Words. Words. Words.
M*A*S*H is still one of my favorite tv programs – even after 40 years or so. In one episode, the main character (Hawkeye) is asked what book he would take with him should he be stranded on a deserted 🏝. His answer? “The dictionary. I figure it has all the other books inside it.”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Words matter. I have hesitated to broach this topic, yet here we are… In this world of instant communication emojis, memes, and gifs, it has become possible to communicate thought through pictures instead of words. As I am rather partial to words, it strikes me that instant communication via pics/memes, etc., IS more efficient, faster, and clever. But it comes at a price – a general vague understanding instead of a detailed answer. Faster faster faster. It has helped create a “war ON words” that needs to stop – as current events are reshaping the meaning and legacy of the*N* word. The word “shit” cost Dale Earnhardt Jr a whole bunch of money and probably a championship due to the points he lost due to a post race interview.
https://twitter.com/dalejr/status/724356669120098304?s=21
Cussin’
What makes a word offensive?
Cause “shit” means stuff to me.
“Damn it” means I’m angry.
“Hell” ain’t no place to be…
How you hear words I say
May not be what was meant.
Dogma lived today
Can warp the message sent…
The biased thoughts have won.
You’re bad because you curse.
But wisdom understands,
My judgment makes me worse.
After all. They are only words. We attach the meaning.
So… About that *N* word. I completely understand why African Americans get upset when “white” people use that word. The word is derived from the Latin word for black – *Niger* which is also a country in Africa. Taken literally the word simply means black. I know the word use has changed – and will continue to change. Here is an interview with the guy who wrote a book on it.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?168015-1/randall-kennedy-nigger-strange-career-troublesome-word
Note carefully definition number 3. What few people realize is that during the “sharecropping south” reconstruction, the *N* word was actually used as a job title regardless of race.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nigger
Let’s look at the euphemisms used by and for African Americans: “slave”, “nigger”, “negro”, “colored”, “black”, “African American”… “Slave” comes from Slavic – the ethnic group most “owned” in Germany at the time the word was coined. Does that classify as “cultural misappropriation”? “Negro” is Portuguese for black. Then we have the word “colored” – another obsolete and inaccurate term. Black is the absence of color. Does that mean white people are “colored” and black people are “without color”? It is ridiculous. I have begun using the term “African American” cause I am trying to avoid possible “loaded words”. Carlin would have been cancelled, but he is right. Would someone tell me which term is politically correct today?
One song – two versions. “Colored” (Kenny Chesney) or “other” (Montgomery Gentry). If one gets hung up on the colored/other word use he/she completely misses the point of the song…
There is only one race – the human race. If it is ok with you, I will just call you friend, family, fellow American. I like that better. I leave you with one last thought. The United States of America is the only country (in “modern” history) to fight a civil war over slavery. The UK and France compensated “owners” once slavery was understood to be the evil that it is. Americans just could not figure out a way around it – except in one instance… In 1862 — after the war had already begun — Lincoln found a peaceful way to end slavery in Washington D.C. He paid DC slave owners $300 each to free the humans they claimed to “own”. The Civil War was totally about slavery – the economics of slavery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/when-slaveowners-got-reparations.html
Use the N word, don’t use the N word. It matters little to me. But if we are gonna cancel people and take away their careers for using it incorrectly, we gotta figure out a way to keep anybody from using it. Its prevalence and usage in pop culture has permeated throughout the US – due mostly to African American comedians, rappers, and other artists. Hear a word enough and it becomes subliminal.
Git em Chief.