Black Language Matters: Insights from a Resilient Perspective

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After leaving the #BlackLanguageMatters class on a late Thursday afternoon, I had an overwhelming sense of excitement and nervousness for the profound things I had witnessed and heard. After spending the majority of my night telling my friends all about Harry, no words could truly express his truly special resilient personality. Walking out of that class, I not only felt as though I had made a new life long friend, but I felt a surge of hope, the kind of hope that makes you want to a better person. Harry’s narrative accompanied with the first chapter of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness unveiled so many inconvenient truths about the society we live in today, that I couldn’t help but blather to my friends about. …show more content…

Their responses were filled with appraisals for the professor mentioning how “dope” it was that we got to watch something from the Grammy’s. However, they fail to realize the impact and significance of that performance, song and album and to be completely honest, before that class I myself hadn’t realized the depth of his performance. Lamar’s powerful set began with him and the rest of his band entering the Grammy stage in prison uniforms, a sight I do not think viewers at home were prepared for. With a prison break, a colorful celebration ending with the image of the continent of Africa having Compton being the capital he brought front stage the internal struggles of modern blacks caused by external conflicts. A few lyrics from The Blacker the Berry that really stood out to me were “You hate me don’t you? You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture. You’re fuckin’ evil, I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey.” Lamar directs these words directly to the crowd, confronting white America about the system of oppression they have created which allows them to fetshize and appropriate the things they like about black culture, claiming it as their own, while denigrating and devaluing these qualities when they are featured on the creator. “Came from the bottom of mankind My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide.” By stating these now “politically incorrect” stereotypes during the age of colorblindness he reveals an inconvenient truth that even in this day and age people still harbour these feeling towards white people. The term monkey has often been used as a descriptor of black people aiming to indicate that they have “ape” like qualities. A famous incident is how a incredibly popular and talented Brazilian soccer player had bananas thrown at him mid match. The soccer player stops and actually takes a bit out of the banana, setting flame to a

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