Obama Is Not 'Your Nigga'

by Gee Joyner
of http://rainbowsandlilacs.blogspot.com/

Will President Obama ever be debated equally?

First of all, the first ‘Black’ President of the United States is not a full-blooded Negroid. Sure, for the most part, no Black American residing in the United States is one hundred percent of African descent, yet he is a first generation mulatto, for lack of a better word. If we are to subscribe to the notion that the race of the child always follows that of the mother, as was the case during the Antebellum days of U.S. slavery per the 1662 Virginia miscegenation law passed by the Virginia colonial assembly (matrilineage)-- also "one drop rules" were applied differently in different states; in Mississippi, black if 1/32nd African American; in Louisiana, black if 1/64th, then Barack Obama is really a ‘white’ man. The aforementioned, in and of itself, puts the public and closeted racists at ease, even if only minimal.

Now, I imagine, and even know, the readers of this article will be offended by my use of the word ‘nigga,’ but I’ll offer a few hundred words of explanatory rhetoric in hopes of it serving as a disclaimer for my colloquial use of the term so that no set of eyes will confuse my usage of ‘nigga’ with the inflammatory epithet ‘nigger.’

There is a profound difference in the use of the term ‘nigger’ and ‘nigga’ and can be pejorative or endearing depending on the ethnicity of the person who is utilizing the term(s) and the inflection within the speaker’s voice. In no way am I trying to dehumanize or connote the President of the United States with being a socially, intellectually, and physically inferior being. I am merely using the term nigga as I would use it when referring to any descendant of the Sub-Saharan area of the continent of Africa who shares, hurts, and rejoices in the struggles and triumphs associated with the Black American’s sojourn through North American, and more specifically, United States’ History. While the origins of the term nigger (derived from the Spanish noun negro meaning black or dark or the Latin adjective niger) are commonly associated in modern history with the Spanish and Portuguese use of the word to describe a person of a darker skin hue, and having no derogatory connotations but was merely a descriptor of persons from Africa, who happened to be first enslaved by the Spanish and Portuguese, the term became derogatory once the American hierarchical system heaped gross caricatures and negatively stereotypical behavior to the nigger. Thus, nigger and any variations of the word (i.e. nigga, nig, nigglet,) have been deemed vulgar and inappropriate at best.

On the contrary, the world in which I was reared and reside in today utilizes nigga as a term of endearment, even a tool of empowerment in the sense that I, and many from the Hip-Hop culture, have deconstructed and reconstructed the American- English lexicon by redefining a vocabulary word, if you will, so that the word, in and of itself, is juxtaposed positively against the original intent. No longer is it a term that subjugates and subordinates individuals of the darker complexion, but it exclusively elevates and separates the Black American as being a member of a fraternal order that can only be infiltrated by one’s ethnic origins by the very usage of the term nigga. A good friend, a loyal companion, a brother or sister of the educational, social, political, and economical struggle that exists and flourishes in America, if one is Black, is considered to be a nigga or my nigga or your nigga. That brings us to the conundrum as to whether or not Barack Obama can be considered the American Niggas' nigga.

So, by now, everyone in the relevant world knows that the current President of the United States was born to a white mother and a Kenyan father and was raised by his maternal grandparents in the alien state of Hawaii. The fair-skinned, yet coarse-haired Barack attended one of the best Ivy League schools in America while admittedly, in his own words in his book Dreams from My Father, not being the best high school student and loafing during his Freshman and Sophomore years at Occidental College. The man literally and literarily knew he was a conflicted mulatto stating, "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed; the final fatal role of the would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind. Something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.” He obtained his undergraduate and law degrees from Columbia University and Harvard College respectively and persisted in slumming in Chicago by being a grassroots community organizer on his way to the Illinois Senate. Now, how many niggas, from my definition of a nigga earlier in this piece, have had such an experience?

How could our ‘Black’ President, reared by an elderly white couple in the multicultural environment of 1970s Hawaii, truly identify with the African-American, or American Nigga, experience. A few years as a grassroots organizer/community/political activist and political opportunist does not qualify one’s membership into the nigga club. He is no grizzled veteran of the uphill struggles and de-facto discrimination endured by the nigga without the Ivy League or mixed-race pedigree.

Interestingly enough, he married a legitimate Black woman which seems situationally ironic considering his upbringing, his mother’s parentage, and his frequent encounters with Anglo-Saxon females that were the majority of possible romantic candidates at the institutions of higher learning in which he was enrolled. Sure, the man plays basketball, yet he also enjoys golf. Sure, his wife’s family are niggas, for all practical purposes and outwardly appearance and physical attributes, yet his family, the one who reared him, are white. This, in and of itself, may be the reasoning behind him being chosen as President Elect in November 2008. He was far from threatening, he was far from a graduate of a state school or an HBCU. He didn’t have the dark skin that so threatens, for only reasons white Americans can explain, the American status quo.

Do niggas really identify with Barack Obama? I, for one, do not. Those ignorant of what it means to be a nigga may beg to differ because niggas voted for him. But niggas voted for him only because he ‘looked’ like a nigga. Niggas didn’t know who he was or where he came from. They heard him speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and enunciate his syllables and pronounce his words like he was an educated nigga and thought, “This nigga could be the President one day. Hell, I’d vote for him. He’s what I want my son to be like,” yet they didn’t dissect the nigga. They didn’t research the nigga. They didn’t interrogate the nigga. He may have the base and the soul in his voice that is so often associated with Black Cool, and the rhythmic walk of a nigga and the so-called and over-exaggerated pop culture swag of the American Nigga, yet his avoidance of the Black American struggle and the Black American agenda and public pronouncing of those struggles and inequalities lend me to believe that he is masquerading as a nigga like a man masquerading as a woman at a costume party. Maybe this is why he doesn’t address the unemployment rates of the nigga, and when he does it is always in terms of decreasing the entire country’s unemployment rate and thus, decreasing the unemployment rate of niggas in America. Obama even advocates for the civil and occupational equality of the nations lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population on a more public platform than he does for niggas in America. So, we must ask ourselves, when is the President going to disrobe himself and end his Halloween celebration? We all wear a mask, the only difference between niggas and him is that due to his socioeconomic and hierarchical position in this country is that he can take his off. I can’t—Black don’t come off.

-Gee Joyner is a professor of English at HBCU LeMoyne-Owen College. His novel KIM is one of Memphis' best selling books and he has lectured, presented and published for various publications and assemblies. Take the time to follow his blog by visiting: http://rainbowsandlilacs.blogspot.com/