racialicious:

rosa—sparks:

I really did cry last night. I didn’t weep or come undone or wail like a widow, but I cried.

I posted a quick, from my guts post about my anger and sadness at hearing and seeing this. The response to my post is overwhelming. I can’t believe that many people have read ANYTHING I would write, in the middle of the night, in a moment of raw emotion.

I cried last night because of the personal pain of seeing a hateful politician calling the President of the United States a nigger. 

As I said, imagine what he must think of the rest of us? Imagine that this man wants to lead our nation and thinks so little, and in fact, so horribly of black people.

But you know what really made me cry? It’s personal. 

I have been called a nigger. I have been called a nigger since I was a child. And I’ve been called a nigger in FRONT of my young daughter. I have been called a nigger in the north, south, east and west. And no, I don’t mean in the way like I’m having a moment with Jay and Ye and going to Paris. 

I live with those moments for the rest of my life. 

Anyone who thinks that the word has context or meaning or is somehow diluted because Jay-Z says it has never been assaulted by the use of that word to describe their person.

They’ve never been in a parking lot and been stuck in a clusterfuck and had a person roll down their window and yell,

‘Get the fuck out of the way, nigger!’

They’ve never been told that their shopping cart was in the wrong place in the aisle of the supermarket and called a nigger and had their daughter referred to as a half-breed.

They’ve never been roughed up in the 3rd grade bathroom and called a nigger and laughed at by the other girls in your class.

All of those things have happened to me. And the pain that resonates in me from those experiences NEVER goes away.

Make no mistake. The word NIGGER is never out of context, has shaded levels or meaning, or ANYTHING but a word to devalue and destroy a black person. It is meant to hurt and reduce a black person to less than a human.

It’s not politics, it’s not a game, it’s not a random mishap. It is a deep-seeded, pure moment of one person’s life to look at a black person and call them a nigger.

It comes from hate and pure ignorance and ugliness.

And it is so painful and will never NOT be painful.

And as Woman of Color, I will never NOT be wounded and destroyed when I hear the word.

And THAT is why I cried myself to sleep.