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So this has trended again this week i'd like to add some further thoughts from practical work in the streets/prisons
I am not judging anyone because as you all know I used to use nigga every 4th work practically but just wana highlight some things...
Lots of young black men in particular will claim that 'nigga' is now a term of endearment but they/we do not truly believe this.. example..
I do lots of writing workshops in prisons here (invariably filled with young black men) and I do a social experiment with them..
When they finish writing their raps about how many niggas they will shoot I don't judge them I just ask the following question/scenario
I tell them 'my mums white scottish, Glasgow/Belfast both more violent than London what would u think if I rapped about killing honkies?'
Without exception every young black man I've posed this question to has either laughed at the absurdity of said 'nah fam that's racist'
The inference is clear that we - like racists - value white life more than black life, no matter how we dress it up/deny it.
What's more if the biggest black rappers on earth started rapping about killing 'racist cracker cops' instead of other niggas we know result
Remember when Ice T made 'cop killer' and the US govt stepped in?
So while I obviously don't subscribe to the idea that music causes violence it's also a cop out to say culture is not massively important
And I am also a hypocrite because I still love my Mobb Deep, DMX, Lox etc so again no judgement but we have to be honest it's problematic
if you are black and having a convo with a brother trying to tell you nigga is positive ask him if his gran is a nigga he'll get offended
It's revealing that forms of black music made in Africa & the Caribbean do use the word at all unless consciously adopting a US influence
The Richard prior talk highlighted in this thread is brilliant on this. However we try2 dress it up nigga is intrinsically de-humanising
Obviously stopping from addressing eachother as such will not overthrow shit material conditions either but these are my thoughts.
I personally stopped using the word also because it made me uncomfortable having white kids shout it back to me at shows
The truth is no truly self respecting people promote and sell their own death, let alone to those that benefit from it most.
Those of us that are not black Americans and thus did not live through Jim Crow, spectacle lynchings etc can't really explain why we use it
Other than cos we like US rap music. The most oppressive decade in British racial history (80's) produced Lovers Rock and Rare Groove
The trench town of the 70's produced us Roots Reggae, Apartheid SA Hugh Masakela & Miriam, Nigeria gave us Fela
So it's not hardship but rather an admission of defeat and desperation imo. End of thread. Safe
Again not judging any1 I used to use it all the time and was a very naughty/violent/angry man at one time in my life, I get it.
Actually I would like to add to this thread with a couple points about blackness and violence, which I'm writing about a lot at the mo...
In both Britain & American popular culture and law enforcement the idea of 'black on black' violence has become a 'credible' idea...
The phrase suggests that whole other humans are violent for real material/historical/political reasons black ppl r violent cos black..
This idea is rooted in 19th century pseudo science but it has. it stopped some, even some self hating folks from asking basic questions like
When 'black on black' violence became a buzz word in U.K. media Northern Ireland was still a war zone and Glasgow more violent than London
Even from tridents own reports we see that vast majority of the 'black on black' shootings were by British Caribbeans or Jamaican nationals
So how did it make sense that British Ghanaians and Zimbabweans get included racial osmosis for something they not part of?
But if we admit that the problem was mostly British Caribbeans - including mixed race - more so than Africans obvious questions arise
Like how come the black group that's been in Britain the longest is doing by far the worst of all the black groups?
How come Jamaica is about 30x more violent than Ghana even though half of JA is Ghanaian in origin?
How come that outside of South Africa there is never usually a single African city in world top 50 for murder rate? (US usually has 3/4)
Additionally in a U.K. context violent working class youth gangs have been a constant for well over a century but if u know no history...
See: Hooligans Or Rebels by Humphries
The worst hoods in the UK have historically been in Glasgow, some having life expectancy as low as mid 50's until recently...
Accra by contrast has many many many challenges but kids stabbing eachother over iPhones and postcodes is not one of them.
But by focusing on visible black boys in London rather than what is a UK wide problem the state can pretend teenage violence was imported
explaining why so many American hoods are so much more violent than than African ones is not something eugenics explanations can help with
Black Americans literally 'less Black' (one drop rule) than continental Africans so by eugenics logic Accra should be worse than Chicago
And if the Nigerian civil war was 'black on black' why was the Japanese rape on Nanking not 'yellow on yellow'?
Lastly roughly as many Russians alone died fighting Nazis ('white on white' crime) as all Africans in all wars on the continent since WW2
It's almost as if the violence of humans racialised as black needs a proper human explanation. Mad I know.
In truth 'gansta' rap and 'niggerisation' helps obscure all this and makes black death an attractive commodity.
If working class youth violence has been a constant in British history for 150 years it's really no surprise what's happening today...
And given that roughy 80% of black Brits live in the poorest wards of the county and middle class Zimbabweans not going going jail/killing🤔
By Zimbabweans I mean Zim immigrants to U.K. who we all know are mostly middle class professionals.
None of this is 'excusing' the youngers just as understanding 'The Troubles' is not excusing any killers there, it's just understanding.
For Americans and others that don't know in London we had a whole police department dedicated to 'black on black' crime until recently
Many of their most high profile cases where mixed heritage men (like Mark Duggan) showing the UK state also likes US1drop rule.
And in Tottenham (where Mark was from) everyone knows organised crime is as much British Turks as BritCaribbean but hey 'black on black'
But anyway. Have a good evening all. 👍🏾
