Tag Archives: Nigger

“Colonizer’s Language” a Spoken Word piece by Renaissance the Poet

This spoken word piece contends with the concept of the Colonizer’s Language and how we use language to describe and identify ourselves. This piece unpacks some of the history of the term “nigger” and how it impacts us in the present.

NIGGER by Renaissance the Poet

Nigger.

Negroe.

Nigga.

Black.

African-American.

Criminal.

The colonizer language that we have imbibed

as if it was a life sustaining nectar

Afraid to, wean ourselves from the poison that is killing us

because we have been fooled and are fooling ourselves into believing that it’s beneficial,

nutritional, contra-positional, infinitesimal in the scope of things

The Pros outweigh the Cons…?

con-artists in sheep’s clothing, parading the homunculus pulling the strings in our brains, weighting our steps with second guesses, misperceptions, allegories, and ill-conceptions, but in vain…

Do we strive for something better, clueless to the range of how damaging the language we use to represent ourselves is to our dignity, self-identity, intrinsically speaking, spiritually seeking, deranged! conceptions of how we came to being and who we hope to be, to become, to arrive

Nigger, as if we arrived, materialized as slaves on plantations contrived for labor

and never existed prior to raising cotton for stock profits in American pockets,

droppin to the ground exhausted, because the master forgot to water the human stock bought on the auction block for cents on the dollar

And this, is what we holler as a greeting!

excuse me…

“NIGGA,”

Cuz, I’d rather be a N I G G A, so I can get drunk and smoke weed all day

It is a natural response to an oppressive situation to assimilate and reclaim the terms of a language used to discriminate and disseminate hatred,

like the word “Gay,” was once used to describe happiness or joy in a situation, but then it

became a derogatory term laced with inflammation and incitation to repressive anger

displacing concentration on the facts at hand

that a label to the soul burns worse than skin to a brand

But the word only had power insofar as those convicted, insisted, complicit in its imposition

buckling under the weight’s transmission, did it have capacity to defame, but

Reclaiming the term robbed it of its power and now it is adorned with praise

Nigger, unfortunately is not a term that can be rephrased in such a way as to liberate its user

To reclaim is to own, and to own a nigger is to be a nigger’s master, a colonizer, and the oppressor

so,

to call oneself a nigger is to be one’s own oppressor, but moreover an overseer whipping our own asses for a master who profits from our disasters

Because a nigger is lazy, licentious, sexually promiscuous, unsound in mind and body, pretentious, unscrupulous, vile, criminally minded, guided by the basest of natures, wild, genetically inferior, paternalism required:

to own the term nigger is to ingest this image, latch it to our sinews, hang it from our bones, as our ancestors hung lynched from branches, and pass it to our lineage because the ideology is a spiritual pestilence to the masses

The antithesis of white, the foil despite the toil of life the cradle of which it all ignites: Black

More Eurocentrically politically correct; African American

But still dislocates us from our historical heritage and infests with hatred for ourselves

As we imbibe the colonizer’s language as our own

But in truth it has no meaning or value to us

Words are just symbols and signs; semiology

vestigial coverings that have nothing to do with our actual identities and reality

The Word “Nigga”

These Rhymes

Carry with them

Explosive obnoxious notions

And inoculations to erosive emotions

 

So pay attention with your best ear

Because this world is vicious

With its conspicuous ill-nutritious

& Victim-us mentalities

Dishing us pity me card sicknesses to our realities

 

 

Me

I’m just way too wild to be a Sisyphus

Held down by this society

 

The plot is thus…

 

I am a BLACK MAN

With the will to be free

Like Galileo

My mind will expand the universe

But I am just a tree from a seed

You see

The beach is but a part of the sea

It’s just harder to see

That using a stereotype to my benefit will only feed the greed

And even though Sun Zu marked that as a definite factor to a wars victory

Making my enemy think I am weak, when I am not

But that’s not the case in this plot

It’s a vasectomy

& I’ve been stripped of my pride

Like, inject the beat

Intravenously

That bullshit would have me stripped of my dignity

Crawling on all fours

Begging with pleas

 

The MAN

Has been disrespecting me

And however,

Incorrectly put it may be

He has miss-took me for a lesser being

The knife of his oppression- held half in my back

Held, half in your back

And he would have had more,

But the people who identified as Black

Took a stance and pushed him back

 

The script was flipped

But somehow we’re still off track

And while these “Uncle Tom Rappers”

Continue to profit on the exploitation

Of our modest situation

Doing the MAN’S work for him

Spewing his poisonous dominion

Into the minds of our behavior negative

Perpetuating the hate within our children

 

So many of us LOVE the rap

The Cadence and the flavor of

The heart of the speech in our people

Clearly there here

Where are you, my people? (repeat until they answer)

Yeah

We’re here

Standing

In defiance to the oppression we hear

 

Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

They bring our culture back

Better yet they give us a scope of culture to aspire to

Our mentors

Who remind us of what it means to be black

And furthermore what it means to be a people

And why the word nigger

YES

& the word Nigga

Will forever and always

Be whack.