Wednesday, May 2, 2012

my nigger and yours

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In 1936, Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. He won medals in the 100- and 200-meter races, another in the long jump and yet another as a member of the 4x100 relay team. He was the most successful athlete of the summer Olympics, and watching a documentary about his life last night, it was hard not to cheer in the heart for such a successful and wondrous athlete. What people remember of the 1936 Olympics -- if they remember anything at all -- is the fact that Owens' blistering successes put the lie to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler's hope that the games would highlight Aryan superiority, a part of Hitler's world view and a view that would later lead to the slaughter of six million Jews and other 'undesirables.'

Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens was black. Hitler, as leader of the country hosting the Olympics, refused to shake his hand as was customary after a gold-medal win. Hitler also raised enough of an objection so that two Jewish men who were members of the American relay team were pulled out of the line-up at the last minute and Owens and another black runner were substituted. If Hitler had to choose between Negroes and Jews, he'd pick the Negroes.

In 1936, Hitler was consolidating a power that would later lead to World War II. His newly-minted planes and tanks and machine guns were being given a test run in Spain, where another dictator, Francisco Franco, was having a difficulty that came to be known as the Spanish Civil War.

Hitler was putting together his world view in 1936. He had not yet put it all together, but he was on his way. To help him, he had several attendants who reveled in and helped cement and embellish his vision of "Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuerher." (One people. One empire. One leader.) One such man was Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, an individual who was one of the greatest expositors ever of what would become known as "spin-doctoring," a talent for creating and instilling a vision which, no matter how ludicrous, would become part of a wider perception.

It was Goebbels who said, for example, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Well, he did and they did and the Goebbels legacy lives on to this day in military adventures and politics and other more personal venues. Just tell a big enough lie or tell a half-truth long enough and hard enough and ... voila! it becomes true. Joseph Goebbels helped craft and instill the notion, for example, of Aryan superiority ... the white guy, the blond guy, the blue-eyed guy was top dog among all the races and Germany would be an Aryan nation.


Joseph Goebbels was with Adolf Hitler during the Summer Games of 1936. The documentary showed pictures of the two men sitting cheek by jowl, watching the games in which Jesse Owens emerged as a big winner.


And if the documentary was to be believed, Goebbels was both astonished and outraged that a "nigger" should have bested his Aryan competition. According to the documentary, he expressed his astonishment in his diary ... the nigger had won! How could that be?!

Goebbels was astounded. He was in some way insulted!

Imagine that. How could he be astonished that the nigger won if he had not bought into his own fabrication -- the one depicting the Aryan race as superior? He bought into his own lie and refused to believe what was right in front of his nose. Jesse Owens had won. It was a plain fact. But Goebbels apparently could not allow himself to consider that his view of "niggers" was simply not true. He just couldn't do it. Superiority was a vision that was too important, too visceral and too grand to be upended by plain fact. 


Joseph Goebbels
And that was what stuck with me after the documentary concluded. The heart-rending treatment that Owens received both in Germany and later when he came back to the United States was enough to make a strong man weep, but what stuck with me was Goebbels' astonishment and outrage. He simply could not surrender or re-evaluate his own notions and, instead of doing so in the face of the facts, found new and improved ways of buttressing his opinion and bias.


How very human. Individually and personally human... to erect a vision or view that is consoling and to mortar that view with hopes and observations and neglect to step back and wonder how factual that view might be. Adolf Hitler may have coined the phrase "the Big Lie" in his book, Mein Kampf, and Joseph Goebbels may have helped to nourish Hitler's vision, but the tendency to elevate and aggrandize personal visions -- to anoint our Aryans and excoriate our niggers -- is just human ... one of the truly horrific human capacities. Never let a fact stand in the way of a good story. Never investigate, but only seek out a comforting meaning or belief. I want to be at peace and happy, so office politics, and tales of "terrorists" and the one looking back at me from the bathroom mirror are vital to my peace and happiness no matter what the facts may show. I console myself that my fabrications are not nearly to heinous as those of Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Hitler. Oh really? I need my Aryans. I need my niggers. And naturally I am not as mean-spirited or cruel as Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Hitler. No, my hands are clean. I can prove it because my lily-white mind or mouth never utters the word "nigger." What a good guy I am ... please don't trouble me with what is obvious or factual.


