Every day as a teacher in all black schools I hear the n word all day long from and only from black students. They are not supposed to use it but they love it. They call each other “n” literally over fifty times a day in one classroom. I count some days. But heaven forbid a white person utter the word. They even try to trick white teachers into saying it. Unfortunately these kids are not learning the self discipline and composure that will make them successful adults. Their computers and phones hum with constant profanity. There are really only about seven words that are frequently used and all of them are curse words except “disrespect” which gets repeated whenever a kid is mad. I try my best to teach professional behavior. I hate to see these young people setting themselves up for poverty and failure. The people they are disrespecting are themselves and their ancestors.
I started my teaching career in 1967 in a school in Ocean Hill/Brownsville which is immediately adjacent to and was actually considered part of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn New York. I had attended private schools all of my life. I had never been in a public school until I started teaching in one. It was a real education.
I began my first year by walking across a picket line to enter school. The union had called for a strike for a number of things they wanted, money and preparation time, along with other issues. I had been given special training at New York University paid for by the New York City Board of Education and felt that I was under obligation to report to work no matter what the union did. My degrees, Master of Science in Marine Science and Master of Arts in Classical Theater had no qualified me to teach. The courses I took were pretty rudimentary, but they got me licensed.
The school was in an area in which a white face was an absolute rarity. In the two years I taught in that building I began to wonder whether white people had children anymore. I had never used the N-word. I knew the word, but it wasn't something I said. I had a roommate in college from Columbia, South Carolina who referred to black people as nigras. My family had had black servants throughout my youth. They were wonderful people who I dearly loved. Reducing them to epithets just never occurred to me.
Through 45+ years of teaching, all in schools with either majority or large minority black populations I never heard another teacher use the N-word. However, every year there would be an accusation by a student or the student's parent that some teacher or other had called the student by that term. I even had a student of mine make that accusation about me to my principal. He called me into his office to ask me about that and other things the kid said. I told him I would dignify the accusations with a denial. It ended there, but the racism that I and every other white or Asian staff member were subjected to on almost a daily basis made the use of the N-word seem pretty minor by comparison. It was a straw man used to attack any one at anytime. It was, as mentioned, an excuse to beat someone, deplatform them, to use a modern term, and in a few cases, to terminate their employment, unjustly, in my opinion. The people who worked with me were, perhaps, the least racist people on the planet, and yet they were the most sinned against when it came to that ridiculous accusation.
I have been retired for the last 13 years. I have chosen during these years to not associate with black people largely because in all the years I taught the one message that came across completely and unabiguously was that black people do not like white people, and that is one generalization that I believe to be far truer than false. When I retired I decided I did not want to associate with people who hated me. I don't use the N-word to describe them or even think it, but I know how they think about me, and what they think is far uglier than that word, and has a lot less reason for its existence.
Sounds like a pretty unfortunate experience, Eugene. It makes sense, though, because Bedford-Stuyvesant, like many other heavily Black, inner-city places, can be a hotbed for hating “whitey.”
My experience in the burbs was pretty easy-going. My dad grew up in Berkeley, CA, just a mile or so from Oakland. Even in the 70s and 80s, it was mostly peaceful in general for citizens, Black or white. This is not to be confused with “mostly peaceful” during BLM riots. ;-)
I mentioned two of my friends in An Inconvenient Black Truth, both of whom were Black. One was raised in an affluent neighborhood and the other in the Bronx.
Neither subscribed to what would be considered “typical hood mentality.” That would seem obvious for the friend from the affluent area, but less obvious for my buddy from the Bronx.
These guys marched to the beat of a different drummer in their own ways and were pretty much excluded by most Blacks because of it. They both had hope, goals, and a plan, somehow, that made them “un-Black” in the eyes of many other Blacks.
The “he used the N-word” thing has become such a “get out of jail free” card, and it’s very unfortunate because it shuts down real progress, progress that could and should bring positive results.
Much of what more affluent Blacks fled, even back then, was that ghetto mindset. This, along with most of the race-card stuff, is debilitating. If you used the same concepts in sports, for example, you would likely fail.
Imagine a football team where you told your players, “You’re not going to win. You don’t have a chance. And when you lose, it’s whitey’s fault.” How motivated would those players be?
It works the same way in life, except with the ghetto mindset, which is basically just a negative mindset with race inserted at every point. It causes issues. Listen to any self-help or self-improvement book. They would say to do the opposite of everything that the ghetto mindset portrays as normal.
I had a lot of black friends, but like yours, they were un-black to most other blacks. The most difficult were the women. A sense of entitlements sort of pervaded the entire community of women.
