First of all, I'd been thinking for some time now that Pat Boone was
dead. I had to quickly resurrect him. Born June 1, 1934, Boone is
about 11 and a half months older than me. But we are millions of
light years apart. The difference between his wealth and mine would
be enough. But that is not the million of light years I am referring
to. It is the difference in how each of us see our fellow human
beings.
But that's not what I set out to talk about. Pat Boone can talk for himself.
I want to focus on our strange habit of creating a bunch of symbols,
declaring that they have a certain meaning and then keep changing what
that meaning really means.
Take the word Gay, for example. My mother loved her gay coat. It was
a multicolored
cloth coat. Mother took good care of her things, having been a young
mother during the Great Depression. So that coat lasted her for many
years. But she was greatly disturbed when she mentioned to some
friends that she was wearing her Gay Coat. They quietly advised her
not to say that word. "Gay?" mother asked. "What's wrong with Gay?"
Tinker Bell was a little Fairy. Enough said about that. A fagot
referred to a young boy who gathered fire sticks in the forests of
Europe. Later the word was shortened to Fag, meaning a cigarette.
Sort of a short fire stick.
But when I was teaching Braille, one of my students, a young Lesbian,
objected violently to the word Fag in her Braille lesson book.
Naturally, knowing her to be a bright and understanding person, I
believed I could explain the meaning of the word back when the Braille
lesson book was put together. 1960. But it would not do. So I took
my handy Braille eraser and she and I rubbed out one Braille dot from
the "F", turning it into a "B", and the word became, Bag. I did not
tell my student that in the storage room I had an entire shelf of the
identical Braille books.
For me, the hardest word to push out of my mouth was, "Fuck". Four
letters succinctly defining a very fundamental activity. But we
decided that Fuck was a dirty word, while copulate was much "nicer".
Both describe the same activity. But although I write the word here,
I would most likely never say it in a presentation before a mixed
audience.
Nigger is a word that was part of the language of the Old South. That
Old South still exists in many places, and not all of them South of
the Border. But I have to tell you, I am damned sick and fucking
tired of saying, "The N Word". As if that makes it just hunky Dorey.
We used to say, Negroes. But we changed to Blacks as the word of
choice by Negroes. I have no idea if that's true or not. My grandma
Jarvis, born in Missouri back in 1874, said, "Niggrah". She talked
about her "Colored wet nurse". And the Black Mammy who cooked for the
family. And the little Pica ninnies, the little children who lived on
the plantation. Did I mention that my grandma Jarvis was raised on a
plantation? And her father had two or three slaves prior to the Civil
War. My own great grandfather Tom Hickman. Judged to be a fair and
kind man, by his family and the other white neighbors. But no one
ever wrote down what his slaves thought him to be. He owned other
human beings, for Gods Sake! And yet, my grandma adored her dad. She
followed him about the plantation, avoiding the Women's work inside
the house. Grandma ended up living on an old age pension, but always
believed she was better than the Niggrahs she lived among.
The word Niggrah was not what made my grandma think the way she did.
Force her to say, "Black People", and she would continue to think of
them as she had been trained to think of them back in the 1880's as a
young girl.
I know blind folk who avoid the word, "blind". But you know what?
They are just as blind as if they used the word. And the entire world
sees them as blind.
While I do not believe we can easily change people's attitudes, that
is the place we must work. And if stopping our use of certain words
or tearing down old rags of Confederate dogma helps, let's do it. But
only as a starting place.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Boardman writes: "An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral
> blindness to racist behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian
> multi-millionaire musician whose fortune was built on racist exploitation
> of
> black music in a racist music industry devoted to catering to America's
> white racism."
>
> CNN discusses President Obama's use of the N-word. (photo: CNN)
>
>
> "It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in Public...."
> By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
> 26 June 15
>
> "Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it's not just a matter of,
> uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That's not the measure of
> whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt
> discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything
> that
> happened two to three hundred years prior."
