How America Made Niggas!!! (Part III of Four: Greed and Jealousy) | Our Community

Anthony Samad

In the third part of this series of how the longest lasting “Made In America” commodity, Niggers, continue to survive and have great-grandchildren (Niggas), I must examine the crowning characteristics that promotes disunity and dysfunction amongst a once proud people, greed and jealousy. No matter what you think (or how you think) about this discussion on eradicating these words (and according to your e-mail responses, the discussion is now a national one), we cannot deny what African Americans, as a people, have become as a result of a four hundred year effort to frame Blacks in a sub-human context and marginalize their equality. What we once could not have (liberty, equality and property) because of law and culture, has turned to what we must have (and not necessarily want others to have). The social politic of mainstream access and limits that have been placed on Blacks (and others) have created what I call “the only one” syndrome that we, as a people, must somehow come up one at a time instead of all together. Instead of wanting for our brothas (and sistas) what we want for ourselves, many of us want everything for ourselves and nothing for our brotha. Many of us have developed this “only one” mentality that causes much consternation when another one of us joins the land of “milk and honey.” Instead of celebrating another black person’s success, we feel like we have to compete and are jealous of their very presence. Our greed (to have it all—by ourselves) turns to envy, then jealousy, then enmity. Minister Louis Farrakhan once said that “Envy is the Mother of Murder.”

So what do we now see in our communities? We see folk “hatin’” on each other because they succeed in pulling themselves up against seemingly impossible odds. We see our young men killing each other when one tries to “get out” of the cycle of self-destruction. We see our children dumbing themselves down, afraid to let their own lights shine for fear that somebody might think they’re “all that” and be assaulted (remember Akeelah and the Bee—scholar, John McWhorter calls it children suffering from fear of being seen as “Acting White”). So they play dumb—or act like Niggas, thus reinforcing what Whites once truly believed (and some still believe) that Blacks are inferior. We know our children are bright. What they are not—are inspired. We see black leadership fighting to be the HNIC (Head Nigger In Charge) so that they can deliver our communities to the feet of the economic and political power brokers outside our communities. And Niggas now do anything for money, from slangin’ drugs to sliding up and down on poles naked.

This form of niggerism escapes no segment of the community. From political leaders, to business leaders, to the preacher wars, all of them could be doing well but still are jealous of the preacher’s success across the way, or the businessman’s success across the way, or the politician’s success across the way. They have to be the only one—not a leader, but the leader. I call it, the “take me to your leader” syndrome. Black people are the only people that have to have “a leader.” This is a true vestige of slavery when the slavemaster would pick one “field slave” to come to the big house and express their concerns about the abuses of the overseer. In others words, “All you Niggers can’t come in my house—pick one.” And black people, 140 years after slavery has ended, are still fighting over who’s going to be the one to get into the house to speak to “Massa.” Everybody else can have multiple leaders, in every industry. Ask white people to take you to their leader. They damn sure wouldn’t take you to President Bush. They’ll ask you what you’re talking about. Because they’re taught, from the time they’re children, that they’re all leaders. That’s where the sense of entitlement comes from. A sense of entitlement that is absent in Niggerism, because the Nigger thinks that he’s the only one entitled and nobody else should be. Moreover, if he doesn’t “come up” then he wants nobody else to succeed either. And now we’re allowing black children to be taught that they’re all Niggas. We have, sho’ nuff, gone backwards when black people go from most white people thinking they’re Niggers to black people thinkin’ of themselves that same way.

So much so, that Comedian Damon Wayans has tried to trademark the word so he can commoditize “Nigger” by putting it on t-shirts. The U.S. Copyright Office has turned him down twice, but he intends to continue to pursue it. Just like a Nigger not to let their own greed get in the way of a whole people’s degradation. But there’s probably a whole bunch of people jealous that they didn’t think of it first. That’s how Niggas roll. They put greed and jealousy above all else.

Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America (Kabili Press, 2005). He can be reached at www.AnthonySamad.com