[Sometimes we can find] out who people are by listening to the music and rhythm they carry in their speech, and theorizing that we are not really who we are when we are perfect in grammatical sentences (which I think of as a form of incarceration) but when we actually depart from that and invent, in the moment, not like what you learned in the fifth grade, but it is genuinely you in your love affair with your ability to speak to others. That [is] when I find you. Anne Deavere Smith.
Let me make it clear that I know my presence here on Georgia's death row for the past 27 years has served to strengthen the widely held view of the African-American male as white America's bete noire.
Therefore, I will now take this opportunity to say, in both sincerity and truth, that I apologise to the entire world for ever having participated in behaviours that have contributed to that negative stereotype. Please know that I am sorry for the hurt and shame that I have caused others, and myself.
Deep down in our community-heart-of-hearts we know that some of what has been passing for intra-cultural communication between a good many of us has been just plain bad for us all. I have a few things to say that may not sit very well with some African-Americans.
I found the words that head this space in the November 2000 issue of Elle magazine. They belong to the actress and playwright Anne Deavere Smith. Although they reflect a part of her interpretations of William Shakespeare and others, their meaning can be applied to us African-Americans, as a people, as well.
In her interview with Smith in the article Talking the Talk, Elle's Margo Jefferson reminds us that it [is] the glitches, garbles and digressions that make [our] speech real.
I agree. Departures from standards of correct usage of words and phrases define our unique individuality. Although our words can carry constructive energies that help demonstrate who we are, they can also create destructive images in the minds and hearts of those who do not truly know us. In order to build a more positive African-American house in the face of the on-going nature of American racism all words that African-Americans share with, and direct at, each other should be well chosen for their potential to create good and constructive images. We, as a people, should never contribute to that racism.
Just as often as not, it is through our communications with one another that people learn who we, as a people, are or, alas, are reinforced in what they have been taught to think we are, or want us to be, even if we are not.
The African-American who thinks that (s)he can use the n-word to describe another African-American, in what I have heard some say is an intentional left-handed attempt to express intra-cultural love, is misguided.
No one should use the n-word, in my opinion. The n-word in the US is sort of like a big bucket of gasoline in a very dry climate. What I mean is that the US is engulfed in the red-hot fire of its thoroughly racist past. Ignition began in August of 1619, when a total of 20 African men and women arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. The fire was then stoked and incrementally maintained through centuries of hate, fuelled with the stacked bodies of ever more African slaves.
The n-word is not a name that we gave ourselves. It is a word that history's diabolical slavers gave to our magnificent ancestors who were living under the unequivocal threat of sudden death. For any one of us to use it is, at best, self defeating. It is folly to entertain the idea that it can ever be used as a term of endearment. To try to do so is a blunder akin to standing beside our own burning house and throwing the afore mentioned bucket of gasoline onto it instead of water, expecting to reduce the blaze.
We need to be honest with ourselves and admit that even in casual exchanges with one another, whether with a loved one or a stranger, the communication of a large number of African-Americans is something less than loving. Publicly on the radio, on television, in the classroom, in the State House, in hallways and privately (even in cars on the highway) far too many of us talk to one another as if to a mortal enemy.
Our conversations, in many cases, are devoid of a sense of interactive respect for one another's human dignity. It is time for each African-American to rethink how (s)he will henceforth speak to and with one other not for anyone else's sake, but for our own.
As a people, with the unending help of many other peoples, we have successfully struggled for freedom from the darkest days of slavery's plantations. Before we can be completely free, however, we must free ourselves of the unconscious or conscious inclination to use the n-word, and/or any other collection of words that by so using perpetuate the mean spirit and language that was, and is, embodied in every word that plantation owners and their overseers spoke to and against us.
The words of Smith spring to mind again, in that we need to initiate and cultivate a love affair with [our] ability to speak [to our black brothers and sisters]. That is who we really are: brothers and sisters.
For years we have invented a rich variety of slang and phrases that most Americans gladly embrace. Now it is way past time for African-Americans to invent new words and communication techniques for ourselves with which we all can express greater love and real respect for one another.
History has proven us to be a people of great brilliance and determination. Our pains have been too bitter to forget or go with ill-chosen words, astray. The future commands every African-American's resilience and innovation.
Only those lanterns filled with the new oil of linguistic love will light the way.
BY BRANDON ASTOR JONES
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns (include your name and full return address on the envelope, or prison authorities may refuse to deliver it). He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA, or email <brandonastorjones@hotmail.com>. Jones is seeking a publisher for his autobiography, growing down. Please notify him of any possible leads. Visit Jones' web page at <http://www.brandonastorjones.com>.]