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Language and Other Weapons

The screen is black. The sounds of bodies rustling in leaves can be heard. They are the sounds of love.

NARRATOR (VOICE OVER)

Being black is like having a chronic disease because someone can always call you a nigger and you know they eventually will. You just don’t know when it’s going to come at you or how it’s going to come. Will you get called a nigger out loud or in a more deceptive if equally devastating way? Life goes on for some time without incident and then the affliction bites you again, reminds you that it’s still there. These “nigger moments”—the points in time when black people are forced to recall their blackness in a way that brings shame to their existence—engender self-hate over time. The hate can twist the strongest heart, reducing one’s composure to a vicious growl. The black lashes out at his environment but his hateful words and angry jabs will only quicken his failure.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. FIELD—EVENING

WIDE SHOT: Black-and-white film. Nestled within the tall grass of a field, a YOUNG BLACK MAN and a YOUNG BLACK WOMAN make love on the ground. The camera slowly zooms in on the couple. A dress is pulled up around her waist. Their faces are filled with excitement.

NARRATOR (VOICE OVER—CONT’D)

Consider a character from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Cholly Breedlove. Morrison first published the novel in the United States in 1970, but it takes place in the years before and after the Great Depression. On the night Cholly loses his virginity to a beautiful country girl, Darlene, he is subjected to the humiliation of a nigger moment.

As CHOLLY and DARLENE continue to make love, the crunching of footsteps on twigs and stalks of grass can be heard. A light shines across CHOLLY’s back. The girl freezes. CHOLLY senses her change in emotion and turns around. His eyes meet with the faces of two WHITE MEN. WHITE MAN 1 holds a lantern. Both men are smiling.

WHITE MAN 1

Get on wid it. An’ make it good, nigger. Make it good.

CHOLLY’s lover turns cold. He continues the act but it is no longer love. The WHITE MEN stand there, chuckling for a minute or so and then they walk away. Their voices grow more distant until all that can be heard are the sounds of the country night.

NARRATOR (VOICE OVER)

This incident leaves Cholly scarred for life. It is a watershed moment of shame upon which others will build. Eventually, self-hate will implode the young black man. He will embrace alcoholism and begin to despise his wife and his children. Ultimately, he will rape his young daughter. It would take the space of another novel to fully understand how the incident had scarred DARLENE.

CUT TO:

A close up on CHOLLY’s face. His face, a scowl. CHOLLY raises himself up from DARLENE. She is silent, frozen with pain. His hands loom menacingly as though he might strangle her.

CUT TO:

BLACK

The sounds of CHILDREN PLAYING can be heard.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. FIELD—DAY

Color film. A group of fourth grade boys are playing a game of football on a black top. These are St. Albans boys, students at one of Washington, D.C.’s most prestigious private schools. They wear blazers, ties, turtlenecks, and slacks. They play their game in the shadow of the National Cathedral. A tall kid steps up to the line of scrimmage with the football in his hands. His team of five receivers joins him.

That’s ME, age 10, scrawny and lanky, at the right end of the line, getting excited to run a pass route. The QB hikes the ball and the PASS RUSHER stands in front of him, READY TO STRIKE.

PASS RUSHER

One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi.

BURNING my defender down the field I wave my hand to let the QB know I am open. Our eyes connect and he sends the ball into the air. As it comes closer to my hands something blurs. My coordination escapes me and the ball DROPS to the ground.

A TEAMMATE walks by me, angry at the missed opportunity. He HITS me on the shoulder and looks me in the eye.

TEAMMATE

Faggot.

ME

Fuck you.

Recollect these:

1.A year-long beating in fourth grade

a.Faggot, a nickname

b.Mouth, a weapon

c.Nigger, an insinuation

2.A failure to fit a part

a.Catch footballs

b.Play Nintendo

c.Shhh yer little mouth, teacher don’t wanna hear about yer fag-tag

3.A face crushed into pillows, upstairs

a.At home the

b.Parents hope that

c.Moments will pass

4.A list of boys’ school rules

a.Class shuffled out like cards

b.You don’t pick your hand, you just play it the best you can

c.Get stuck or be ready to stick

5.A fifth and sixth grader

a.Stand up straight

b.Look through them sharply

c.Laugh down at them and look up now: son, you’re popular

The well-dressed, would-be men of St. Albans pass through the halls on their way to class, toting L.L.Bean and JanSport backpacks filled to the brim with selections from the literary canon. I walk down the hallway, book bag weighing me down. I wear awkward glasses and an oxford, one neck-size too big. My red tie is done up in a rough, bulky knot and my khakis hang slightly below my waist. A blazer without buttons. I am a freshman now and any prestige I amassed in grade school has been erased. The slate is fresh and naked.

