It was a beautiful autumn day in 1984. I was shopping with my mom at Caldors, now replaced by a store called K-Mart. I don’t know what we originally went to buy, but we ended up buying a big black leather like chest for me to store all of my toys inside of it. It was so
big, we both had to carry it out of the store, across the parking light to our family’s maroon Volvo. The chest was big enough to fit a small body inside of it.
My mother’s skin was fair, very light and she had long fine jet-black curly hair. People usually mistook her for being anything but Black. They mostly thought she was Hispanic. People would just walk up to her speaking Spanish. I didn’t understand why they would do this. To me she was just mommy.
So there we were, almost dragging this chest across the concrete parking lot, when an elderly white man walked by us and spit at us. He yelled,
“Damn niggers! You need to use that to go back where you came from!” My mom yelled back,
” You brought us here! You take us back!”
“Go back to Africa, that’s where you all belong!” At the time, I didn’t understand what either of them meant. We were from Jersey, so it’s where I thought we belonged. My mom stopped and dropped her side of the chest while I was still trying to drag it on my own.
“Mommy, what’s a nigger?” I asked looking up to her.
“He’s a nigger!” She yelled at the white man. “Nigger means ignorant! He’s a nigger!” The old man continued to walk inside the store. My mom was so disturbed and angry. I’d never seen her so mad. Her light skin turned red, her eyes began to swell up with tears. Once we got to the car, she unlocked the truck and lifted it by herself. We sat in the car, and drove home in silence.
That was my very first memory of racism; the second time was not long after moving into the suburbs of South Orange, New Jersey. A town that was predominately white. My elementary school was in Maplewood, which was the next town over from South Orange, so my mom decided to familiarize herself with the area by driving around the neighborhood. We saw a small quaint park and decided to stop… We pulled into a parking space where a white lady and her daughter were sitting. Her mom turned to look at our car, she appeared to be frightened by the sight of us. She immediately locked her car doors and told her daughter to sit back. She pressed the gas so hard that he wheels screeched as she took off. The women’s reaction didn’t make sense. I didn’t even want to get out of the car anymore. I asked my mom if we could just go home. It was that exact moment that I actually didn’t want to be black. There was absolutely nothing I could do to change the color of my skin. It was and is the way I am born, and I’ll die black.
Today, we have a new title for black; we’re called African American. Although, I find myself struggling with this appointed title everyday. I’ve been in America my entire life and embarrassingly have never left the country, yet I do not feel American and do not know its culture. I dwell it this land, abide by the laws and yet feel no true connection to the founding fathers of its nation. For years, black kids and their people are told and taught only of their slavery ancestry. We constantly throw the N-word around as though it holds no power over us, and truly for me it doesn’t, but that’s like saying I’m not bothered if someone calls me out of my name. I think it’s all in one’s perception.
So how do I explain and define this word to my son when he becomes of age? What do I tell him? I have few
ideas. I can start by giving him the origin and root of the word, and then bring him up to date in how rappers and comedians use this word today to entertain their audience. Admittedly, even I have used the word jokingly amongst friends and family, but hearing it come out of someone of another race’s mouth has been quite offensive. I recently saw a video of 3 little white boys no older than 10 years of age dancing to some hip-hop song. They were completely off beat and corny as they tried to rap along to the lyrics and all I caught or even understood was them using the using the N-word. That was not okay… I’m sure they knew no better, but where are the parents, and can I blame the parents if my own race still condones the use of the word within their own songs?
Sure we can all argue that it’s just a word, and for some it truly is just a word, but for our elders who fought against this word, and for my mom who on that day back in 1984, and the younger me, it was not and did not feel like just a word. For years, I never said it, not even jokingly and no one around me said it. It was the word we heard only in movies like, Roots, The Color purple or old documentaries focusing on Civil Rights. Back then we weren’t aloud to forget the origin of something and today it’s as though people celebrate the knowledge of knowing it and then using it like it’s a word of strength and compliment. I’ve often heard celebrities say, “it’s just a word” that’s their excuse for going along with the consensus of those who’d like for us to forget the origin of the word. I can not take the history away from the word and the power behind it, but I did not learn it from listening to music, and no one in my household spoke this word. It was a different time, where words carried weight and this particular word carried a lot of pain especially for me.
Beautiful Joi 