> - President Obama, June 22,
> on Marc Maron podcast
>
> This piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently, an
> experience that illuminates what the President is saying and raises the
> question of whether it's polite to say "nigger" in private. My experience
> underscores that what the President is saying is obviously and profoundly
> true, and has been since long before he was born. And my recent experience
> illustrates the abiding armor of denial and determined ignorance that
> allows
> people to enjoy the advantages of a racist society without having to
> acknowledge that it exists.
> An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral blindness to racist
> behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian multi-millionaire musician
> whose fortune was built on racist exploitation of black music in a racist
> music industry devoted to catering to America's white racism. Boone's
> fundamentalist Christian self-delusions about race appeared on WND (aka
> WorldNetDaily), self-described as "an independent news company dedicated to
> uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the
> role of the free press as a guardian of liberty."
> According to Boone, it's President Obama's fault for not preaching that
> "racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that our society
> was truly becoming colorblind." Having said that, Boone provided a white
> racist analysis of the killing of two black children, Trayvon Martin and
> Michael Brown, unarmed and shot by reckless white men. As for Charleston,
> where an avowed white racist killed nine black people in church in hope of
> starting a race war, Boone explains it away as having a "racist element,"
> but being "inspired by Satan"! While blaming Obama for "erasing" God from
> public life, Boone pleads for a return to America as a Christian nation -
> but he does not mention that American Christianity was a powerful defender
> of American slavery.
> This mode of thinking, or rather this mode of avoiding real thought, is
> endemic to a large section of the American population and has been, in one
> form or another, since before there was a United States. How else do you
> get
> a Constitution in which slaves don't get to vote, but do get counted as
> three-fifths of a person in order to inflate Congressional representation
> of
> slave owners? Orwell called it Doublethink in "1984," but it's a much older
> American tradition.
> One form of denial is feigned shock that "Obama said the N-word!"
> Assorted television babble-heads on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Fox and elsewhere
> got all a-twitter over the President's saying "nigger," which they
> sanitized
> to "the N-word" with such characterizations as "extremely direct language"
> and "shock value" and "jarring comment" and "electric" and "one of the most
> charged racial slurs in the English language" - all of which are
> projections
> of the commentators' subjectivity. They are not at all accurate
> descriptions
> of what the President said, which was detached, measured, analytical, and
> precisely accurate. But who wants to hear that on TV? As Wolf Blitzer put
> it
> on CNN, "Many people may find this offensive." CNN's black legal analyst
> said the word should never be used. In sharp disagreement, CNN black anchor
> Don Lemon articulately defended adult conversation about difficult issues
> on
> television (for example, on Democracy NOW).
> By paying attention only to the President's use of the word "nigger" and
> not
> to his much broader context, television's purveyors of conventional wisdom
> manage to deny the relevance of the President's larger point: that racism
> has been endemic to American (and pre-American) culture for some 300 years
> and that racist thinking remains alive and well in many forms. Focusing on
> the President's use of "nigger" as an excuse not to talk about racism in
> America is, arguably, just another form of racism in America.
> Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show reduced the TV babble to its ultimate
> Fox-accusing absurdity, President Obama saying "nigger" in a State of the
> Union speech. Wilmore also played clips of other presidents saying
> "nigger,"
> albeit in a less thoughtful way than Obama:
> . Nixon: "Our niggers are better than their niggers"
>
> . LBJ: "there's more niggers voting there than white folks"
> Wilmore also indicated that, while there's apparently no record of
> presidents like Washington or Jefferson saying "nigger," they did own one
> or
> more.
> Another effect of all the empty blather about the President saying "nigger"
> is to distract from the empty gestures about various Confederate flags.
> American devotion to the Confederate flag is, literally, insane or
> dishonest
> or hypocritical, or all three, or pick your word. Why? All Confederate
> flags
> are symbols of treason against the United States of America, and somehow
> it's OK to celebrate them and merchandise them and pretend they're
> something
> they never were. The Confederacy committed treason as defined by the
> Constitution and too many people would do it all over again, for the same
> racist reasons.
> What does one young South Carolinian tell us about America today?
> So here's the personal experience I mentioned. Over the weekend of June
> 20-21, I was at a family wedding in northern Maryland. The Sunday before
> Obama's podcast became public, I was at a post-wedding cookout with maybe
> 20
> people of various ages, many in their twenties. It was a definitely
> non-political social gathering.