And as the years pass and the rivulets of my story swell over and over and over again, I too am surprised when the nigger crosses the finish line right in front of my nose. I too am jolted and filled with anguish. My story is just too important to revise or investigate.


It is a fearsome thing, changing the mind. Truly, it is hard. So many years building a sense of what is true and comforting. So many years of Aryans and niggers. So many years of patriotism and xenophobia. So many years of doing works considered "good" and eschewing works considered "bad." So much talk of rooting out the "terrorists." It's just the best story I can tell. Or is it? If all that and more like it were somehow taken away or revised, how the hell would I know who I am? Isn't it easier to excoriate the likes of Hitler and Goebbels with their Big Lie and never stop to consider how widespread the implementation of my own Big Lie has become?


If you know who you are, it's no wonder you're scared of being what you might, more factually, be. How could I be consoled by a tale I cannot yet tell? But the obvious keeps crossing the finish line right in front of my nose. And the mind and heart cry out piteously, "Stop that! I love my niggers and my Aryans and I rely on the sincerity of that love to prove my point." I believe myself ... my intellect, my emotions, my car, my cat, my country, my religion, my ... my story ... my Aryans, my niggers.



Change my mind? Not on your life! And certainly not on mine!


And yet...


And yet....
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13 comments:

  1. I've read your blog off and on for awhile now. At times it waxes eloquent; at times it seems unnecessarily sensationalist. This post is the last by you I'll read. Only one question before I unsubscribe from your RSS feed. Concerning your propensity to use shocking analogies to raise questions;

    "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

    Be well,

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  2. Dear David -- I am flattered that you once subscribed and equally flattered that you should unsubscribe. I mean that. Seldom do I elicit such pointed and perhaps worthy responses, so thank you.

    I would have been further gratified, I will admit, if you had spelled out your offended sense of "decency." I'm not trying to imply that I'm somehow "right" and you're somehow "wrong" or vice versa. I would just be curious as to your parameters of "decency," a word I hold in some regard but not without suspicion.

    Perhaps, having signed off, you will never see this query, but I will make it anyway: Does your sense of "decency" refer to the use of the word "nigger," a socially-abhorrent designation? Does it refer to the miscreants who prompted so much slaughter in WWII and yet whose legacies are not truly eradicated in the hearts of men and women? Does it refer to a spiritual endeavor that is frequently served up politely like little cucumber sandwiches at tea (crusts cut off)?

    These are honest questions, not goads. What decency do you refer to and how and when do you feel it should be brought to bear? What are its positive attributes and what barbed wire does it lay?

    Well, I am probably just talking to the cloudless sky here, but I am grateful to have the train of thought.

    Thanks and best wishes.

    adam

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  3. Adam,

    I assume by using racially insensitive words you call into question the 'stereotypes' and 'prejudices' we carry; to contrast them to an obviously inappropriate term. This works if the post targets non-minorities.

    Decency requires use a names for a group which that community accepts. Call a man what he wants to be called.

    If your point is to question why the black community takes offense at being called 'n...' the answer seems obvious. If you wouldn't use this language in a black church (which one would hope you wouldn't), then you offend a group of people to make a point to a different group of people. The post becomes 'thought-provoking' to your group at the expense of a minority group.

    If I misunderstood, and your post was to question the black community's indignation at a mere 'word', perhaps you could make the point more clearly.

    Be well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. David -- I used the word "nigger" because that was the word Joseph Goebbels was alleged in the documentary I saw to have used. His use was obviously derogatory, although the word had more open currency in 1936 than it does today.

    As I understood the situation in which Goebbels used the epithet, he used it in part to enunciate his pure astonishment and party-line disgust. He used it because suddenly the Big Lie of social superiority he helped to nourish was called into very concrete question AND that question did not suggest to him that the world view he promoted was worthy of question. Rather, it seemed to suggest to him that he should go back to the racial-superiority drawing board a refortify his position and beliefs.

