What's in a word?

There he goes again.  Newt Gringrich is, once more, making sweeping statements and offending a large group of people with a very limited understanding of the facts.  You may even call his comments disparate and divisive.

In case you missed it yesterday, Gringrich called out the NAACP saying he would be glad to meet with them and discuss how the black community should consider preferring paychecks over food stamps.  Wow!  Making a statement such as that takes more guts than brains, as my mother would say.

What he’s missing here, though, is that he’s addressing the wrong group.  The statistics show that only 29% of people who receive food stamps are African American while 59% are Caucasian.  Hmmm.  What’s more, who does he think he is making the assumption that just because a person is on food stamps means that they want to be on them?  To stereotype the many by the actions of a small few is not an attractive trait Mr. Gingrich.

I also read a comment post yesterday where someone called another person the *N* word and I can’t deny that I was offended.  The very word—okay I’ll say it; nigger—tends to incite anger as well as lively debate over its appropriateness, just as much as Mr. Gingrich’s falsely assumptive comments did in the press yesterday.  In fact, just writing it here in my blog, the combination of letters with dual syllables, has the uncanny effect of raising my ire.  And I’m sorry to say that after reading the simple yet irascible message, I replied in kind.

After all, the root of this term (as I understand it in its historical sense) is a reference to those who are enslaved by a selfish and manipulative ideology.  This arcane philosophy is manifested by a disparate and divisive dialogue utilized by simpletons whose biases are rooted in fear and greed. 

The Encarta Dictionary describes this word as “a highly offensive term for a black person.”  I would rather define it as more of an examination of the person who expresses it or those who exemplify it; a reference to an inability to discern truth from rhetorical exploitation.

And so, as I think about the enflaming message of Gingrich’s speech yesterday, and the ignorant utterance of a commenter on Yahoo! as well, I am brought to a precipice of thought in which we should redefine our outdated terminology and begin using these words in a less simple and a more valuable way.  I believe that the word Nigger should be used to describe people like Gingrich and the man who used it to denigrate a young girl of color.  It is only then that we can drive out the truth into the sunlight and begin to have an honest dialogue about their rhetorical and divisive natures.