> One young man in his mid-twenties was there as the new beau of the bride's
> sister. He was pleasant, attractive, well-spoken, polite, and had grown up
> in South Carolina. During our first conversation with several other people
> in the kitchen, David (not his real name) spoke enthusiastically of his
> work
> with horses and Brahma cattle. He described a roping gone wrong when he was
> forced to jump his horse over a fallen Brahma cow, whose horn scored his
> horse's underbelly. He seemed comfortable and at ease as the conversation
> shifted from person to person. He gave no hint of any socially disruptive
> opinions or behavior. But he was drinking.
> Some time later I wandered into a conversation David was having with the
> bride's mother on the screen porch. This conversation was already
> political.
> David was complaining about Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for calling out
> Charleston for having streets named after Civil War generals and otherwise
> ridiculing South Carolina's history. Stewart was about to start a race war,
> David argued, without mentioning Dylann Roof killing nine people. David
> said
> he was concerned about a race war because someone had already shot at the
> Confederate flag at the Capitol. David said we should just let history be
> history, and besides some people treated their slaves well.
> By the time our hostess came into this conversation, David was talking
> about
> Obama being Kenyan and like that. Our hostess told him firmly not to talk
> like that in her house. When he didn't seem to get the point, I leaned in
> and suggested that maybe we should both be quiet. He admitted he'd been
> drinking, but throughout this conversation he remained polite, friendly,
> quiet, apparently sincere in beliefs he didn't seem to think anyone would
> find unusual. He came across as a basically sweet kid.
> The last thing he said to me, before others took him swimming, he said with
> the same earnest pleasantness. He said, "I don't hate niggers."
>
> ________________________________________
> William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
> print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
> judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
> Corporation
> for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
> nomination
> from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
> Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
> Permission
> to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
> Supported News.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> CNN discusses President Obama's use of the N-word. (photo: CNN)
> http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
> "It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in Public...."
> By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
> 26 June 15
> "Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it's not just a matter of,
> uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That's not the measure of
> whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt
> discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything
> that
> happened two to three hundred years prior."
> - President Obama, June 22,
> on Marc Maron podcast
> his piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently, an
> experience that illuminates what the President is saying and raises the
> question of whether it's polite to say "nigger" in private. My experience
> underscores that what the President is saying is obviously and profoundly
> true, and has been since long before he was born. And my recent experience
> illustrates the abiding armor of denial and determined ignorance that
> allows
> people to enjoy the advantages of a racist society without having to
> acknowledge that it exists.
> An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral blindness to racist
> behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian multi-millionaire musician
> whose fortune was built on racist exploitation of black music in a racist
> music industry devoted to catering to America's white racism. Boone's
> fundamentalist Christian self-delusions about race appeared on WND (aka
> WorldNetDaily), self-described as "an independent news company dedicated to
> uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the
> role of the free press as a guardian of liberty."
> According to Boone, it's President Obama's fault for not preaching that
> "racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that our society
> was truly becoming colorblind." Having said that, Boone provided a white
> racist analysis of the killing of two black children, Trayvon Martin and
> Michael Brown, unarmed and shot by reckless white men. As for Charleston,
> where an avowed white racist killed nine black people in church in hope of
> starting a race war, Boone explains it away as having a "racist element,"
> but being "inspired by Satan"! While blaming Obama for "erasing" God from
> public life, Boone pleads for a return to America as a Christian nation -
> but he does not mention that American Christianity was a powerful defender
> of American slavery.
> This mode of thinking, or rather this mode of avoiding real thought, is
> endemic to a large section of the American population and has been, in one
> form or another, since before there was a United States. How else do you
> get
> a Constitution in which slaves don't get to vote, but do get counted as
> three-fifths of a person in order to inflate Congressional representation
> of
> slave owners? Orwell called it Doublethink in "1984," but it's a much older
> American tradition.
> One form of denial is feigned shock that "Obama said the N-word!"
