so malcolm x speech about house vs field is never open for a white person to discuss?

[dembotoz]

because at the end of house and at the end of field he inserted the n word

really a damn shame because the imagery is just so easy to understand.

of the reading i have done about x....this is the thing that stood out the most to me...
like a 2x4 between the eyes.

a speech i can relate to.....

damn shame
its great imagery

[bettyellen]

1. Discuss, or make a cheap joke out of? How productive was that exchange?

He let that asshole off w lots of lies but got in some biting snark....

[SaschaHM]

6. Apparantly by virtue of being liked on DU

Maher's cheap "house n*gger" joke somehow carries the weight of a Malcolm X speech.


To the op: No one is taking away your toys. You can discuss a Malcolm X speech. However, just like African Americans have done to folks on the right since time immemorial, we will speak our minds if we feel that something is out of line and offensive. You don't have to care. That's fine. However, don't throw a tantrum because you're learning that words, regardless of partisan leanings, have consequences.

And I'll just put this out here for the folks in the back. 88-8. That's the percentage of Black Voters that saw through Trump's bullshit and have been concerned about policies on the right. 88-8%. That's the benchmark that Democrats need to improve upon in 2020. If the Democratic nominee for Prez pulled this shit, we'd be looking at 4 more years of Trump.

[dembotoz]

2. then i need speacial clearance from someone to discuss it?

[wasupaloopa]

3. Time changes many the things. You need to change with them.

I think your OP has little merit

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. As a white guy I never had a yearning to say the N-word.

[dembotoz]

5. i am shocked folks on du do not seem to know this speech

perhaps my favorite civil rights speech

damn folks

mlk is great and all but on this occasion.... x swung for the fences

[TheBlackAdder]

9. It blows my mind. Malcolm X and W. E. B. DuBois should be mandatory reads.

[bettyellen]

12. We do know it, and still think Maher made a mistake. Why assume that was in ignorance?

Seriously?

[MedusaX]

7. Here is the text of Malcolm X's speech.....

Malcolm describes the difference between the "house Negro" and the "field Negro."
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. 23 January 1963.
Transcribed text from audio excerpt.

So you have two types of Negro. The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called "Uncle Tom." He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro.

The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master's second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master's house--probably in the basement or the attic--but he still lived in the master's house.

So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, "We have good food," the house Negro would say, "Yes, we have plenty of good food." "We" have plenty of good food. When the master said that "we have a fine home here," the house Negro said, "Yes, we have a fine home here." When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he'd say, "What's the matter boss, we sick?" His master's pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would.

But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses--the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he'd die. [Laughter] If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.

If someone came to the house Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," naturally that Uncle Tom would say, "Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?" That's the house Negro. But if you went to the field Negro and said, "Let's go, let's separate," he wouldn't even ask you where or how. He'd say, "Yes, let's go." And that one ended right there.

So now you have a twentieth-century-type of house Negro. A twentieth-century Uncle Tom. He's just as much an Uncle Tom today as Uncle Tom was 100 and 200 years ago. Only he's a modern Uncle Tom. That Uncle Tom wore a handkerchief around his head. This Uncle Tom wears a top hat. He's sharp. He dresses just like you do. He speaks the same phraseology, the same language. He tries to speak it better than you do. He speaks with the same accents, same diction. And when you say, "your army," he says, "our army." He hasn't got anybody to defend him, but anytime you say "we" he says "we." "Our president," "our government," "our Senate," "our congressmen," "our this and our that." And he hasn't even got a seat in that "our" even at the end of the line. So this is the twentieth-century Negro. Whenever you say "you," the personal pronoun in the singular or in the plural, he uses it right along with you. When you say you're in trouble, he says, "Yes, we're in trouble."

But there's another kind of Black man on the scene. If you say you're in trouble, he says, "Yes, you're in trouble." [Laughter] He doesn't identify himself with your plight whatsoever.