    It was this refortification effort that I wanted -- perhaps ineptly -- to point out as a very human tendency: The facts in front of our noses may contradict us and yet, where the belief system is strong, the tendency is NOT to re-evaluate our own proclivities and prejudices, but rather to bandage them ever more tightly. I would argue that this tendency is clear in all sorts of settings -- remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for example? But leaving aside the bamboozling of politicians ... what about at a personal level? Preferences can induce some very strong defensive measures ... so strong, in fact, that the use of the word "nigger" pales by comparison in my book.

    I am not in the least interested in either insulting or elevating the black community, many of whose members I have heard refer to each other as "nigger," by the way. I have been fortunate enough to be friends with black people ... and I don't just mean the white-wine-sipping kind of friends. I have been equally fortunate enough to know nitwits who happened to be black. But whether I liked or disliked these people had nothing to do with skin tint. A nice person is a nice person. A jerk is a jerk.

    I was not looking to enter a free-for-all about race by quoting or referring to the word "nigger." I admit to using the word or taking an interest in it in part because it is incendiary. But its incendiary nature, to me, was worth the risk: The fall-out from trying to refortify our positions when the facts prove otherwise is truly a dangerous and unhappy adventure... especially in spiritual endeavor.

    I don't plan to apologize any time soon, though I will apologize for not being a better, clearer expositor of my position.

    Thanks for your interest and opinions. Please feel free to kick my ass any time.

    adam

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  5. Adam,

    I hold no ill will towards you. I know exactly what you meant by your post. It is my opinion the point could be made without resorting to a hateful epitaph.

    My reason for commenting is simply this:

    In business we are taught for every complaint we get there are 100 people who don't say anything. They simply don't use your service anymore. Blessed is the businessman who hears about it.

    I expect no apology. It is, however, my opinion this post was intended for those who look through 'white' eyes. It excludes blacks from sharing in it's insight by it's very nature. I'm hard-pressed to believe a black man could take any lesson away from this post.

    In any case, best of luck with your blog; I wish you no ill will.

    Be well,
    david

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  6. David -- Well, as Abe Lincoln once observed, "You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."

    adam

    ReplyDelete
  7. Adam,

    I have subscribed to your RSS feed again. I did so because, having read your previous posts, I know you to be fair and honest. May I share something?

    I'm a 52 year-old gay man. In our community we often refer to one another as 'fags' or 'faggots'. We've earned that right. We wear the label as a badge of honor among ourselves. We even write about ourselves as 'queers', 'fags' and 'sissies'.

    However, no matter how noble the intention, we would become uncomfortable with a straight writer continuously using those pejorative terms to question the status quo of 'normal' folks. If you substituted 'queer' for 'nigger' in your post, you would not be welcome to read it out loud in a gay bar even though a gay man could do so.

    You could use the term once at the beginning to induce the full ramifications of the derogatory term. But we would hope, after the initial 'shock', you refrain from its use.

    I know you mean well. I don't doubt your hatred of racism or prejudice. But if you wouldn't feel comfortable either reading your posts or handing them out to the group those terms target, perhaps you could find a gentler way to express yourself.

    I hope you understand. No hard feelings, Please take this comment as useful advice.

    Be well, friend.

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  8. I see you left out where you came to the Zen Community site, where this blog is aggregated, and attempted to have Genkaku censored when he wouldn't remove this post here. When I refused to remove his post or blog from the site, you then started threatening me, trying to act like I'm some sort of racist.

    Perhaps you should worry about the splinter in thy own eye, brother, and less about what others say on blogs.

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  12. Perhaps so, Al. But I'm sorry if you got the impression I meant you to censor anyone. That was not my intention.

    Be well friend.

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  13. Always a tough issue, that nigger word. I'm in favor of reclaiming it from the racists, myself. It's a strong, pungent word with a tremendous amount of history and impeccable etymological roots (niger, Latin, black). It certainly can't be expunged from the language, and it's nonsense to think so. The word is no crime. The ignorance and hate it is often connected with should be, if they aren't, but confusing the two does nothing to address the real issues. I'm perfectly willing to apologize to any black person who is offended by my use of it, but being afraid of the word doesn't further any racial harmony or respect.

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