July 1-22-08

On Tuesday class was enlightening; we covered a lot of quotes and ideas. Although some of these quotes have deeper meanings to them, I believe some are obvious to the eye if one just reads carefully. There is one quote that I can relate to: “The community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set-up; by himself the individual is incapable of fixing a single value.” First, I would like to clarify that the “community” is the well-known leaders of America and “himself the individual” is the common people of the world. This basically means that the famous leaders in society play a major role in our language, but an individual, like I don’t hold much power. For example, the word “nigger” has been around for centuries, it was used to describe dark-skinned people or those from the African ancestry. Now, it is thought of as a derogatory word that affects the black community. African American rappers use the word “nigger” in a different context called Ebonics, which is better known as “nigga.” Taking the ending off of the word makes it sound more appealing to these rapper’s audiences, but in reality the root word is still there and the history behind it still exists. This word was not only converted into another word, but it was made to be pleasing to society. If a normal Samaritan like me was to try and convert this offensive word into a nicer version it would be impossible because of my social ranking with in the world.
Publicity plays a major part in this conflict. It’s a conflict because our society should be more aware of these issues rather than being ignorant about them. If this word had no historic background to it, then I would question the power of hegemonic forces, but there is a time when we as individuals have to draw a line.