SOURCE: X, Malcolm. "The Race Problem." African Students Association and NAACP Campus Chapter. Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. 23 January 1963.


http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxt17.html

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Every cultural/ethnic group

has its own internal metaphors (whether expressed as parables or stories or songs or jokes). However the "context" of such usually relates directly to the history/past experiences of that cultural/ethnic group and to co-opt and use these metaphors out of the context that the group assigns it, essentially changes the meaning of the metaphor, while marginalizing the cultural group that uses it.

Maher's father was Irish Catholic and his mother was a Hungarian Jew. I am certain that both of those groups have some sort of metaphor for whatever he was trying to convey.

[Igel]

15. It's less unique than you think.

I use "house serf" and "field serf," because the exact same dynamic often played out in Russian serfdom. There was a third category, "factory serf," but it was less common in most areas. (The same third category existed in the US as a matter of course; but since the South was less industrialized, it's easy to overlook it.)

And "house serf" nobody finds offensive, even if the reality was the same for the two sets of oppressed people under serfdom, and even if after emancipation the reality was still the same for the two sets of people. In one country, racism is the explanation for it, and there was that, to be true. In the other country racism can't be an issue. Russian serfs were, in many ways, "whiter" than I am: they were still bought and sold, whipped and raped, killed with relative impunity in spite of the laws; and once emancipated, treated as second class citizens. Of course, in one country there was a civil war with hundreds of thousands killed to fight against or in favor of slavery; in the other, there was an edict that simply ended serfdom on paper. In both countries, what happened to the emancipated was a problem, because there was no presidential/congressional solution in the US and the tsar' left it pretty much up in the air. "You're free. Enjoy."

However, unlike in the US, the status of somebody's great-great-grandparent as serf is, at best, only mild cause for concern. Few claim it as a kind of pride of humiliation; few blame serfdom for current state of affairs; and few use it as an insult or put down. Hard to find a lot of serf-related museums, even; exhibits exist, but just a description of the past that's probably very relevant to the present but only in the way that poor parents are relevant to their children's prospects, who are in turn poor in a way relevant to their kids prospects. The Soviet catastrophe helped mask some of the differences; that there's no ethnic difference between oppressed and oppressor made interpreting skin tone as some sort of external index of character and moral attributes a lot harder, whatever the direction of attribution and stereotyping.


Irish don't have a lot of metaphors for that kind of thing--perhaps in some deeply Irish areas of Boston, maybe, but by and large just no. I've known lots of Irish-Americans whose ancestors came over before 1850 and, really, the idea was to get past past humiliations and wrongs and simply get on with the future. It's hard to know who to blame now for the Irish famine in Britain, for the abuse of Irish in the US, for the ethnic discrimination faced by the Irish in the US. They're dead. Most of their wealth was seriously hurt in the various depressions and panics. Or by foolish descendants. Meanwhile, Irish made their own way. As of 1970 there was still a wealth- and achievement-gap for Irish Americans, but assimilation was possible--the mainstream didn't have a racial marker and the Irish very infrequently emphasized distinctions between themselves and the mainstream and had little use for harboring resentment. And those that did, well, at least kids in my generation considered to be fools. (My brief flirting with resentment was entirely the result of "consciousness raising" in school; upon several seconds' reflection, I realized that the abuse of Irish in 1820 in Virginia or in 1870s New York had very little to do with me in 1970s suburban Maryland. Anger at people dead for 80 years, even when I was 15, I understood to be a huge waste of time and energy. It would either lead nowhere, or find an out by being displaced to those in the present.) Heck, I even like the BBC, the scions of oppressors and haters that wronged and oppressed my people. Meh.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. Good discussion however

the problem is that Russians, Irish, and Hungarians (who you didn't discuss) are all designated as "white" based on the U.S. system of racism/white supremacy, so it was easy to "assimilate" (ethnically) after one or two generations here in this country, and move on. However if you are a POC, you will NEVER EVER be permitted to assimilate. You carry the imposed stigma of the color of your skin forever. And if your skin color doesn't give you away and it is later discovered you descended from someone of color, like Homer Plessy, who was 1/8th black, then you are immediately reclassified as "black", with all the burdens that go with that. The political comedy "Watermelon Man" by Melvin Van Peebles, hyperbolically illustrated this -

When Jesse Jackson called NYC "Hymietown" over 30 years ago, not only was he tarred and feathered, but was drawn and quartered and strung up.... The term "Hymie" deriving from a legitimate oft-used Jewish name "Hymie" or "Hyman" (orig. Hebrew "Chaim&quot , but more recently used as a pejorative, not unlike the similar use of "Paddy" as a pejorative (despite it being a valid name as well). He apologized but it was never considered enough, and it branded him since and will for the rest of his life.

