the groups supposedly similar, and distinct, hereditary
origin, thereby making physical characteristics the most important
part of group identity.  It's easy to see that any groups whose
social identities are based on the superficial similarity of physical
characteristics rather than shared culture, norms, values, and
heritage, can be easily exploited and manipulated.
 
     The term "African-American" performs a similar e(ras)ure.  In place
of "race's" somatic reduction, it performs a geographic reduction.  The
result is a similar lack of cultural specificity.  An "African-American"
could be an ex-patriate Afrikaaner living in Argentina, or one of the
decendents of Matthew Henson living near the North Pole.
 
    In this context the term "African" performs a similar, but more
insidious, e(ras)ure.  To call myself an African is to e(rase) a cental
aspect of my socio-cultural self.  A part I choose never to "forget."
The part generated by the collective experience of the descendents of
Africans being defined, and defining themselves, as "niggers"
in the United States of America.
 
    "Nigger," historically situated and culturally embedded resonates
with the sensual consciousness of this fin de siecle diaspora
African whose family has prevailed in the United States of America,
because of luck and perseverance, despite being pressed down for 5
generations.  Just say the word.
 
 
                                       Iverson