Newsmakers Live

I had to fight nearly every day after school when I was in elementary school. I got whipped a lot and I did a lotta whippin’. I beat the s**t outta Bill Jenkins with a social studies book, for example, for continually calling me a nigger. Remember it like I did it just yesterday. I didn’t like the way I felt when somebody, anybody, called me that. I still don’t. My dad taught me that if I respect myself enough, I’d reach a point where nobody could disrespect me, no matter what they said or how they said it. I’d be able to brush it off by saying to myself that it’s something wrong with them, not me. I found this to be true, and have lived accordingly most of the time ever since. However, in view of our “do as I say and not as I do” philosophy, it does not and cannot work. If I call myself and think of myself as a nigga, how the hell can I get upset when somebody else calls me nigga? I understand the underlying intent to belittle and behead the race when “they” call us that. Believe me, I do. I’m from “that generation.” I don’t wanna get too deep into this subject in this blog, as this is not the place to write a 500-word essay on the subject, but I do believe we have to make changes in our own collective, or our consciousness, before we can actually effect or cause a change of thinking in anybody else, or at least raise our own level of respect for ourselves that it is virtually impossible for anybody else to disrespect us. It’s all in the thinking. I believe that “thinking makes it so.” Help me out here. Give me so more insight on this subject. What do you think?