DON'T CALL ME OUTTA' MY NAME!

DON'T CALL ME OUTTA' MY NAME!
( From NY Amsterdam News February 4, 1994 Page12)

"By Carol Taylor
No people in the world other than us people of color have been called so many names - none! Check it out. We've been called: niggahs, night-fighters, niggroes, niggers, negroes, nigras, octoroons, maroons, quadroons, spooks, cottonpickers, tar-babies, darkies, blackies, cafe- olays, ink spots, coons, spades, spicks, (that's for those of us who speak Spanish but refuse to acknowledge our Black heritage), jungle-bunnies, chocolate drops, blacks, coloreds, colored people, kaffirs, monkeys, gorillas, apes, (which it is more likely white* people came closer to: have you ever seen a monkey with thick lips or kinky hair?), bucks, pickaninnies, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, dinges, wogs, forgive me if I've forgotten any - I'm only human (yeah!). Of course, the most ridiculous name is "minorities," which evidently encompasses anyone who is not white! I say 'ridiculous' because everyone who is not white really belongs to the "majority!"

Ever since I was sensible as a youngster, I have had great difficulty with identity. White (so-called) people don't have that particular difficulty, until recently, that is. Now there are some white males running around the country yelping about "reverse racism." Of course there's no such animal: racism is racism.

Anyhow, I also went through that pathological stage of calling myself "bi-racial," - there's also no such thing because there's only one race, the human one. Denunciation also goes for those idiot terms "interracial," "mixed race," "intra-racial," and any other term which sows divisiveness within the human family.

The ultimate divisiveness is murder, and what I am dealing with here and now is an issue which might seem almost frivolous at first, until one realizes that the start of friction amongst us is name-calling! Sticks and stones do break bones and names can indeed hurt us when followed up by violence!

I have decided - after all these painful years of misidentification and confusion, not to mention Eurocentric miseducation - I have decided to call myself "Black African," and you cannot imagine how much controversy this has caused among others, no matter what they call themselves! I'm going to explain what the historical basis for my fairly new appellation is. Follow me closely now: the first people on this planet were Black - you know, most melaninized, no question, as dark as human beings can be, black, Black, blue Black, lovely charcoal Black!

If you cannot admit this because your education has, on purpose, been limited to Eurocentric experience and you haven't read Lucy: The Beginnings of Mankind by Donald Johnson and Maitland Edey, The African Origin of Civilization by Cheik Anta Diop, writings by Dr. Henrik Clarke, Dr. Ben Jochanan and Dr. Leonard Jeffries and especially The Isis Papers by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing. If you cannot accept that the first human beings on earth were crystal Black, then the extent of your denial is complete and you will continue to live in abject fear.

Dr. Leonard Jeffries, in The African Americans: Search for Truth and Knowledge, states, "The search for truth and the pursuit of knowledge should be broad-based and not limited to white European-American ethnic group experience."

So the first step in understanding why I call myself a Black African is to understand that all humanity began as Black. Then, as Dr. Welsing makes clear, the Black people somehow began at certain intervals to give birth to individuals who had no pigment - albinos as Dr. Booker T. Coleman (now Professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene) the renowned Historian puts it: "...they can teach about the lack of carbon in animals and plants but not acknowledge that the same thing happens with humans. When the lack of carbon-melanin occurs in humans, it's called European!"

There is controversy about reasons why, but albinos (unmelaninized) eventually moved to cold climes, I suppose partially because they couldn't withstand the sun (kinky hair and melanin protect us against the sun's rays, kiddies!). There they continued to interbreed, produce blue eyes and straight hair, proclaim themselves "superior" and run around the world telling people of color that whites were the world's masters. So it was because of geographically varying climates that people with differing physical traits came to be - but the critical issue to understand is that these differing traits do not prevent people from being human! All a' we is one! All'a we is African!

Indeed, there are Red Africans, Yellow Africans, Brown Africans, white Africans, and since I admit to being political and have adopted the 60's ideology of Black Power, I am a Black African!

Carol Taylor R.N. Author of The Little Black Book: Black Male Survival in America: Staying Alive & Well in an Institutionally Racist Society"

*Addendum: Someone asked me why I don't capitalize 'white;' I replied that generally whites've been so steeped in their untreated racist/colorist behavior that they deserve to be taken down a peg or two! We all - no matter what our 'hue,' need www.Discussrace.com and www.Raciscmtest.org to undo our massive eurocentric mis-education and be able to enter into positive interaction with those who wear skins of differing colors!