Then & now, I'm a Negro: The people who used that word gave it majesty

"When black nationalism was on the rise, a hostility toward white people and the Western world came into vogue among young people who were then usually called Negroes. Few people wanted to be called 'black' and some were almost ready to fight about it.

"It was something of an improvement when 'black' became a term that was no longer considered demeaning. It is, in fact, a rather natural development of what was often said about the Negro race which, we were told by our parents and others, was like a flower garden because it 'included every color from blue-black to lily white.'

"Vernon Davis, brother of the trumpeter Miles, once told me he felt integration actually began during segregation in what were public schools reserved for those possessing Negro blood but who could be 'actual blonds or redheads, with white skin and blue or green eyes.'

"In 1959, Mike Wallace and what would today be called 'the white media' discovered the Nation of Islam. The 'Nation' was a black nationalist cult that had woven together science fiction, ethnic nationalism and a bizarre version of Islam that was always dismissed as a perversion of the religion by Middle Eastern Muslims.

"Many black Americans seemed more gullible, or at least loved to hear Malcolm X castigate and threaten the white man while he was the central mouthpiece for the cult. To hear him tell it, the white man was cruising for a bruising and would get his when 'the word was given.' It was never given, of course.

"During the 1960s, when calls for 'black unity' became more harsh, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of those who were actually tearing down the cotton curtain of Southern segregation were dismissed by Malcolm X and his many imitators as cowards because they used nonviolence instead of violence and were disdained for supposedly repressing the 'black manhood' that was ready to burst out.

"America was bettered by the nonviolent multiracial civil rights movement, not by those who saw anything less than black-approved self-segregation as a form of selling out. They did not call themselves African-Americans, which is a pretentious term conceived by Jesse Jackson and some black academics.

"Those so willing to pretend that they are Africans and not Americans, or who claim their Americanness almost as an unavoidable burden, are just caught up in yet another meaningless trend that has been swallowed by the country as a whole. Freedom of choice is finally the point, above all else. We are, after all, Americans."

I love the comments:

"First I was *******, then I was a negro, theb I became black, then I became african america and now I am back to being a negro. The whole time white people remained white. This is some sick game the government is playing. I'M BLACK DAMMIT! NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!! and Reid was right, if Obama was any darker or spoke with ANY black dialect or was born of a black woman, he would have been through."



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