I, classified by law as 100% White, am proud of my Black ancestry. How about you and yours?
The central fact in American politics is, as it always has been, racism. But there is a fact so heinous that one may not speak it in public in the hearing of racists: We are all descendants of Black Africans. Creationism is the explicit denial of this fact, and the foundation for the denial of all other political and scientific facts.
Today we explore the consequences of racism and denialism in a journey down the rabbit hole and over the rainbow at the same time. Our starting point is the flap over Gwyneth Paltrow's June 1 tweet,
N * * * * s in paris for real @MrTeriusNash (the dream) tyty, beehigh
celebrating with her friends a performance by rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West, who were performing their hit single “Niggas in Paris” together as “The Throne”
in Paris, several times over.
To me, this flap is good news. A sign of real progress. Until now, we couldn't even discuss some of these problems, particularly how White people,even those who get it, remain excluded from much of the Black experience, while so many Blacks remain excluded from so much that is claimed to be the property, the possession, the birthright of Whitey. We still do it clumsily, but we are beginning to do it.
Let us see first to what extent we can separate fact from opinion in l'affaire Paltrow, and contribute a few extra facts, on the general principle that everybody who has the facts is entitled to an opinion, but nobody is entitled to a separate set of facts. And even though people are each entitled to hold and express an opinion, opinions can still be wrong in many different ways: unhelpful, thoughtless, mean, immoral, pigheaded, stupid, even racist.
And then let us see whether we can come to any agreement about how to apply what we find more generally.
My title is derived from the lament incorrectly attributed to Abolitionist Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree), Ain't I a Woman. She didn't say that, but another woman, Frances Dana Barker Gage, said it for her, and for all other women held in slavery. And I am going to make my lament for Gwyneth Paltrow (who has suffered far less oppression than Sojourner Truth or any other slave back then, or free Black then or after ^_^), and anybody else that it applies to.
Warning: No Euphemism Zone
Few things are as fraught in American culture as "The N-Word", whether in its intentionally cold-blooded, vicious, racist insult form, nigger, or its intentionally homey affectionate form, nigga. I am aware of the danger I risk by trying to discuss its usage and meaning, not merely in a dictionary sense but as it is lived, and even more so by laying claim to it myself. But this is important. I feel that I have to try, in public, for the good of humanity, as I will explain.
Much of public discourse, especially on matters involving race, is conducted in the style of Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts: Sentence first, verdict after. (And never mind the evidence or the law.) Or according to the newspaper proverb, If it bleeds, it leads. We, however, will examine and even sift the evidence.
Facts
First, we have a rap song by The Throne, Niggas in Paris (from their August 2011 album, Watch the Throne), which they performed in Paris at the beginning of June.
Here is what the song says, in part:
You escaped what I escaped
You'd be in Paris getting f * * * ed up too
Ball so hard, let's get faded,
Le Meurice for like 6 days
Second, we have Paltrow's tweet, quoted above, in response.
To begin with, Paltrow was quoting the actual name of the actual song in praise of the song and the artists who wrote it and were performing it. Also, an attached photograph showed Paltrow on stage at the show with three men, indicated by the rest of the tweet to be R&B singer The-Dream (Terius Nash) and two Jay-Z affiliates, Ty-Ty (Tyran Smith) and Bee-High (Jay-Z's cousin Brian. Last name, anybody? Google is not helping me).
Opinion
Well, that was short.
OK, now for what people said about it. Note that these are not my opinions. I am keeping this section, too, as factual as I can, just quoting verbatim so that you can see some of the unfolding debate and get a sense of the range of idea expressed.
Gwyneth Paltrow Should Apologize for Her Careless Tweet
Paltrow carelessly used a racial slur on Twitter last week. Why hasn’t she said sorry? Allison Samuels takes issue with the actress’s entitled defense—and her naïve view of black people.
In a series of messages written on June 6, Tip wrote: “listen rush simmons, toure, and all Black Folk who are sympathist to this gwen paltrow n**ga thing. She may have not meant harm, sure it was in the heat of the moment but the fact that she showed not 1 IOTA of an apologetic tone, given the historical weight of that word is not responsible of G Paltrow’s part.”
Gwyneth Paltrow Tweet: Star Tweets Uninteresting Photo From 'Iron Man 3' Set Amid Controversy Over Use Of N-Word
Though friends like Russell Simons came to her defense ("I know her intentions were not to be offensive ... she was just proud of her friend, Jay-Z"), other celebrities like Q-Tip said her tweet was in poor taste ("Paltrow shld [sic] have offered a [sic] "If I offended anyone I'm truly sorry" as a person who loves black people and understands").
QTip Tweets His Opinions On Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘N-Word’ Tweet
paltrow shld have offered a "if i offended anyone im truly sorry" as a person who loves black people and understands
BTW i said nothing mean or nasty. i met gwen and chris. kool peeps! so no need to be mean in ur responses
Why Is Everyone So Cray About Gwyneth's Tweet? By Russell Simmons
A few months ago, I went to the Jay-Z charity concert at Carnegie Hall. It was pretty exciting to watch hip-hop's biggest star play the world's most prestigious venue. However, there was nothing more exciting than him donating 100 percent of the proceeds to charity, including my $25,000 donation.