So the issue is not as simple as people make out - mainly because of the uniqueness of the dysfunctional American system of racism and all the codes and rules that come into play (or are cherry-picked for enforcement by the oppressor).

[LuvLoogie]

27. It's kind of difficult not to "harbor resentment" when you get a daily fresh shipment of bigotry.

Resentment isn't manufactured. It is not some kind of socio-economic commodity. It's a fucking chemical reaction.

[shenmue]

10. Uh, Malcom X is not Bill Maher

Are you suddenly an idiot?

[Humanist_Activist]

11. Did Malcolm X drop the n-bomb in that speech?

No? Then you have no argument.

[JI7]

13. bill maher wasnt having a discussion on it

[Gravitycollapse]

14. It's open for careful, respectful discussion. Not racially tone deaf jokes.

[Abu Pepe]

17. I think that is different than Mahar's context.

Though I can see some white liberals unable to read that aloud. I would have no problem using that word in an academic context quoting Malcom X or even a white racist in a direct quote if it were relevant. Not for a cheap joke.

[GreenEyedLefty]

18. What's to discuss?

How can a white person relate to it? I'm genuinely puzzled by this.

[dembotoz]

20. so malcolm x is only relevant to blacks??????????????? ok than you

for clearing that up

will make mlk day easier too....

[GreenEyedLefty]

21. Re-read my question.

I asked how a white person can relate to Malcolm X's speech. I never stated that it was relevant only to blacks. YOU said that.

So, answer the question.

[dembotoz]

22. U imply I can't

[GreenEyedLefty]

23. Or you won't?

I'll keep checking back.

[dembotoz]

26. Sense this is becoming circular

[MineralMan]

19. I wonder what the differences are between Malcolm X

and Maher? There must be some differences, but I just can't put my finger on them.

[pnwmom]

24. The slavery of African Americans is never open for a white person to make a joke about,

with or without the N word.

[HipChick]

25. Just Never

[lapfog_1]

28. Maher could have gone a different way with his "joke"

When the asshat repuke senator made his comments about teenagers working in the fields in Nebraska and how Maher would be welcome to come to Nebraska and work the fields...

Maher could have said "Work the fields... what, you want me to be deported?" and that joke, almost as racist as what he did say, would have passed with some laughter and quickly forgotten.

I am not excusing him for his tasteless joke (One does wonder why his mind went there and not the direction I just stated).

But we have a double standard when it comes to racist and ethic jokes in the US.

And, btw, Maher should have made a comment that rejects the premise...

White kids in Nebraska are NOT out doing stoop labor in the fields of corn or soybeans. I grew up in farm country in next door Kansas... and there is NOT a lot of any kind of stoop labor happening in those fields. They are and have been mechanized for many many decades.

What he should have said, but would not have been a joke. was "really, the majority of white kids in Nebraska are out working in the fields doing stoop labor? Do you have any statistics that back that up?"

[Voltaire2]

29. Or he could have said "sorry, I work in the house, not in the fields".

And then, minus the n-word, the joke works and is not offensive and actually makes the point he was trying to make.

[bettyellen]

30. Yeah, either he made a poor choice or was way too comfortable using that term....

Either way, it's his to live with the fallout. Trying to protect him from that is just bizarre.

[cwydro]

31. It was an absolutely stupid thing for him to say.

But he has apologized.

We have so much more to concentrate on other than some silly comedian.

[dembotoz]

32. Seems the original text is house negro... Would that have been acceptable to say?