BlackNotBlack.com

Slur Slips from Arza's Mouth

In a little-reported story out of Florida this week, state representative Ralph Arza left a message on a colleague’s voicemail in which he angrily referred to a third party as a nigger. You’ll notice something interesting about that previous sentence—the use of the word nigger. You don’t see it in print much. So at this juncture I’d like everyone to take a good long look at it.

Did everyone survive?

Arza, a republican who had behaved in exactly this fashion on a previous occasion, responded to this latest public flap with: “At times I have had difficulty controlling my emotions and anger. I have noticed that this problem is made worse on those occasions when I have been drinking. Saturday night was one of those occasions.”

So we have another public figure trying to suggest that alcohol made him a racist. As a person well-acquainted with both alcohol and racism, I’ll suggest that someone is a racist before they consume alcohol. Booze may loosen inhibitions, but it does not change one’s beliefs. Mr. Arza hates niggers all the time—he just isn’t stupid enough to admit it without a vodka assist.

I have friends in Arza’s home state of Florida and they confirm what is already well documented—it’s a stronghold of American racism. The farther north from Miami one ventures, the more overt it becomes. One white friend of mine who moved to Jacksonville from Los Angeles tells me he is constantly astonished how often “nigger” gets aired in a room where no blacks are present. So it’s possible the word slipped from Rep. Arza’s mouth because he simply forgot he wasn’t speaking to someone in his normal peer group.

Let's agree to forever hereafter call these sorts of episodes “pulling a Mel”, because like Gibson, Arza quickly issued a contrite and embarrassed apology, followed by a pledge to enter rehab and seek counseling. So in addition to asking us to believe his scripted apology wasn’t written by his press secretary, he wants us to believe six weeks of country club rehab can cast the evil from him the way Satan was driven from little Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist. Nevertheless, I don’t personally believe racism makes Arza bad—only flawed. Life is a journey to better oneself and Arza may have taken a big step if his apology was indeed sincere.

While it’s easy to hope that an individual will one day escape the ghetto of the mind, it’s more difficult to imagine the same can happen to an entire culture. In black culture (if we accept for a moment that uniformity exists in any culture) there is a glorification of the word nigger. Among a large segment of urban and young blacks the word nigger—or “nigga”—is akin to a vocalized pause, on par with “like” or “dude.” Among the middle and upper class the word is less prevalent, yet there’s widespread acceptance of (if some exasperation with) its usage by other blacks.

I’m not here to suggest that such glorification is wrong—those who do it have an associated rationale and people have the right to express themselves as they wish (unless they are congressmen who represent a constituency). I do notice, however, that to glorify the word nigger yet continue to allow it to possess almighty negative power when uttered by non-blacks is confusing to most observers of black culture. The rules are writ thus: usage of the word nigger/nigga is fine among blacks, but the moment a white person uses the word it’s an act of war.

Though the guidelines regarding usage of this racial epithet are convoluted, they aren’t unique. The idea that the meaning of a word changes according to who uses it is universally accepted. For instance, you might endearingly refer to your little brother as “fuckhead”, but if someone else does the same it’s time to fight. However, in any reasonable family the realization that outsiders have taken to referring to your brother as fuckhead would cause you to reconsider your usage of the term. You might even stop doing it. You might even give up insulting your brother and instead try to be supportive and positive. And if you failed to do so, others might believe that you had sacrificed the moral authority to chastise others for calling your brother fuckhead.


But populations don’t behave like individuals—at least not quickly. Since certain segments of black culture relish (and profit monetarily from) usage of the word nigger, and certain segments of non-black culture refuse to relinquish the illusion of power usage of the word bestows upon them, what is the solution for a black person who wishes to escape these constant reminders of his/her low status? Well, in my case, I simply left the United States. I didn’t do it for this specific reason, but it was in the back of my mind that escaping the racial crossfire might be an illuminating facet of the expatriate experiment. As it turned out, it wasn’t just illuminating—it was the best thing I ever did for myself.

And I’ll discuss why as these postings continue.

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posted by Egan Ehlers @ 1:01 PM