> Assorted television babble-heads on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Fox and elsewhere
> got all a-twitter over the President's saying "nigger," which they
> sanitized
> to "the N-word" with such characterizations as "extremely direct language"
> and "shock value" and "jarring comment" and "electric" and "one of the most
> charged racial slurs in the English language" - all of which are
> projections
> of the commentators' subjectivity. They are not at all accurate
> descriptions
> of what the President said, which was detached, measured, analytical, and
> precisely accurate. But who wants to hear that on TV? As Wolf Blitzer put
> it
> on CNN, "Many people may find this offensive." CNN's black legal analyst
> said the word should never be used. In sharp disagreement, CNN black anchor
> Don Lemon articulately defended adult conversation about difficult issues
> on
> television (for example, on Democracy NOW).
> By paying attention only to the President's use of the word "nigger" and
> not
> to his much broader context, television's purveyors of conventional wisdom
> manage to deny the relevance of the President's larger point: that racism
> has been endemic to American (and pre-American) culture for some 300 years
> and that racist thinking remains alive and well in many forms. Focusing on
> the President's use of "nigger" as an excuse not to talk about racism in
> America is, arguably, just another form of racism in America.
> Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show reduced the TV babble to its ultimate
> Fox-accusing absurdity, President Obama saying "nigger" in a State of the
> Union speech. Wilmore also played clips of other presidents saying
> "nigger,"
> albeit in a less thoughtful way than Obama:
> . Nixon: "Our niggers are better than their niggers"
>
> . LBJ: "there's more niggers voting there than white folks"
> Wilmore also indicated that, while there's apparently no record of
> presidents like Washington or Jefferson saying "nigger," they did own one
> or
> more.
> Another effect of all the empty blather about the President saying "nigger"
> is to distract from the empty gestures about various Confederate flags.
> American devotion to the Confederate flag is, literally, insane or
> dishonest
> or hypocritical, or all three, or pick your word. Why? All Confederate
> flags
> are symbols of treason against the United States of America, and somehow
> it's OK to celebrate them and merchandise them and pretend they're
> something
> they never were. The Confederacy committed treason as defined by the
> Constitution and too many people would do it all over again, for the same
> racist reasons.
> What does one young South Carolinian tell us about America today?
> So here's the personal experience I mentioned. Over the weekend of June
> 20-21, I was at a family wedding in northern Maryland. The Sunday before
> Obama's podcast became public, I was at a post-wedding cookout with maybe
> 20
> people of various ages, many in their twenties. It was a definitely
> non-political social gathering.
> One young man in his mid-twenties was there as the new beau of the bride's
> sister. He was pleasant, attractive, well-spoken, polite, and had grown up
> in South Carolina. During our first conversation with several other people
> in the kitchen, David (not his real name) spoke enthusiastically of his
> work
> with horses and Brahma cattle. He described a roping gone wrong when he was
> forced to jump his horse over a fallen Brahma cow, whose horn scored his
> horse's underbelly. He seemed comfortable and at ease as the conversation
> shifted from person to person. He gave no hint of any socially disruptive
> opinions or behavior. But he was drinking.
> Some time later I wandered into a conversation David was having with the
> bride's mother on the screen porch. This conversation was already
> political.
> David was complaining about Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for calling out
> Charleston for having streets named after Civil War generals and otherwise
> ridiculing South Carolina's history. Stewart was about to start a race war,
> David argued, without mentioning Dylann Roof killing nine people. David
> said
> he was concerned about a race war because someone had already shot at the
> Confederate flag at the Capitol. David said we should just let history be
> history, and besides some people treated their slaves well.
> By the time our hostess came into this conversation, David was talking
> about
> Obama being Kenyan and like that. Our hostess told him firmly not to talk
> like that in her house. When he didn't seem to get the point, I leaned in
> and suggested that maybe we should both be quiet. He admitted he'd been
> drinking, but throughout this conversation he remained polite, friendly,
> quiet, apparently sincere in beliefs he didn't seem to think anyone would
> find unusual. He came across as a basically sweet kid.
> The last thing he said to me, before others took him swimming, he said with
> the same earnest pleasantness. He said, "I don't hate niggers."
>
>
>
> William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
> print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
> judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
> Corporation
> for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
> nomination
> from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
> Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
> Permission
> to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
> Supported News.
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>
>
>
No comments:
Post a Comment