Page 20
Nigger VS White
By: Dwight Jones
[continued from page 5]
Despite all of the above I am quite
comfortable speaking the word nigger
or hearing the word used by someone
else regardless of the race. Admittedly
I have never been called a nigger by a
White person probably because I am
one of those big-black-greasy looking
niggers that some people think twice
about tangling with. But if it were
to happen I would merely laugh-out-
loud while saying to myself, "well that
makes you ten-times a nigger accord
ing to Dr. Leaky's summation regard
ing Ms. Lucy's skeleton.
But more importantly my sense of
comfort stems from my upbringing
relative to the fact I was always in the
midst of strong Black men. It all start
ed with my daddy, Evans Jones Jr. who
instilled manners and honor into my
character when I was six years begin
ning on my first day of school. Clearly
I recall his last words that day of"come
here son, remember, keep your shirt
tail tucked inside of your pants, and
use your handkerchief when you wipe
your mouth and cough or sneeze."
My dad was insane with that always
carry a handkerchief stuff. One Sun
day when I was about ten years old he
gave me one of his customary pops in
the center of my butt for not having
my handkerchief. When I complained
to my uncle John Ferguson about my
dad's tough disciplinary approach, he
responded "a gentleman should al
ways carry a clean white handkerchief
in case a lady decides to cry."
Additionally, my daddy was the tenth
Black fireman hired by the city of
Winston-Salem in 1954 when I was six
years old. The original four Black fire
man of the city literally integrated the
south as no Black firefighters were em
ployed by a municipality beneath Bal
timore Maryland. Consequently they
surely heard their fair share of the use
of the word nigger while conducting
inspections of residential and business
properties belonging to White slum
lords. Still the more they received
those nigger worded insults, the
brighter they made their white uni
form shirts causing many Black people
throughout community to view them
as heroes.
At any rate I find it to be quite comical
when I hear tl)e word nigger coming
from someone's mouth even when it's
a bird. While living in Atlanta for two
years while attending cosmetology/
makeup school, I had to wear a white
lab jacket. Being too lazy to wash and
press them, I started dropping them
off at a dry cleaner. The first morning
that I opened the door, immediately,
the most beautiful bird imaginable,
sounded off with a loud whistling
sound and then said: "nigger at the
counter" - "nigger at the counter" -
"nigger at the counter."
So when a White lady came to the
counter I asked, what did that bird just
say, "neighbor at the counter" was her
answer. My response was it sounded
August 2013
as though he said nigger at the coun
ter which drew a "Pete would never say
something like that." Anyway for the
next twenty something months, every
Monday morning Pete would greet
the White customers by their proper
names by saying "good morning Mr.
Smith or Mrs. Jones but continued to
greet me with a loud whistle and say
ing "nigger at the counter" three times.
Ole Pete even had the nerve to say
"by nigger" - "by nigger" every time
I opened the door to leave. But that
did not stop me from shopping at that
business. In fact, whenever the lady
went to the rear of the building to get
my clothes, I flipped both of my mid
dle fingers at the bird, gave the"bird-
the-bird" while saying "bird-go-to-
hell"-"bird-go-to-hell every time nig
ger at the counter echoed throughout
the building. After of few months of
looking forward to exchanging verbal
trading verbal jabs
with Pete and enjoying every minute
of it, the white people dropped the
seventy-nine cent of my bill making
the total an even six dollars, giving me
vegetables from their garden, while
make my lab jackets whiter-an-whiter!
Interestingly yesterday while working
on this column, I had to take a break
to prepare dinner for my 86 year old
mother. Upon coming to the kitchen
table she asked, "you doing ok with
your writing," doing ok?" but it's a
sensitive subject to discuss so I need
to be careful was my response. Then
I asked, do you think that papa Ruth,
her daddy, Rufus McCollum Johnson,
was ever called nigger after he walked
17.7 miles to work and back (over 34
miles all total) from Germanton NC to
Winston-Salem during his 54 year ten
ure of working at RJ Reynolds Tobacco
Factory #8. "Every day, all day long"
was her answer, to which I respond
ed, "what did he say about it?, "Oh he
would say you better study hard so
you don't haf to work in Reynolds!"
Then silently I began to say, if grand
daddy were not willing to ignore the
sound of the word nigger, the third
and fourth child of his clan of thirteen
would not have earned their scholar
ships to Floward University! Then after
graduating. Aunt Ella would not have
been capable of serving as an Eng
lish professor at Howard for 38 years
which allowed my cousin Pat to grad
uate from Princeton before finishing
Yale Law School.
