The “N” word…not just for Black folks anymore

This tired debate has been going on for too many years.  I am one of those individuals that hates this word.  I grew up using it too, and once it was funny to me.  I also felt like it was a personal thing when pronounced with “ga” at the end and not “er.”

If I slip and use it today, it blatantly flies back in my face as obscene.  Over the summer I accepted a long term substitute teacher position for one of the Juvenile Hall facilities where I live.  With these kids, (all boys and we refer to them as wards), it doesn’t seem to matter what race, all the boys use this word with the “ga” sound at the end.  I see White wards calling other White wards the “N” word, and I see Asian wards calling Black wards the “N” word.  What kills me is that all these kids use it in an appositive way, not reflecting race at all as if they were saying to each other “hey bro” or “dude!”

I try over and over again to correct them in class reminding these kids that the use of profanity is against school policy; but there is no stopping them.  It really bothers me to hear that word used at all.  It’s not a personal or affectionate thing for Blacks anymore.  It’s just a part of mainstream society and no matter how much we argue about it…you can’t stop it now.  I still don’t totally agree with how blatantly Whoopi Goldberg used it on The View and I question her response to something Elisabeth Hasselbeck said when she stated “…”We do live in different worlds …It isn’t balanced, and we would like it to be, but you have to understand, you have to listen to the fact that we’re telling you there are issues, there are huge problems that still affect us.”  -(2008, “EURweb.com”)

I don’t know where Sherri Sheppard and Whoopi Goldberg get the idea that, that word is a personal thing for Blacks only.  Maybe in their generation, but that has long since changed.  I hear that word being used by youths of every color and race everyday.  In my neighborhood grocery store I was standing in front of two young Asian teens, a boy and a girl, and the girl kept calling the boy the “N” word.   These ladies (Whoope and Sherri) are sheltered in Hollywood, but for those of us in the “trenches” of the real world there is a whole different reality outside of privilege and fame, at least in Northern California and the Bay Area that is how it is.

Now don’t get me wrong…..regarding her statements about race she makes a strong point, but one has to admit if we were making progress, how would anyone know?

We always hear how there are still issues, but what about the progress?  Has there really been none in the last 160 years or so?  Sure there has.  Has there been enough?  Hey there is always room for improvement, but it cannot be ignored that you will hear a person tell a bad story ten times and a good one once or twice.  It’s as if most like to harp on the bad and ignore that for the first time in history we have a Black presidential candidate.  If there was no change, and we lived in totally different worlds Thurgood Marshall would never have been nominated for a seat in the Supreme Court and Douglas Wilder would have never been elected Governor of Virginia in 1994.  Hey we can’t forget the landmark case that ended segregation in public schools Brown V. Board of Education.  I mean face it during Martin Luther King Jr’s day forty years ago having a Black Supreme Justice or Governor of a state was not heard of. 

Hey after all bad news seems to be entertainment.  People like scandals, warm fussy doesn’t sell as well.

The reminder that there have not been enough changes just keeps the negative vibe alive.  We can’t take that word back because everyone owns it now, not just Blacks from a different word.  Kids from all backgrounds and cultures are using it.  Twenty years ago if you weren’t Black and you used the word in the wrong company you could expect a beat down.  Today non-blacks use the word as the norm, same as with rap music.  So I ask in terms of the use of that word….where exactly are these so called different worlds Whoopi is talking about?

Is that to say that racism and separatism is a thing of the past?  Please….let’s not be stupid.  I have had my heart broken because of racism more than once.  I have been discriminated against in the workplace and coming to terms with it the first time it happened was hard.  I believe that in this imperfect world that we live in we will never cure racism, and the use of that word now is out of control.  I may not like it, and others may agree with me; but the truth that we all have to face is that we can’t stop it.

Hey we can’t even get these kids to pull up their pants.  If you can stop the youth and famous people like Whoopi Goldberg from using the term and manage to get a least twenty people in one small room to agree that the use of it is wrong….well we all know that is not going to happen…

 

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZO.html

Douglas Wilder bio  http://www.vahistorical.org/sva2003/wilder.htm

Elisabeth Hasselbeck in tears over Whoopi’s View http://news.bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view/2008_07_18_Liz_in_tears_over_Whoopi%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%98View%E2%80%99/srvc=home&position=6

Martin Luther King Jr. bio   http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html

Thurgood Marshall bio   http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/tmarsh.htm

Whoopi and Elisabeth spar over Jesse’s use of the “N” word   http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur45356.cfm

Diary of a teenage mother 21 years later…..

I have been following this story about the “teen pregnancy pack” in Gloucester, Mass.  It amazes me all the press it has gotten.  Check out PoynterOnline for complete coverage at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=67&aid=145862

Now as a teen mother two decades later I would like to share my experience.  I got pregnant at 17 years old and I can tell you first hand that peer encouragement had a lot to do with it. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying one of my peers pressured me into getting pregnant. I saw it as a way to get out of the house. Plus in my eyes there was a lot of romance associated with the thought of getting pregnant. The government wasn’t shy about proving assistance back in the 1980’s, when I got pregnant with my daughter either.  Not only did I do it on purpose I planned it so that I wouldn’t have the baby until I was 18 years old. That way my family couldn’t force me into giving the baby up for adoption. My best friend had a baby when she was 16. She got on welfare and she started investigating everything she needed to know about other forms of assistance and low-income housing for single mothers. I was right by her side learning all the ends and outs of being a single mother on welfare too. She was still at home living with parents that accepted the choice she made. I knew for me it would not be so easy, especially since my parents would not be so accepting. So I decided to wait just a little longer to get pregnant, but by the time I was 16 I knew I wanted a baby.