Every day as a teacher in all black schools I hear the n word all day long from and only from black students. They are not supposed to use it but they love it. They call each other “n” literally over fifty times a day in one classroom. I count some days. But heaven forbid a white person utter the word. They even try to trick white teachers into saying it. Unfortunately these kids are not learning the self discipline and composure that will make them successful adults. Their computers and phones hum with constant profanity. There are really only about seven words that are frequently used and all of them are curse words except “disrespect” which gets repeated whenever a kid is mad. I try my best to teach professional behavior. I hate to see these young people setting themselves up for poverty and failure. The people they are disrespecting are themselves and their ancestors.
I started my teaching career in 1967 in a school in Ocean Hill/Brownsville which is immediately adjacent to and was actually considered part of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn New York. I had attended private schools all of my life. I had never been in a public school until I started teaching in one. It was a real education.
I began my first year by walking across a picket line to enter school. The union had called for a strike for a number of things they wanted, money and preparation time, along with other issues. I had been given special training at New York University paid for by the New York City Board of Education and felt that I was under obligation to report to work no matter what the union did. My degrees, Master of Science in Marine Science and Master of Arts in Classical Theater had no qualified me to teach. The courses I took were pretty rudimentary, but they got me licensed.
The school was in an area in which a white face was an absolute rarity. In the two years I taught in that building I began to wonder whether white people had children anymore. I had never used the N-word. I knew the word, but it wasn't something I said. I had a roommate in college from Columbia, South Carolina who referred to black people as nigras. My family had had black servants throughout my youth. They were wonderful people who I dearly loved. Reducing them to epithets just never occurred to me.
Through 45+ years of teaching, all in schools with either majority or large minority black populations I never heard another teacher use the N-word. However, every year there would be an accusation by a student or the student's parent that some teacher or other had called the student by that term. I even had a student of mine make that accusation about me to my principal. He called me into his office to ask me about that and other things the kid said. I told him I would dignify the accusations with a denial. It ended there, but the racism that I and every other white or Asian staff member were subjected to on almost a daily basis made the use of the N-word seem pretty minor by comparison. It was a straw man used to attack any one at anytime. It was, as mentioned, an excuse to beat someone, deplatform them, to use a modern term, and in a few cases, to terminate their employment, unjustly, in my opinion. The people who worked with me were, perhaps, the least racist people on the planet, and yet they were the most sinned against when it came to that ridiculous accusation.
I have been retired for the last 13 years. I have chosen during these years to not associate with black people largely because in all the years I taught the one message that came across completely and unabiguously was that black people do not like white people, and that is one generalization that I believe to be far truer than false. When I retired I decided I did not want to associate with people who hated me. I don't use the N-word to describe them or even think it, but I know how they think about me, and what they think is far uglier than that word, and has a lot less reason for its existence.
Sounds like a pretty unfortunate experience, Eugene. It makes sense, though, because Bedford-Stuyvesant, like many other heavily Black, inner-city places, can be a hotbed for hating “whitey.”
My experience in the burbs was pretty easy-going. My dad grew up in Berkeley, CA, just a mile or so from Oakland. Even in the 70s and 80s, it was mostly peaceful in general for citizens, Black or white. This is not to be confused with “mostly peaceful” during BLM riots. ;-)
I mentioned two of my friends in An Inconvenient Black Truth, both of whom were Black. One was raised in an affluent neighborhood and the other in the Bronx.
Neither subscribed to what would be considered “typical hood mentality.” That would seem obvious for the friend from the affluent area, but less obvious for my buddy from the Bronx.
These guys marched to the beat of a different drummer in their own ways and were pretty much excluded by most Blacks because of it. They both had hope, goals, and a plan, somehow, that made them “un-Black” in the eyes of many other Blacks.
The “he used the N-word” thing has become such a “get out of jail free” card, and it’s very unfortunate because it shuts down real progress, progress that could and should bring positive results.
Much of what more affluent Blacks fled, even back then, was that ghetto mindset. This, along with most of the race-card stuff, is debilitating. If you used the same concepts in sports, for example, you would likely fail.
Imagine a football team where you told your players, “You’re not going to win. You don’t have a chance. And when you lose, it’s whitey’s fault.” How motivated would those players be?
It works the same way in life, except with the ghetto mindset, which is basically just a negative mindset with race inserted at every point. It causes issues. Listen to any self-help or self-improvement book. They would say to do the opposite of everything that the ghetto mindset portrays as normal.
I had a lot of black friends, but like yours, they were un-black to most other blacks. The most difficult were the women. A sense of entitlements sort of pervaded the entire community of women.