You are not sure what the n-word conjures up, and I wonder if blacks aren't themselves sure. Perhaps they do indeed run from silly ghosts. It seems to me blacks have allowed their experiences to plant into their collective psyche a demon from which they would rather run than face squarely. (I'm trying to find an analogue to my own experience, a mere word that strikes such horror within me that I would forbid others to utter it. I understand my having no ancestral link to slavery may make this impossible, but it would help me better understand what blacks experience.)
My tendency has always been to face matters, whatever they are, flatly and openly. When I have encountered demons in my life, I have faced them. Those that were real have caused me to run to Christ for defence. But I have found most of them to be mere figments of my mind. I think this n-word demon possibly a figment of black people's minds (in fact I am confident it is). Whatever the case I think it is time they take courage and find out for themselves. (grin)
I think I understand as well as most that one cannot divorce one's history from the problems under which one now labours. So I do not aim to discount black suffering. I instead aim to understand what it is that causes so many blacks to run from demons to the point of attempting to force a state not to fly a flag from one of its buildings (But could it be that the Confederate flag is comparable to the Nazi flag with its Swastika? Can a reasonable comparison be made between the two? Perhaps so. I honestly have not considered the question), or to the point of avoiding a single word. Moreover I think I aim to better confirm or negate my belief that blacks will not rise above slavery until they become individuals in their own minds, free to think separately and taste life as well as any other.
I have socialised with blacks enough to know many of them yet think and act in the collective, quite often to their self-destruction. And I have come to understand that while in an earlier day this clan manner of being was sufficient to ensure black survival, it today inhibits the success of all but those ignorant clowns better known as "black leaders." But you are probably right. Perhaps I need to socialise more with blacks, for most of the blacks I know are individuals, and to them the n-word is but a word, like the i-word, unless it is used as an insult. |
