Is it time for this word, and all its derivatives -- including the hip-hop term "nigga" -- to be abolished from the English lexicon? More to the point, should Black people stop using the word, whether in hip-hop, in comedy, in movies and television or other entertainment? Are we giving White people permission to use it by claiming to "appropriate" it ourselves? (And we certainly don't like it when the word becomes a pictorial...) Have we so internalized the notion of our own inferiority and marginalization that we now use the term reflexively, and self-destructively, without even realizing that we are contributing to our own dehumanization? (A legal case in Brooklyn could hang on whether the word has become so mundane that White people can no longer be called racist just for uttering it.)
The web-site AbolishTheNWord.com has touched a nerve around the world, and has renewed this debate. We had the co-founder, Jill Merritt, on the radio show today, as well as Michael Eric Dyson, who -- along with others, like comedian Paul Mooney -- is on the other side of the argument. Check out Jill and Kovan Flowers' web-site. I dare you not to be viscerally affected by the images of slavery and lynching that Merritt and Flowers say are inexorably tied to the word. So should the word be stricken? (Image credit: Lynching in America)
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
