Much has been made of late of the “N” word in black circles, and in the news. For years, accomplished blacks have become pariahs in their black communities when they leave the victim mentality behind and take responsibility for their own success. Unfortunately, when men like Bill Cosby or Jesse Jackson call for blacks to stop using the word, they are mocked and scorned. But what these men are really saying is that the culture of victimhood and the anti-social posturing and hatred are immature and self-defeating.
Now adding his voice to the chorus of black conservatives is author and political commentator John Ridley, who has written novels (Everybody Smokes in Hell, Stray Dogs), films (Three Kings, U-Turn), television shows (Third Watch), and plays (Ten Thousand Years), and who has done political commentary on NPR. In the latest Esquire magazine, he’s written The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger, which says many of the things non-black observers have been saying (at the risk of being called racist) for a long time. Bravo.
LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT NIGGERS, the oppressed minority within our minority. Always down. Always out. Always complaining that they can’t catch a break. Notoriously poor about doing for themselves. Constantly in need of a leader but unable to follow in any direction that’s navigated by hard work, self-reliance. And though they spliff and drink and procreate their way onto welfare doles and WIC lines, niggers will tell you their state of being is no fault of their own….
That which retards us is the worst of “us,” those who disdain
actual ascendancy gained by way of intellectual expansion and physical toil – who instead value the posture of an “urban”, a “street,” a “real”
existence, no matter that such a culture threatens to render them
extinct.“Them” being niggers.