Anyway, back to the glamour of it all. We had fun during her pregnancy. I watched her body change. I felt her baby kick, and I was one of the first to show up at the hospital to visit her the day her baby was born. He was so tiny and sweet.

I was so jealous. I wanted a perfect little baby to fill a void I had in my life back in those days too. I was an unhappy kid trying to escape the pain of abandonment and loneliness. My mother abandoned me to my father and left when I was 2 years old. She had several children before me that she had also abandoned. She was never really able to bond with any of us or our children for that matter. By the time I was 12 my father had been married 3 times. To say the least it was very difficult having stepmothers.  

My first love was my high school sweetheart. I imagined us against the world. Now I wasn’t trying to trap him into marrying me. I had heard it was harder to get welfare if you were married and I didn’t want him to mess up my chances of getting aid, so I was just happy with the thought of us living together. It was never a question of marriage. What kind of crazy thinking was that? I can only say that it was because I was so young that I just didn’t understand the gravity of my situation.

See the problem with this level of thinking…..or lack of thinking is that most young people are not mature enough to consider the needs of the child. Some people are just too selfish, but I never though about how painful it was going to be for my daughter to be raised in a single parent household without her father. I never thought about the challenges of getting a good job, all the sleepless nights I spent worrying about money; because I learned as the days passed, once she was born, welfare was not going to be enough.

I spent a good portion of her childhood in college. Unfortunately many of my friends that had babies early did not choose the same path that I did. My girlfriend from high school ended up addicted to drugs. She had a few more children a few years later and all of them ended up in foster care. She spent most of their adolescense in and out of prison. I lost contact with her many years ago. Over the years I would contact her family from time to time, but at some point I stopped looking back. 

I was a lonely teenager whose parents were wrapped up in their careers. I got caught up with the wrong crowd and relied on my friends to see me through the tough times, which we didn’t know at the time we were causing ourselves. I needed a strong mentor, and I didn’t have one. I can’t say enough about spending time with our children, and being the support they need.

Can we irradicate teen pregnancy? I don’t think we will ever stop it, but addressing the problem is a move towards prevention. Changing how it is viewed would help too. Especially in Hollywood with characters like Juno….and real life teenage celebrety Jamie Spears who as we know are both being glamorized. This in my opinion is just plain stupid…not good at all.

Back in the early 90’s there was a TV sitcom fictional character named “Murphy Brown.” She was successful, professional, witty, beautiful, and very single.  At some point during the shows run in the 90’s the Murphy Brown character had a baby that she was determined to raise as a single parent. In a 1992 speech Vice President Dan Quayle spoke out against glamorizing this fictional character’s life style. Murphy Brown’s insistence on raising her baby without a father supported the life style of an independed successful woman that didn’t need the financial support or presence of a man…you know “sistas are doing it for themselves.”

Vice President Quayle’s got a lot of negative feedback after his speech. Many folks started subcribing to the belief that there is nothing wrong with this lifestyle. That to me is a lot of drama. I believe his speech had more to do with the Murphy Brown character mocking the importance of fathers helping raise children in the home, not so much that he had an issue with working mothers. My take on it is that fathers, (and in some cases mothers), should be viewed as more than an extra household income. They are a part of the child, and the child needs their love and support too. I have a link to an article highlighting the story ( Exra, 2006) http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2006/10/speechwriter_wh.html 

When I look back on being a single mother, I can say that it was hard, but not just on me. I know in today’s economy most women have to work outside of the home, married or not. I was a working woman….and a college student with a young daughter to look after. So how did that turn out. Well my daughter is now 21 years old. She too is a college student with no children. So yes the chain can be broken, and the two, (working and raising a child), can be done at the same time but let’s be honest…..a working mother has a much harder job keeping up with the flow of what goes on in her home when she is not there.

We can’t be divided when raising children. We have to give 150%.  What I can say from experience is that we have to think about what is best for our children. It was very hard on my daughter being raised without her father. She missed him terribly, just as much as I missed my mother. How in the world did I put myself in the position of discounting her feelings when I had been through the same thing having a parent abandon me too. 

I have learned from being a teenage mother, and associating with other teenage mothers that most of us didn’t know to think about what is best for our children before we have them so young. I never thought about my unborn babies feelings. I don’t thing I was mature enough to do so in the first place. We as people and parents are not the only ones affected by our life styles and decisions. We need to think of our children’s needs, and spend time nurturing them, and teaching them the differences between right and wrong. That has to be taught from birth, because if not I am sure many of us know how hard it is to try and start teaching a child right from wrong when they are older, even teenagers. 

Knowing the difference between right and wrong is the only way we learn common sense, and for crying out loud we need to be parents, that’s our primary job before anything else is to parent our children….let’s not leave that up to their peers….heck most of those kids still need their parents too.