Semantics of the black dictionary

You white idiots who are so damn politically correct, who walk on egg shells, move around between crystal and porcelain shells of niceness, your grinding yellow teeth that enforce to display a week smile through which you press a politely over-stated thank you, all of you are bigots with your care and sensitivities, which you learnt to phrase so wisely at your white campi.

“Listen you nigga, you were born with your hands in my pocket, man.”

So what does your oddly stif politeness hide in your heart? That you don’t share the lack of opportunity of the poor black man, that your neighbors are all white, that your academic debate about equality solves nothing of the social segregation that you hold dear in your suburban forts, or that your persistent claim to attach negative values to a nigga word, that your deeper fear emerges only in your dictionary, is really the root of all you so nicely despise about my vulgar choice of words?

The young blacks with their vulgar strength of tongue, they hiss at you with fire that engulfes the sensual comforts you are used to. This is what is really upsetting, that they stick a needle in your heart that is filled with fear, that is the steam that is in your head. His nigga that causes you to freeze, has no weaknesses that govern your friendly smiles. His nigga is a dignant nigga, a pride nigga who stands on his own and the water that flows over his lips annihilates the segregation of your vocabulary which mirrors your life style. Malcolm X’s house negro who echoes your indignation of words, who escaped the harshness of the field, mirrors no other world than yours, and him you find tolerable, but the nigga who rules his street, but is not seen on yours, his vulgar strength bosoms you with hatred.

There’s a verile section, green like the spring’s meadow, short and small still like the first buds of the willows rising in early March from their hardened branches, a section of the American-English dictionary that says ‘Forbidden for Whites.’ Some clever tongues speak of it but not many, cause the rattle of a multitude is like an alarm of trouble ahead. Some will let you sit down on their benches and bring openly forward what is in our hearts, but this is America however, and the heart rules not on our lips.

This section of the dictionary is part of a language, a language that is like the wire between two rocks, the only understanding between men, and this language refines our thoughts as our vocabulary grows. But its words have fallen under the control of purists, puritans of the heart that is colored flesh, and they believe their power, which is the rule of their moral superiority, depends on their exclusive rights of language, like the Turks the Kurds, or the Moroccon Arabs the Berbs, they forbid to speak of it. Their colonial rule of the mind, whose slaves we have become as they shipped us to their fields, depends on this section of the dictionary and our disconnect of words, of understanding, of our hearts and minds, of our souls. Their exclusive hold that forbids us to speak of it, is a key that hides the sanctuary of men.

Now, agreed, I am not very religious, some might say I am not, although I would disagree with that notion based on semantics, and I am certainly not very sensivtive, and my heart speaks before my head, and I have stepped on many people’s tows, large and small tows. So, there are no sanctuaries, few at least holy rooms in my heart, and those who exist are not different than the rest of it, filled with words that have mostly form and representation. I speak of an eclectic space where the gravity of weight has been largely elevated to a disharmony, a playgarden of words, many of which are completely empty. Here words frolic around, happily mix together, not all speaking the same language, not all fitting similar shapes, and form a diversified set of phrases, hollow many, whose only occupation is the space they fill.

“Damn, nigga.”

I hear this word being used every day and by friends mostly, but despite its friendliness I am not to touch it, you say.

Read a variant of this article in Dutch on Boilingpoint.nl, entitled: The Macht van N.