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Exploration of Race
Sticks and stones will break my bones but....
By Diallo Marvel
Staff Writer
Nigger, Blackamoor, Maroon, Negro,
Monkey, Colored, Negro, Nigger,
Octaroon, Quadroon, Spear-chucker,
Sable-skinned, Afro-Amercian, African
American, Darkie, Kaffir, Pickaninny,
Spade, Buck, Savage....
In pre-colonial African societies, the
name of a person, place, or thing is its
nature. Everything has aplace and function
that earns a specific name. A man earns his
name by his bravery or wisdom in times of
adversity and strife. A woman receives a
name that exemplifies her beauty, insight,
or womanly traits.
Africans abroad have been called many
different names throughout history, de
pending on the region and reigning power.
What most of the names have in common
is they were negative and imposed through
hegemonic actions of Western Europeans
sovereigns.
There is a direct correlation between
names and Black people’s perceptions of
themselves. When names followed the
traditions of an ancient heritage, Black
self-concepts were healthy. But as names
grew negative, Black people’s self-concept
changed in step with the negative connota
tion of the name.
Part of plantation owners' ways of
breaking newly acquired Africans, as stated
in the literature of that period, was to
dehumanize them. The first step in illiciting
a sub-human self-concept was to change
their personal names and titles. Slaves
were called “niggers” which comes from
“negro,” Spanish for Black, or “nekros,”
Latin for “dead.”
The word “Black” in modem dictionar
ies does not carry one single positive at
tribute in its definition. But [Biblically]
in the beginning there was black,..black is
carbon,..black is fertile soil,..black is the
darkness in the womb, where all human
life comes from, even Jesus Christ’s.
In short, it is a very simple but potent
psychological weapon. To be called a
nigger, dog, buck, or devil, will make one
hate the concept of living as a Black man
or woman. This iswhyitisso very easy for
a Black man to take agun and kill someone
who looks like him, shares the same
economic difficulties and lives in the same
community as himself. . . or why
subconsciously, Americans, Black and
white, place more value on white lives
than any others.
In recent years, Blacks have become
very much aware of what name they should
be called in the eyes of the global commu
nity. From 1950 to 1996, Blacks have
graduated from Negro to Colored, from
Black to Afro American and then to Afri
can American. But, ironically, as political
correctness rises in the Black community,
the incidences of crime, individualism,
self-hate and “Nigger this and that..,” still
grow. Sadly, it is an indication of the sheer
magnitude of the slavery and covert mecha-
nisms of neoracism.
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