You know... I am reading this book called _ The Culture of Desire: Perversity and Paradox in Gay Lives Today_ by Frank Browning and he talked about white people using the n-word.

He says:

"Reclaiming slurs and epitheths of hatred is hardly unique to the new queer activists. Black people have done it for decades, and not only within their neighborhoods. Lines like, "Hey, nigga, who you think you are?" or "Look at this boy here, got a brand new car!" tossed between two black people on a city sidewalk are privileged statements, taken back from white racists of the not-so-distant segregationist South. My friend, Brenda, a black journalist with a teenage son, has become fascinated with Queer Nation politics, its provocative separateness, and, especially, its language. She raises the parallel with black language style. "For a teenage kid, to us that language in a white setting is a kind of aggression. They know that white people are afraid of them, and they use that fear," she says. Brenda never uses the word "nigger." just as most middle-aged gay (white?)men I know do not use "queer." But she acknowledges that there is a mischievous demon inside her that loves the effect. "It's like you just say these outrageous things to the liberals and roll with laughter because you've scared the bejesus out of them." And she's right, If my black colleagues in the mostly white offices of NPR were using the N-word among themselves, it would tell me instantly that they, normally outsiders in a majority-white place, were deliberately employing language meant to exclude me. It would be language whose exact meaning I might not know and that I certainly have no permission to speak. Black teenagers using the N-word in front of me on a bus in an inner-city neighborhood have even more power. Not only am I isolated, but I'm frightened because I'm in a place that rumor and the media tell me is unsafe and because the same rumor/media sources tell me these teenagers are likely armed and angry. The already aggressive, exclusive words become doubly threatening" (pp 34-5)

I find this interesting and telling and amazingly candid for all the obvious reasons, but to put it in the context of white teenagers who use the n-word freely, I think it gives insight...

To be blunt and trite and simplistic (as I can get) They scared and they are challenging their fear and trying to overcome it. They don't want to be afraid of Black people, but the truth is that they are afraid of Black people and so they feel that using the N-word exaberates that fear while taking the power Black youth and people who use the word, having reversed it's historical contextual use...

(I did say, as I can get)

Peace,

Q

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"americans are gross!" -utamaroho

Uplifting thoughts:

"We are the end result of our ancestors prayers as they died. We you are the sum total of their answered prayers."

"I am because we are; we are because I am."

"falling in love with somebody's soul...their essence their personality their walk their talk the way they speak and smile...no matter what the physical outer body is..male or female...is a temptation i hope i am never foolish enough to resist." - Hot Damali