The instructor asked us if anybody used the N word.
I raised my hand and said I did.
None of the black people in the class
admitted that they did, although I had heard them.
Usually entre nous. Especially not in front of a white person.
I said I didn’t use it as a term of address, I used it as
a term of reference. As in, I wonder what that nigger wants,
or, I wonder if that
nigger is a threat to me.
I said that that’s the way I thought.
In the demotic. One black person said,
“He called me a nigger.” And the instructor said,
“Look at him, he’s not even ashamed of himself.”
For what? For telling the truth?
What I learned is that the term is so explosive
and polarizing you not only can’t say it,
you can’t admit you think it.
It’s thought-control right out of
Nineteen Eighty-four.
It’s Newspeak and Doublethink.
Aristophanes’ The Frogs?
No, Ray Milland’s The Frogs.
Filmed at
Bayou
Twas brillig, and the slithy
toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
