Father’s Day doesn’t receive the support that Mother’s Day receives. As
I have observed this phenomenon, I have concluded that there are many
reasons. There may be an assumption that mothers are loved more, or
fathers loved less. I think the real answer lies in performance.
Dave Chappelle finally figured it out. The
classic metaphor of Smokey Robinson’s Tears of A Clown, playing out on
national television. Before Oprah and the whole world, he realized he
had become the latest generation of Stephin Fetchit, Amos n’ Andy, and
the long line of comedic buffoonery that, under the guise of comedy,
made a fool of him and engrained degrading images of his race for
decades to come.
Earl Woods was a black man who passed on his love of a game to his son.
Tiger Woods may have never
acknowledged what race he was, but there was no doubt of what his
father was, and the game of golf saw Tiger through the prism of his
paternal bloodlines.
Nigger pathology is something America, black
and white (and now Brown and Yellow), has yet to overcome. “We Shall
Overcome” was the mantra of the 20th Century Civil Rights, and we have
overcome a few things (not many). But one thing we, fo’ sho’, have not
overcome is this Nigger pathology.
In the second part of this series, I want to
examine why African Americans, Blacks, Negroes, Negritudes (whatever we
choose to call ourselves) can’t seem to escape the word Nigger—and its
afterbirth, Nigga.
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.
Niggerism is just not an invention of sub-human capacity, it’s a
circumstance that many Blacks, in most cases, choose not to overcome.
Many of our people act a certain way and call being it “hard” or
“keeping it real,” but only become examples of how the media and
mainstream wants to portray the whole race.
With the widespread, poverty, homelessness,
unemployment, underemployment, unhealthiness and criminality in the
Black community, a new model of entrepreneurship needs to emerge.
