A friend once wondered why people kept saying \u201cniggah\u201d in conversations among the Zhongguoren he met both in English and Chinese during his last foray to China.<\/p>\n
For the non-Chinese speakers, \u2018nig-eh\u2019 (\u201ceh\u201d barely audible) is an all-purpose gap filler, like the favorite \u201clike\u201d to our teenagers, and \u201cUh-uh\u201d to old-timers. It also sounds too closely like \u201cniggah,\u201d hardly a word of comfort in Jamaica (both Carib or Yankee), but Walt kept his cool and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. He was greatly relieved when I clarified its use in this column.<\/p>\n
For those under-20, \u201cniggah\u201d is either liberally sprinkled in rap lyrics, or avoided by the liberal over-20s in public discourse as the pronunciation for the racist slur \u201cnigger,\u201d originally from the Latin word negro for \u201cblack,\u201d before it took to the \u201cshoe shuffling black ignorant slave of African descent\u201d in America and given the sting in reference to slaves from West Africa. Its particular usage as a word, and the reality that it refers to in the U.S., is not pleasant. I went to university in three places in the U.S. South and I can sit all night to relate stories of how the word got a front seat in my meditative council for the frequency of its use and abuse!<\/p>\n
Now, we have the NBA Clippers\u2019 owner Donald Sterling balking at paying a fine imposed by the basketball association after being videotaped expressing his disdain for \u201cblack\u201d athletes and celebrities! His high-priced lawyer does not see any violation of law; he is putting up a fight even of the ownership of the franchise itself. As an obvious tactic, the light has been shifted into the alleged blackmailing propensity of Sterling\u2019s rather high-maintenance girlfriend!<\/p>\n
Comes New Hampshire, Wolfeboro Police Commissioner Robert Copeland, a Caucasian 82-year-old, acknowledging to his fellow police commissioners in an email that he used the racial \u201cnigger\u201d slur against Obama because he really meant the term to be pejorative of the President and his perceived lackluster (at best) performance, evidently more than a little short of his expectation. Nor will he be \u201cpolitically correct\u201d and apologize for publicly patronizing its use.<\/p>\n
The black-and-white divide does still run up the marquee of high profile people, never mind that it is no longer common and widespread at the ground level. Let me run the reality of the divide in my four levels of perceptions.<\/p>\n
The sense level is where it begins. I am pretty well-endowed with the melanin requirement of existence in equatorial real estate, \u201cborn beautifully brown\u201d in Pinoy mythology, and coupled with the trust that the WAY LIFE IS (Judeo-Christian-Muslim) precludes any other reality, I am quite at peace with the givenness of the color of my skin. Not so with many, the liberals included, who think that tanning make one \u201cglamorous,\u201d and the lily white conservatives who see a shade of tan more appropriate on the hired help.<\/p>\n
The social Darwinism of the previous two centuries created the assertion that the light skinned in the temperate zone is an advance in the evolution of the human specie. The emotional gulf provided by the notion that \u201cwhite is beautiful\u201d and that there are no two shades about it, is pretty much a subjective preference, adhered to from the bias and prejudice of one\u2019s upbringing. Given their ages, Sterling and Copeland may belong to this category.<\/p>\n
Commercial value designers centered in Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Soho, way up north of the Tropic of Cancer, leave us unsurprised that greed promotes skin whiteners and related cosmetics in the global market with the intensity of selling the opaque white fluid fat-and-protein rich cow juice at considerably higher milking rate. One of my students was surprised to find herself and her mother the only folks in Oahu\u2019s Waikiki shading themselves under a parasol from the sun.<\/p>\n
Personal quirks and propensities, individual views and learned perceptions are understandable but when the gravity of vision and mission either through religious cults (\u201cwe are all going to be white in heaven\u201d) or political cadres (Aryan supremacists, Sieg Heil!) take on organized social discipline and organizations, then the rule of law comes to play.<\/p>\n
I am a resident of Hawai\u2019i where the planetary color is the rainbow, giving not much weight to the black-and-white divide. Nor was John Harlan in 1896 impressed with the majority opinion of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that justified the \u201cseparate but equal\u201d provision\u2019s legality. Harlan\u2019s minority opinion said: \u201cOur constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.\u201d The Civil Rights Act of 1964 affirmed that.<\/p>\n
Sterling and Copeland are probably hoping to find out whether Harlan\u2019s sentiment is still a minority opinion since it is no longer the legal one. They are consigned into ancient history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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