Who is the Nigger? -James Baldwin (clip)

A clip from, "Take this Hammer"...
KQED's mobile film unit follows author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community.
Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a Negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now."

Full version: https://diva.sfsu.edu/bundles/187041

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  Education

[daseinwilliams]

Sorry, no. Nigga is never a term of endearment. Do you call your mom a nigga? Your grandmother? "Honey, dinner's ready!" "What nigga? I didn't hear you, grandmom."

As long as there is a historical memory of the word nigger, you can NEVER redefine it. It's self-delusion to think so. Blacks can never "reclaim" a word that was never theirs in the first place... a word created to subjugate them... It's sad that we have a biracial president yet the word is still necessary to so many of us.

[TheHamsterEater]

I just stopped by for the comments, and they have not failed to entertain.

[Rogers evan]

This reasoning is what Baldwin is protesting against.A description of someone is not a description of that person, but it is instead the description of the person who says it, saying something about someone else gives more detail about the person saying it than any amount of vocabulary can describe the other. Baldwins examining of the word nigger provokes rational self-realisation, by doing this you can reclaim the word nigger and can redefine it as a word of self expression, not discription

[Lolagoestohollywood]

Nope. That's like saying "bitch just means female dog" or "fag is just a cigarette" - words change meaning, and this word has changed its meaning to "person who is black and therefore less than human". That is what is meant by non-black people. That's what the word means.

[Lolagoestohollywood]

well, yes and no - people of color are ALL people who aren't white, not just black people. Thus, Black men, Asian Women, Native American children, etc. are all people of color.

[tonygriffin70]

The sad but at times humorous truth is that people think that the word is only exclusive to people of color. I will call ANYBODY a nigger that acts that way by definition, INCLUDING self-righteous, my Isht doesn't stink white people. Don't chew, just swallow....

[Ish Baraka]

Use the term "person of color" or "man of color", "woman of color", etc. It emphasizes the people of color are people first and are described by their skin color second.



[happydelicious]

lol...just look at them now. What proof do you need that the Negro was always the N-word? What I find funny is how so many dopey whites bought into this bullshit. As someone from the ghetto who rose up in class living with every different group, I'm sorry to say that the only N-words in the world for the most part are those traditionally labeled the N-word and dopey whites who are a minority of the whites. Seeing dopes confuses the issue and makes it seem that the white is an N-word too.

[BrandonBlaze904]

a nigger in denial who has built a fantasy world that wont and never will exist, the one where everyone is equal and everyone is the same and that everyone is a victim of circumstance, culture and environment.