The third song that came on during the show was “Ain’t No N*gga”… the song I signed Jay to Def Jam on. Everyone in the hall was singing every word to the song. Every white girl (and there were a lot of them) was singing it to their man…“Ain’t no n*gga like the one I got!” EVERYONE was singing every word of every song for the entire set, which ended with “N*ggas In Paris.” White, black – everyone was singing along.
Gwyneth Paltrow, “Niggas,” and the Black Folks Who Cried Wolf
...there’s a lot of “nigga” throwing going on, yet there was no outcry until the white woman said it. One has to question why exactly it’s perfectly acceptable for two, adult black men (Jay-Z and Kanye West) to make a song about a couple of “niggas” ballin’ in the City of Lights, but when their white friend tweets the name of the song, she’s all of a sudden racist.
Nas: “Gwyneth Paltrow is a Real N-Word, That’s My Homie”
Nas defends Gwyneth Paltrow’s controversial tweet…
“She’s the homie, she’s cool. Gwyneth gets a pass. Real people get a pass.
“Niggas,” in Practice
Jay-Z, Gwyneth Paltrow, and when white people can say the word.
Last July, at an amphitheatre in Holmdel, New Jersey, I watched thousands of people scream “nigga” at the tops of their lungs. The occasion was a Lil Wayne concert, where he’d just given the 17,500-strong crowd an order: “If you came to have a hell of a motherfucking time tonight, say, ‘Hell! Yeah! Nigga!’ ” A lot of people had evidently come to have a hell of a motherfucking time; that many were white didn’t stop them from using Wayne’s exact language to let him know.
Turning my head to see three tanned Jersey girls bellow “Hell yeah nigga!,” I was perplexed.
From the Right we have Erica Ritz of The Blaze:
‘The Problem With Racism Is Matt Drudge’: Bill Maher Defends Gwyneth Paltrow by Attacking Conservatives
“I would just like to say that the problem with racism is not Gwyneth Paltrow. The problem with racism is Matt Drudge.”
She just quotes Maher and his guests, but offers no refutation. This line from Bill Maher has gone viral in the Right wing blogosphere, with dozens of expressions of baffled outrage.
My Take
I was surprised to find no mention of the Paltrow/nigga contretemps on Daily Kos. On reflection, I suppose that nobody wants to get into anything so overcharged and yet so trivial. But that is not how I see it, so, after considerable reflection, here I am.
When Bill Clinton said that the US needed to have a public discussion about race, he was roundly ignored. I understand how that worked in the Gingrichified climate of the time. Now that Barack Obama, half-White, half-Kenyan-African, and all-American, is President, we are having a bit of that conversation here and there, whether in the Progressive media or at rap concerts. Unfortunately, we are also having a vitriolic, racist failure to converse on the Right, a failure that has become ever more strident and nasty ever since, and gives every appearance of continuing straight downhill, like the Gadarene swine, to its destruction.
I do appreciate the long-running real-life joke (on US society) that Black American entertainers, particularly musicians, have been far more welcome in France than in the US for more than a century (Vichy France and the later racist Le Pen voters notwithstanding), and I can see why someone might congratulate anybody on a successful tour in France. The French support for those whom America has consistently tried to throw away goes back in fact to great composers like Claude Debussy writing somewhat in the style of ragtime genius Scott Joplin (in particular, Golliwog's (sic) Cakewalk, from Suite Bergamasque).
But that is not what this fuss is about.
There are several interesting but contradictory views expressed in all of this, which I have put into the poll. Let us know in the comments if you have yet another view. As I said, you are entitled to your opinion. I am not going to attempt to adjudicate this part of the dispute.
Not that I am without opinions on these questions.
For example, I am not a fan of the more thuggish and misogynistic forms of rap, although that is not what this Diary is about. I did enjoy some of NWA, and Harry Shearer's parody, Cops...With...Attitude!. I enjoyed Paltrow's work in Shakespeare in Love, but have not seen her in anything else.
Much more importantly, I want to help heal the hurts, amounting to PTSD, in the Black community. I want Blacks to be able to deal with the horrors of the past, as laid out on the White side in Huckleberry Finn, without the language overshadowing Huck's evolution and conversion on holding one of his best friends as property, and the struggle, as Twain put it, between a deformed conscience and a good heart.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.
This is an instance of what Buddhists call the Bodhisattva vow, to renounce Nirvana in order to relieve another's suffering.
We should also look into the Black side, from the works of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Henry Louis Gates. There are a lot of good novels and movies on the subject: To Kill a Mockingbird, One Potato, Two Potato, Fried Green Tomatoes, In the Heat of the Night, The Tuskegee Airmen, even the historical comedy Buck and the Preacher. I'm sure Kossacks will recommend many more. James Baldwin? How about Dick Gregory's autobiography, Nigger? Malcolm X? Then there is the rest of the world: Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now (Congo/Vietnam), The Comedians (Haiti), Dingaka and Invictus (both South Africa) and, again, many, many more.
