Time/Race CONTINUUM: Let's Talk n*gga'!

Somewhere around the 6th grade, I began to walk from my house to school. Along that route, was an old woman, who would come out and just stare at me as I passed by her house.
 
 One morning, when I passed her house, she yelled from her porch: "look at the little pickaninny!"  
 
I didn’t know what that was, so, after school I asked my mother, what a pickaninny was?  
 
She asked me "Why?"  
 
I explained that the old lady on her porch-on my way to school, had called me that.  
 
From the framework of her eyes, I knew it was something that troubled her, and she didn’t answer me, she just said, from now on, walk on the opposite side of the street, then crossover a little further down once I passed her house.  
 
Pickaninny-Is a white racist term to describe a Negro or "black" child.  
 
So, we didn’t keep "Colored", "pickaninny", “jiggaboo”, "coon", or "ape"- I mean those phrases aren’t used shamelessly in rap/hip hop music lyrics, or in black standup comedy, or anywhere else I know of-being celebrated or welcomed.  
 
Somewhere, we even accepted elimination of our true identity as Negroes...made **Negro offensive- which, is the CORRECT term, and “Became One" with the slave chain-nigga’--how that ascended the black ranks as acceptable-is truly mindboggling, especially it’s ascension after the Civil Rights Movement.  
 
Why is our true identity discarded, and a white racist slaveowner’s derogatory term, clearly used to degrade us--embraced, even used to a daily sickening degree, cherished, and defended?  
 
Blacks want to rewrite it’s meaning like whites tried to rewrite the history of us.  
 
Neither fuckin' works for me!  
 
So, Let’s talk nigga’!  
 
Many words throughout my life have ALWAYS bothered me.  
 
I couldn’t explain that automatic distaste for words/phrases like, "pickaninny", "Minority", "black history month”, or 1st Black (to do so and so), and, the treacherous word "nigga’" when used among blacks.  
 
Comedian Bill Maher made a tremendous fuck up using it on his show not long ago, and Ice Cube explained to him, "that’s our word now" —  
my reply would have been, "why do you want it? "  
 
Ice Cube, DOES NOT speak for me, and others who use it feverishly in music or speech- don’t either.  
 
 
There’s no doubt Cube is a TREMENDOUS TALENT, and use of that word does NOT negate talent, but it does show ignorance of self.  
 
I’ve been in debates about this word nigga' and my argument never changes-but theirs varies. I’ve heard everything from: it’s not spelled like the white people’s "nigger"-it makes a difference how it’s spelled-to-"by us using nigga’, that takes the power away from it"... to the ultimate HYPOCRISY, that blacks can use it freely, but no one else.  
 
Once again, my reply would be "why do you want it?"  
 
Do you understand it’s origin?  
 
Why do you insist upon embracing a derivative of racist hate?"  
 
I never get satisfactory answers to those-because there AREN’T ANY!  
 
I hear parents call little kids nigga’,-or allow the children to hear music with nigga' in it, among other things--Why would you do that? That is not responsible parenting, it’s trifling parenting, PERIOD!  
 
Passing the ignorance to the next generation, and so on until it’s pandemic, and it is pandemic NOW!  
 
I hear it used to convey hate and sentiments of love and/or bond.  
 
The saddest conclusion is that you still see yourselves as  
 
"property"-because you refuse to loose that chain--for some reason, you just, can’t let go.  
 
Why is that how you see yourselves--as niggas and not as kings and queens?  
 
Why is it acceptable for blacks to use nigga' and no one else, especially if your defense of it is: "using it takes power from it?"  
 
That, is a lie! The power is not removed, in fact, you give it more power of degradation by adopting it into your venacular-it is ascribed self hate, shows ignorance of self and of history.  
 
I imagine the KKK laughs itself silly, knowing that this word is used by black people to describe other black people.  
 
I’m sure they’ve reminisced on how they called us the word during slavery and we kept it-which is truly ridiculous!  
 
Many white people I’ve spoken with in present day, cannot understand why that word is still used among blacks so freely... I don’t understand it either.  
 
If a white person calls you a nigger-you’d probably be ready to fight!  
If a white person calls you a nigga’, where is the difference really, it’s the same connotation, and even though the "er" isn’t heard, still sounds the same to me, still means the same to them.  
 
Do you know the African's true history?  
 
Obviously not, because if you did, you'd see the profound difference between what whites told you-you were, versus the truth of who we were as a people.  
 
Paraphrasing Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, a world renowned linguist/scientist /former college professor:  
 
"we must see ourselves in a new way-we must be revealed as a new people"-and we have to "re-learn" the true facts of history, versus the version we have been given, long held myths and half-truths.  
 
These revelations will begin to unfold in the next installment of Time/Race Continuum.
 
 
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**Negro-(as it pertains to science-based fields of human classification, the term is then, Negroid).