I'd like to talk briefly about linguistic constructions of racism and you and I have talked about this quite a bit. And I was wondering if you can illuminate our audience regarding the historical foundations of the N word, as I feel many actually have no real reference to its establishment. >> Wow, this is a real tricky one as this is something I try to deconstruct, unpack, disrupt into a rut in my hip hop studies class. Because again, it's so ubiquitous throughout rap music and hip hop culture. But again, drawing on Malcolm X's work and its teachings, the word, the N word is connected to a kind of Orlando Patterson talks about a social death, right? So the social death, the cultural death, the political death, why? Because the word negro is going to be connected and associated with necro right, meaning you go back to Latin death dead. And many people believe that this word associated with blackness may be associated with the fact that when many folks in Europe died they're going to turn darker and darker and darker the longer they are dead. So this association if you will of blackness with death become something that's really really powerful. That literally it's almost as if that N word is almost to a certain extent like saying that we are walking dead. I'm making reference to T V shows and stuff. But anyway I'm just saying it's almost as if we have suffered a political defeat of political death, a cultural defeat, a cultural death, a social defeat, a social death and economic defeat and economic death song. So what else is racial colonization if we're not talking about the super imposition of another culture onto our cultures, right. And so again it becomes really I think important for us to emphasize this whole notion that the origins of that particular word, the N word are so bound up with many people's conceptions of the African holocaust of the enslavement of our people of racial colonization. I mean, how many people realize that even the name of one of the most beautiful, lovely countries in Africa associated with the N word Nigeria, the word, I mean, the name of that country was created by British people. >> Absolutely, >> Inward area. That's what Nigeria means, inward area. Go look it up, I mean, this is a class good students, but you've got to be an active agent in your own education. Go and look it up, let's see what we're talking about. But even, I mean, still to this day in word area, Nigeria, inward area. So this association, if you will of the people with a certain kind of death. And again, I'm very influenced on this by Orlando Patterson slavery and social death, but this whole notion of death and dying and you and I both know, it seems like America has an addiction to black death. What else is a lot of gangster rap music, if people are not narrating the constant death and dying that's going on in the hood and the slums and the body of so on and so forth? Right, so it becomes really important to sort of grapple with what does death look like for people living in white supremacist society. So that N word business, yeah, that associate that utter sort of collapsing if you will of our African Itty into a certain kind of social, cultural and political debt. >> Wow again dropping these provocative broad questions and and foundations on you, but just the way you are able to package it and are able to keep tying it back into political economy, economic economics are cultural and social systems is. Just I think a really important thing for many, many people to hear who don't really realize the deep impact of race and racism, particularly in this country, but also globally. >> Absolutely Sean listen, can I add on real quick, we don't have a dialogue. How we do but so the question becomes Sean, what is it that there's only one group in the country? United States of America that every 30 seconds and some of these songs, people are constantly saying the N wrd if you turn on. I mean if you play some of this music every 30 to 45 seconds, somebody is saying the N word. I don't know another group where a racial slur is allowed to constantly be. Again, I'm not trying to please I am not saying that people should censor or police gangster rap. Please do not try to police black we're tired of that,, right? What I'm saying though, there's something that's going on institutionally in the government and the largest super structure of this society where most people, it seems to me have been desensitized to the N word. It's in all the music, it's in all the movies, including those by Quentin Tarantino. >> Absolutely, >> Right, there's a lot of Hollywood white directors who a lot of their narratives are predicated on that mythic understanding of the N word. Now, for many of the hip hoppers, the N word represents what highfalutin society, they would call the anti hero, right? Or if you want to just break it down even further with the Brothers on the block and the Sisters on the block, we talk about rooting for the underdog. So this is the first, that there is no way you can survive that you're not going to make it out a lot sound like the middle passage, don't it? So again, this whole notion of the anti hero and so for me, the gangster rapper embodying that thug, that hustler, that drug dealer, that player, that outlaw, that rebel. To a certain extent, is that Sean a 21st century African American articulation of the anti hero. Okay, who's always full of controversy and contradictions, everybody loved James Dean controversy, contradictions. People love how is it that so we try to say only white male characters are allowed to be controversial and contradictory. And so now what we're also then talking about if we move away from that word, I want to challenge hip hoppers and just black folk in general to be we can be more creative if they've been sitting around calling us the N word since 1441 right? The 15th century, 16th century and so on and so forth, can we get more creative about racial nomenclature? What is it that we want to we know what the enslaver called us, we know what the colonizer called us, we know what the racial old pressures called us. But what is it that a liberated black person, What is it that they want to call themselves though? I don't need to base everything I do off of my what some in slaver called my ancestors, what some colonizer called my answer. I'm much more creative than that, and I'd like to think you're much more creative than that as well, so we don't have to you and I we don't have to go around calling ourselves, trying to talk about is a term of endearment. You know what, I try to meet the gangster rappers where they are, but Sean you've seen it firsthand. Once I meet them, I'm like sly and the family stone, I'm trying to take them hi, I'm trying to take, so what about raising consciousness? So if I meet the student, the 18, 19 years old and they calling themselves the N word or they think it's cool and all that. I would like to think after sitting in the class and being actively engaged in the class for 16 weeks, they might have a different understanding of that N word because that's our job. We're supposed to give them the backstory, most people don't know the backstory. That's our, that's why African American studies is so necessary, it is so needed. That's why African Studies hey, it's so necessary and so needed, that's why Caribbean studies is so necessary. And so most people have no real relationship with African culture, continental or die scoring. That means on the African continent or off the African continent here in the Americas and the Caribbean, something so forth. And if that's the, if that's the case, that's, I'm not going to blame folks for what they don't know, I'm going to get off in their roll up my sleeves and do the work and try to teach and share the culture that that's quintessential to African culture. We're supposed to share it. >> Absolutely, >> Right, and so again, I do think that a lot of so called black black people have unique conceptions when it comes to race. Like what, what that means? How do we define that? And a lot of times you go to some of these beauty shop barbershops, these these mosques, these churches, these synagogues. A lot of times when you ask them to start talking about race, what they really going to talk about this culture?
