If you are easily offended by history, and the muscle memory mnemonics of words like — nigger — then you should not read the rest of this article. Over the many decades we’ve been publishing original work online, one word keeps popping back up for examination in various memes. Yes, that word is — “the N-word” — and we just call it like it is here, because that’s how Nigger has been used in the context of life beyond the Uncanny Valley.
Is Barack Obama a figurehead Chia Pet for commercial exploitation? Or is he more substantial than heroin on the street? What is the Obama trope and how does it extend into our lives and flay us from the minority interest and the “Nigger Disconnect?”
Continue reading → The Nigger Disconnect and the Obama Trope
I suppose it had to happen sooner than later.
Continue reading → Rove and Clinton: Drums of Racism Banging Obama
“Hand me that bowl of Nigger toes,” my grandfather shouted at me across a large oak table filled with family and holiday dressings for Thanksgiving dinner.
I must’ve been around eight-years-old at the time and before I could ask him — what bowl of who — his two daughters, one of them my mother, shouted back at him, “Dad! We don’t talk like that here!” He shrugged them off and pointed at me, “There, boy. By your hand. Shove over that bowl of Nigger toes!”
I love words. I love writing words. I love reading words. I love hearing words. I have a new WordPunk blog that deals with “words in the wilds.” The power of words is in their definition. Words have meanings only because they are shared in context and understood between people. Dictionaries help bridge the fuzzy confusion between definition and meaning. Imagine, then, my delight and horror in receiving this email from a university professor friend of mine:
Word came down from above that we are no longer allowed to use “niggle” or “niggly” or any variety thereof in writing or speaking with students because “they sound and look too much like that other word” (the N-word) and we don’t “want to upset the student body.” I thought they were joking at first until I also saw a warning against using “spook” in class, too.
Is the Republican Party in the USA Racist? Are the GOP — “The Grand Old Party” — kind to Blacks and other minorities, or is their entire purpose and strategy to demonize Blacks and win elections off their backs while only pretending to want and welcome Black skin into power?
In examining 
the Don Imus controversy over the last few days here in our Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line articles — I now realize when one ponders on the core purpose of this Urban Semiotic blog — one cannot escape the hard reality that an “Urban Semiotic” has most powerfully come to mean in this blog the matter of Black skin and its place in The American Dream.
Time and again many of our most poignant and powerful articles published here have addressed Racial issues in America — and that necessary, and sometimes uncomfortable dialog — has been examined and perpetuated in conversations here that are as invigorating as they are enlightening and, for that, I thank you.
If you have a favorite Urban Semiotic article that deals with Race and The Color Line, I would appreciate it if you would provide the title and a link in your comments — along with your reason for picking the article(s) — so we can create a new thread of understanding, a new way forward, and a context for the history and the now that we have tried to covet and change when it comes to getting along with each other beneath the barriers of our skin.
Continue reading → The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green
The Rev. Al Sharpton wants Don Imus fired for Racist remarks Imus made on-the-air last week about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
I agree with Al Sharpton even though I have written positively about Imus here in the past.
Sometimes there are things spoken that are so inconsiderate and so hurtful that no apology and no excuse can ever erase the psychological and physical damage done.
Imus, and his show Imus in the Morning, allegedly have a well-documented history of Racism and intolerance and he needs to immediately and permanently leave the airwaves:
Continue reading → Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos
As we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the United States, 
we are faced with the questions of antiquity that have bothered and constrained humankind: Do we still judge people by color?
Do we still prefer violence over getting along with each other and the world?
It is possible in any way to reclaim our tainted and lost humanity?
I wish those in the churches and the mosques and the community living rooms and the religious leaders would stand up to the politicians and say, “Don’t go to war in God’s name.
Don’t ask for our prayers to cover your bloodshed.
Don’t seek our religious protection for your unholy political wars.
Don’t ask for our faith votes in the polling place. Leave religion out of your killing fields.”
That kind of religious rebellion against the politicians would remove the brush cover from political fanatics who pretend they are doing God’s work in the fields of war by killing those who are of darker skin and lesser opportunity than those wielding the staff and the cross.
I have resisted posting about this topic because I didn’t want to encourage even more hate on the web, but now that some time has passed and more protections have been set in place, I am prepared to tell you on January 16, 2006 — Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America — something awful happened here.
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