After viewing a threat on www.feministe.us about racism, I decided to blog one of my own experiences with race at Purdue. One of my very first experiences-not with racism, but with the unprogressiveness that is inherently characteristic of Purdue. Alas, it speaks quite a bit more as well to where we have to go as Afr0-Americans in order to develop our integrity to its fullest extent.

In my first class here at Purdue, American Studies 601, we, unfortunately, partook of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn which I have no interests in and, in my estimation, is wholly given too much attention as a piece of literature. I have no interests in reading about some little boy floating down a river on a raft.

With this in mind, I went into this (what turned out to be) three week discussion concerning the book prepared for the longhaul of boredom. However, what it turned into was a three week discussion of the word Nigger.

Now, at first, I didn't say much at all--as I have nothing to say really about Huckleberry Finn and the words that Twain uses in the book matter very little to me because of that. However, the situation developed on perhaps the third of fourth class session spent on this book that other Blacks in the class were becoming sensitive to the discussion-mind you at this point in time the word nigger had been uttered at least three times out of most of the mouths in that room.
What happened next was an attempt at censorship--which wasn't so much a "Please, could we refrain from using that word," but a verbal beating of the people in the class (white) who were using the term.

Kurt, I don't think he will mind me using his name-- was telling about the way in which he addressed the usage of the word when he previously had taught the book--having taught High School English for about twenty years perhaps. At this point, one of my fellow black classmates lit into him and verbally chastised him for using the word--in a very authoritative and abusive manner. Alas, after this discussion continued for a little while--a couple of my classmates--one white girl (Stacy) and one jewish girl broke into tears-- I suppose feeling something towards white guilt. Mhm. Well, ok, whatever. But alas, I didn't think it was wholly progressive to censor anything-- and as the situation became such that people were afraid to utter the word in the class-- I dared to utter it. And not only utter it-- but I began to ask my fellow black classmates--why would you attempt to censor this word? I pointed them in the direction of the lines of Sonia Sanchez's poem "Nigger you say? That word ain't shit to me man.... I will even spell it for you-- N-I-G-G-E-R. You are way behind the set....."

And alas, not only that--but being a writer I know the power of words--but I wanted to point to them that it was not good or productive to spend one's time trying to ask white people to not call you a nigger. I think it is absolutely awful, amazing, and ridiculous that the rhetoric coming out of the Black community in terms of this power structure and the ways in which they are caught in it is "You can shoot me in the streets, you can disenfranchise me, you can determine where I can and cannot work and can and cannot live, but please oh please don't call me a Nigger." My repsonse is that as long as you continue to allow these people to walk over you---you are the Nigger. When Black people as a whole--not even thinking about this country---come into their Integrity and their Self-Respect and start to take control of their own lives and start demanding that the power structure deal with them on their own terms....then that will be a great day.

As an afterthought, they say that the man that ran the cotton used to say of my great great grandfather , when he would take his cotton to the market to sell- "You hurry up and you get Morgan Goodson out of here, and you make sure his accounts is right, because he is a crazy nigger and you dont know just what he might do." I think that was quite a good thing.