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kramus · 04-25-2005, 09:56 PM

It's late so forgive me for not reading the complete thread as closely as it deserves.

My mother was born in 1930 and raised in Toronto. She (my whole family excepting my beautiful grandaughter) is white. Around the age of 10 she had a pure black cat. It could have been Inky, or Shadow, or Blacky. She called it Niggy, short for nigger - meaning black and nothing more. When she told me this I was rocked, because the language has evolved with my little bit of society that I exist in, and that word for me has freight attached to it big time. She mentioned that her mother (born 1906) had trouble seeing the black superstar entertainers on tv as being real people - they were more like performing creatures given special status. This double-rocked me, because that lady was the sweetest and most giving woman you can imagine.

Another thing - when I was a teenager I worked on a landscaping crew manned by petty thieves, the uneducated and a contingent of joyful Native American guys. One of a group of 3 brothers was the only blonde (yes, true blonde) Indian I've ever met. He said one day his mom must have jumped the fence. Big laugh. A few weeks later I repeated his joke in the same context. He was ready to take me out. What I guess I'm saying with thing #2 is what I've read in this thread already - i.e. if you are not on the inside of a situation that carries a history of pain and abuse you cannot carelessly make reference to things that the insiders deal with using their own language (by that I mean the language as they mean it, not you) or share their jokes from their side. I didn't have the right. I learned something important that hot summer day.

04-25-2005, 09:56 PM	#65 (permalink)
kramus loving the curves Location: my Lady's manor	It's late so forgive me for not reading the complete thread as closely as it deserves. My mother was born in 1930 and raised in Toronto. She (my whole family excepting my beautiful grandaughter) is white. Around the age of 10 she had a pure black cat. It could have been Inky, or Shadow, or Blacky. She called it Niggy, short for nigger - meaning black and nothing more. When she told me this I was rocked, because the language has evolved with my little bit of society that I exist in, and that word for me has freight attached to it big time. She mentioned that her mother (born 1906) had trouble seeing the black superstar entertainers on tv as being real people - they were more like performing creatures given special status. This double-rocked me, because that lady was the sweetest and most giving woman you can imagine. Another thing - when I was a teenager I worked on a landscaping crew manned by petty thieves, the uneducated and a contingent of joyful Native American guys. One of a group of 3 brothers was the only blonde (yes, true blonde) Indian I've ever met. He said one day his mom must have jumped the fence. Big laugh. A few weeks later I repeated his joke in the same context. He was ready to take me out. What I guess I'm saying with thing #2 is what I've read in this thread already - i.e. if you are not on the inside of a situation that carries a history of pain and abuse you cannot carelessly make reference to things that the insiders deal with using their own language (by that I mean the language as they mean it, not you) or share their jokes from their side. I didn't have the right. I learned something important that hot summer day. __________________ And now to disengage the clutch of the forebrain ... I'm going with this - if you like artwork visit http://markfineart.ca