Plus if my grand daddy would have
gotten all "bent of shape"
over the word nigger, my uncle, Ra
leigh Johnson would not have gone
to Howard before and after WWII (
Navy Corpsman) to become a biolo
gist. Upon returning home, he ac
cepted a position teaching biology at
Winston-Salem Teachers College. But
after completing the fall and spring
semesters, he went to the chancellor
and stated that he "felt inadequate
teaching biology after studying un
der Charles Drew for five years, two
of which Dr. Drew was his adviser"
-"Medicine is my field!" My uncle had
been accepted at Meharry Medi
cal School, but came home to have a
kidney operation. Consequently, the
chancellor granted him permission to
draw up the charter that started the
School of Nursing at Winston-Salem
Teachers College, currently Winston-
Salem State University. Thank God my
grand daddy did not let the word nig
ger keep him from educating his chil
dren, otherwise maybe the hundreds
of registered nurses that graduated
from WSSU would not be capable of
fulfilling the rigorous demands of that
profession.
Also after fighting in WWII, my uncle,
Harold Edmond Johnson, moved to
the Bronx in New York, and started
working as a busboy in a five star res
taurant in downtown Manhattan. As
he worked his way up from busboy to
head maitre d', he was called nigger
on many occasions. Yet he never
thought about quitting his job or get
ting fired for fighting. As a result, my
cousin Derrick earned an under grad
uate and law degree from Columbia
University where he served as the edi
tor of the Columbia Law Review. From
there he became a successful prac
ticing attorney before the first Black
mayor of New York, the honorable Da
vid Dinkins asked him to serve as chief
counselor heading the teams of bor
oughs throughout New York having to
park his Lamborghini in order to ride
in a chauffeured driven iimo. From
there he took an executive counseling
position at Time Warner Cable before
moving on to serve as the executive
director of the famous Apollo Theater.
All this was made possible because my
grand daddy and his children paid ab
solutely no attention to the racist word
nigger.
Surely I did not reveal the preced
ing information pertaining to my es
teemed love ones as braggadocio, but
to illustrate how that people who are
relevant in my life used what some
people deem as negative to stimulate/
motivate them above the idiocy of the
word nigger. Nigger, a word designed
for the purpose of degrading its vic
tims while to insulting them. The de
fense against "nigger" is to understand
why the word exists in the first place.
The word nigger according to white
America is defined as a last, stupid,
worthless, irresponsible creature that
was solely dependent upon whites
with that in mind and returning to the
theme of irony, why would a person of
such supremacy make a treacherous
voyage across the ocean to drag back
a worthless good for nothing nigger
to your"Shining City on the Hill.?"
I will tell you why. Jesus Christ said
"Judge Ye Not. For the same mete that
you judge with shall be use to judge
you." In other words, when ever a white
person uses the word nigger he/she is
realiy looking in the mirror. The only
that an African-American can over
come the caricature/depiction trap is
to study; to demonstrate again that
striving to overcome roadblocks
placed in our path. In fact the great
est marvel of modern America is the
Americanized African. That people
rose from incalculable depths sur
vive the furnace and crucible which is
America, the so-called greatest coun
try in the world. So study and come to
realize that you are not a "taker" but
the exact opposite a "giver." Realize
the same people who label you with
derogatory terms as "takers" are in fact
speaking about their ancestors.
After all, the table was set when huge
waves of immigration came in the
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1800s.The first wave provided a haven
for the Famine Irish, Germans and oth
ers. The next wave of immigrants were
largely made up of Eastern and South
ern Europeans (Russians, Italians, Jew,
Poles, etc.,) who arrived from the mid
1880s to roughly 1915. When both
groups arrived they were the takers
and they took advantage of African's
enforced free labor. By the time the
immigrants arrived the white cotton
balls that were planted by the black
hands and fingers of the Americanized
African iiteraily covered dark rich soil
of the Alabama Black Belt and the Mis
sissippi Delta. The white balis of cotton
planted by the Americanized African is
what brought the European to Ameri
ca. That's RightI Cotton was the num
ber one export of the United States un-
tii the Civil War.The Shipping, banking,
and insurance, industries all benefited
from the slave trade as Europeans im
ported themselves. Some of invest
ment and venture capitai - funded
the new inventions of the Industrial
Revolution. The black man/woman in
America has contributed like no other
people to the American way of life yet
their descendents are iabeied "takers."
If you do not like being called "nig
ger" come back home. Return to your
neighborhoods. Rid yourself of the dis
ease that Malcolm X called "White-itis".
The ice is stiii as cold in the black com
munity as in the white community.
Your children can still learn in the same
neighborhoods you grew up in. Come
home. Teach us to beautify our iawns
like the iawns you iove so much in the
white neighborhoods. After ail, we are
people judged by the color of our skin.
Therefore, when they come to elimi
nate poor blacks you are next. Come
home! Come home! Willie Lynch let my
people go.!
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