My wife and youngest daughter use my wife's maiden name instead of my surname. Our family joke is that they do so to give themselves plausible deniability if asked whether they know me. Everybody chuckles at our joke, but the concept of plausible deniability is rarely funny in today's world and nowhere is that more evident than in our political arena.
Take the word "nigger", for instance. It's an incendiary word meant to inflict pain and arouse hatred. Its history is long and storied and steeped in the ugliest shadows of this nation. We know what it means. We know what it stands for. We know why. We also know that it's a socially taboo word, one not to be uttered aloud; not that it prevents a segment of our population from doing so when they know they can get away with it. We've essentially labeled the word politically incorrect. We've removed it from many dictionaries, but it still lingers in our minds.
Why is that? It's because the word "nigger" is a handy word. It's more than an epithet. It's a code. It's a knife. It's a rallying cry for all the hate many whites carry against blacks in this nation. It's a word that sums up their anger at welfare, at desegregation, at affirmative action and the notion that government would use its power to tear down the walls of white supremacy.
A word like "nigger" can't fade away. It's too versatile to be hustled off. It's a powerful word, and something that powerful does not escape the eyes of people who seek to gain power for their own purposes. That's why the word "nigger" will never die. The letters may change, but not the concept.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has his own word for "nigger". Well, it's really a phrase. When he labels President Obama the "food stamp president", he's really calling Obama a "nigger". Of course, Newt would deny my charge. That's the beauty of plausible deniability. The words "food", "stamp" and "president" have meanings totally divorced from racial politics, but when you put them all together they become an epithet, a code, a knife, a rallying cry for all the hate many whites carry against blacks in this nation, and a black President in particular, who heads a government that challenges the notion of white supremacy.
Every time I hear Newt utter those words and receive thunderous applause my stomach heaves. The word "nigger" hasn't died. It's just been replaced!
Excellent post!
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of like profanity/vulgarity. The more some people try to eliminate offensive terms, the more other (or even the same) people replace them with new (or euphemistic) ones. While the terms mutate, the intent/effect remains the same.