Whoever said a picture was worth a thousand words was sorely mistaken, because the best pictures can transfer their meaning with only one word. The truth is that some words by themselves are worth a thousand words because their meaning wraps around our fundamental notions of the world itself. Love, hate and fear are just three words that can define almost everything around us. It’s primal shit like that people use to control us, to get us up to go to work every day, to make us bust our azz so that we don’t ever have to be with or without those three words.
The boogeyman is someone that we all fear. He lives under our bed or inside the darkened closet, but most of all the boogeyman lives in our hearts. He represents our fear of vulnerability. Forget about rational or irrational values because the boogeyman is real and he is out there somewhere, waiting to jump on us when we are relaxing and just minding our business. You can try to make me feel ashamed for being afraid of the boogeyman, but I retain this fear deep inside of me, and nothing you say can remove it from me. I know the boogeyman exists so you might as well be him.
The nigger is still the tragicomic hero of post-modernity. I have tried to explain to people that the word’s etymology describes someone’s profession and not their skin color. Whether you realize it or not, class is still the great divide among people in America. Have you ever met someone for the first time and been asked what you do? It’s as if you are defined by what type of work keeps your light bill paid. When America became an industrialized nation is when being a neggar held the lowest esteem. People were working in factories and offices, but if you were still in the field turning over crops and shoveling shitty ground you were just a lowly nigger.
As a matter of fact, even if you migrated to the industrialized centers to seek work you were still regarded as expendable so the name stuck with you. As a matter of fact you embraced the name as only you people can do. You made it your de facto endearment greeting. Nobody really took the time to examine how important the neggar really is. As the person who works directly with the foods that we will eventually consume you literally have the country’s health and well being in your hands. I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant last night and I realized how great a role the Mexican plays in my life. From harvesting, to delivery, to preparation, up to serving my table there were Mexican hands on my food. I guess I am really lucky that Mexicans dig DALLASPENN dot COM.
I didn’t wind up here by accident and I wasn’t kidnapped and shuttled to America. I was betrayed by someone that I thought would respect my freedom, because the color of his skin was the same as mine. White and Black is a purely fictional concept. That is the biggest fallacy that people have to deal with now. Wasn’t the African that sold my azz to the European traders at Goree Island also a Black man? You need to stop thinking that someone holds your values simply because they look like someone in your family. You can’t even get along with everyone in your family. I am not going to tell you to embrace any other folks just yet because there is still a system of privilege and supremacy firmly in place that other people have to openly recognize in order to dismantle.
Don’t hold your breath waiting on that either because the fear of being a neggar or worse, being captured by the boogeyman seems to be enough to keep everyone in their place. Just don’t let the world around you stop you from creating your own reality. Check for people that share your value system because that is where your community exists and it may mean getting to know a few Mexicans and a white or two.
Good post. Anyway, it’s like food… all races look the same in your stomach.
I look forward to your posts everyday. They are thought provoking and a good read. Keep up the good work.
all of us are the same. we just sound and smell different.
love how you ended the post.
So, what do you do for a living exactly?
I sell lil kids servives to discriminating cutomers.
“Mama that black man following us.” I find it amazing how people still tend to choose the most basic thing as a reason for discrimination. Or how people base their fears on something simple.
‘ You need to stop thinking that someone holds your values simply because they look like someone in your family ‘
As I have grown older, the more this idea becomes apparent to me
Check for people that share your value system because that is where your community exists and it may mean getting to know a few Mexicans and a white or two.
“…no truer words were ever spoken…
“Check for people that share your value system because that is where your community exists and it may mean getting to know a few Mexicans and a white or two.”
certain blogs, for instance.
Yet another amazing post with some damn haunting photos to back it up.
The best response to the “What do you do” question comes from the Juggernaut Video:
“I sell candy, I’ma part time stripper, AND I do hair”
I don’t do any of these things but that’s the answer I’ve been giving people because freelance writing is just too hard to explain.
Also, this post is beyond good work . . . It has to be the most insightful thing I’ve read all week. For fuck’s sake I’m amazed that you aren’t writing for the New Yorker of something like that . . .