Jews have been able to deal with the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust in large part because Jews are now White in America and Europe, and in charge in Israel. Somebody said, Living well is the best revenge. The words kike, jew-boy, heeb, hymie, and so on are no longer in widespread use, and are roundly condemned by most of White society when they do occur. See the responses to Michael Richards and Mel Gibson when they tried it on. Racism by Jews is, of course, another explosive matter, conducive to Hide Ratings here on dKos.
Racism against Blacks, however, is still the order of the day. Blacks have no protection from implausibly deniable coded racist speech, and precious little from overt racism as long as it avoids the rant form. Look at what is said about President Obama, the uppity Mau-mau Reparationist White-hater who is going to enslave all Whites, blah, blah, blah. Look at the pictures, and so on, that the haters gleefully pass around among themselves.
Ain't we all niggaz?
All right. Let's hear it.
We are all descended from Black Africans. Are you proud of your ancestry, or not?
We have to call out the Creationist racists, not just for their anti-science nonsense, but for their vile racism itself, no matter how hard they pretend that that is not the reason for Creationism.
It is of course nonsense to claim that Creationism is not racism, when the Religious Right is still so strong on the myth of the Curse of Ham as the origin of Black Africans, and their supposed intellectual and moral inferiority. The ancestors of our Creationists proclaimed loudly and long that the Curse of Ham was God's Providential way of providing slaves for the American South only a few thousand years later, because slavery would be good for Africans, as the only way they could be civilized and Christianized. The racist great-great-grandchildren of slaveowners (Alabama Sen. Jefferson [Davis] [Gen. Pierre August Toutant] Beauregard Sessions, III comes to mind) cannot have a pass for maintaining that myth, but pretending that racism is not the reason for it.
About Me
I am also a descendant of slaveowners, but that doesn't stop me from despising their works, and pointing out that they, too, were of 100% Black African descent. It does not matter how vehemently they denied it, nor how vehemently they and their successors denounced Darwinism as the work of the Devil, and scientists as acolytes of the Secular Humanist Antichrist. (Nobody can accuse these people of intellectual consistency.)
My chosen mission here on Daily Kos for several years has been to call out racist Dog Whistle Code and explain how it works, and to attack every form of anti-scientific and otherwise fact-challenged thinking, while supporting policies based on the concept that we are all in this together.
I grew up in a mixed neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, with lots of Black and White friends (the latter group almost all Jews, with a few Mormons, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and others--even Protestants, although I don't actually remember them). My parents moved there on purpose so that I and my brother could experience the Real America, not just the White Bread 50s and early 60s of the suburbs.
My main work is with Sugar Labs and One Laptop Per Child, helping millions of children around the world so far, and aiming to help a billion children at a time out of poverty and oppression. I cannot pay back the theft that my ancestors the slave owners and imperialists perpetrated, but I can and do pay forward on a far grander scale than the sins of my immediate ancestors.
Reclaiming the N-words
It is not my suggestion that anybody get in anybody else's face with the word "nigga". I suggest, rather, that we lighten up and give people permission to do with it what pleases them to do. Don't get bent out of shape. Don't have a cow. As to Whitey, Non lessi illegitimi te carborundum. (Don't let the bastards wear you down.)
Let people have some more space to wear off the malice that was loaded onto the word for centuries, until we can see that such expressions of hatred hurt the hater more than the hated. Which is not practical when the greed-obsessed and the haters have physical, economic, and political power over their victims and can do them endless harm. We can only be grateful that this is gradually becoming less the case, and do our bit to hasten it along.
My way of looking at human rights is they come, ultimately, neither from government nor from God, but from each of us giving them to each other. They are a matter of political will. The essential maneuver is then not in claiming rights for yourself (although we all need to do that from time to time once others have made them available to us) but in joining together, politically if possible, but privately otherwise, to make the offer and the argument to all the rest of society. As we are now in the midst of doing over LGBT rights as we pass the tipping point from gradually increasing personal good will toward suddenly effective political will.
We do not need unanimity to maintain rights for all, but there can be no rights in the face of unanimous opinion against them, or close enough to unanimous opinion so that no effective public dissent is possible, as in the Jim Crow South. Or, as now, in the face of such stifling Political Correctness and Republican faux outrage that even the Progressives at MSNBC and Current TV rarely call out the racism explicitly. Mitt Romney's lies, no problem. Real GOP elephant in the room since the Southern Strategy began in the 1960s, forget it.
We can never lose sight of the fact that the rights supposedly guaranteed in the Constitution to Black US citizens and to a lesser extent immigrants are not and cannot be theirs in full as long as a willful minority can conspire to withhold them. What we can do is to be, fully, voluntarily, explicitly, intentionally Brothers and Sisters. To the point where we Progressives can all be niggaz, and nobody will think twice about it. Possibly even Democrats.
Have you told a Black person, or anybody else suffering oppression, that you are one of them in what used to be called the Family of Man, until the women woke us up? Try it. You may be surprised at how pleasantly surprised they are.