In James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the central character, a bi-racial man who is light enough to pass for white, finds that he still can’t escape nigger moments even when he isn’t the primary victim. As he moves through the early 20th century South considering whether or not to live as black or white, he witnesses the lynching and burning of a black man. This traumatic moment drives the character to embrace a white existence for the rest of his life, forever leaving behind the black elements of his heritage. He fails to realize that he will always be sensitive to black issues: He will always be the invisible victim of nigger moments. Someone in the room shouts “nigger” and laughs. He smiles along, cringes beneath the false pretense of his light skin. Even in passing he cannot transcend the pain.

There is a new weapon in high school: Anything a black kid does that breaks from the stereotype of what it “means” to be black is dubbed as “manipulated.” How do you know if you’re manipulated? Do you listen to Guns N’ Roses or like the Boss? Do you wear tight, torn Levi’s jeans instead of baggy Hilfigers? Do you get good grades and get them with pride? Do you talk with an accent fitting for white, college-bound gentlemen? Have you ever dreamed of kissing a white girl? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you might be manipulated.

As the older, cool kids run the manipulation trials, they substitute questions of blackness into the subtext of The Crucible. Like Africans selling slaves to white men on their shores, the prosecutors are often black, but even some of the popular white students aren’t afraid to move in for the kill either. And like being called a faggot in fourth grade, you don’t go to the dean about being called manipulated. That action would in fact be considered manipulated—even the dean might call you out on that one.

Roosevelt is in tenth grade. He is physically imposing, a star lineman on the varsity football team. He is also black, often pissed off, and he will personally lead the inquisition of my psyche during freshman year of high school. I have known his family for years. I am friends with his younger brother and our parents get along. But the family history brings little pause to Roosevelt’s crusade against what he sees as my white cultural leanings.

I stand outside of the high school’s main entrance, leaning against the frame of the large wooden dais, observing the expanse of the campus, the National Cathedral posing in the background. It is a free-dress day. Most kids have left their preppy uniforms at home. Some boys, anticipating their business-casual wardrobe of the future, wear golf shirts tucked into jeans. Others are simply wearing jeans and t-shirts. I’ve got my jeans on, torn like the denim of Kurt Cobain. Roosevelt walks by me. Looks me up and down, and, seeing my alternative rock outfit, produces a frown and a comment: “Why are you such a sellout?”

Dearest Saint Alban,

The quandary you’ve put me in is most disturbing. The layers of contradiction are disorienting. Who put these “non-black” clothes — the blazers, turtlenecks and ties — on my back in the first place? Didn’t you ask me to be one of tomorrow’s champions? Haven’t you constructed me in your divine image of the beautiful, strong and rich Caucasian man? Then why do you spite me when I play the role so well?

Your friend,

Andre

P.S. thanks for putting A Midsummer Night’s Dream on this semester’s curriculum — what a read!

Walking into a bathroom, I see two white sophomores sitting up on the windowsill, talking about rap music. We are not friends but I choose to intervene and correct them on the finer points of hip-hop. One of them demands of me, “Well what do you know… You’re not a real nigger.”

Get on wid it. An’ make it good.

On a warm spring day, with flowers blooming, the tide of the seasons changing, sweaters and jackets retiring, and semesters growing shorter, I feel angry. I am hanging out in the student lounge where we fill ourselves with Coca-Cola and microwave pizzas. Dennis, a fellow freshman, white and accruing more upperclassmen abuse than myself, is getting pushed around by another group of kids. At age 15 his whole style is tall, goofy, and uncomfortable. He gets knocked down to the ground by a bigger kid—punk—and the older students laugh. He just curls up and hides his face. I’ve been there and felt it before and I’m embarrassed to be capable of empathizing with such a pathetic existence. There’s a lull in the beating so I stand up and kick him in the back while he’s lying on the ground. I kick him to get a few laughs. I kick him to feel better. And I get those laughs, but at the cost that he will never forget. At the cost that I can never take it back. I only feel better for a few fleeting seconds.

All grown up, Dennis is an upstanding citizen engineering political campaigns—believing the American republic can work. We periodically cross paths at reunions and gatherings of the old D.C. scene. He’s not goofy anymore, but rather he’s endearing and cheerful. We share beers and laughs but I can see him looking behind my eyes. He knows that I know that he has not forgotten: You kicked me in the back, motherfucker.

* * *

Cutting down Interstate 5. The drive is long and the air conditioning’s been broken for years. We sweat it out in the car as we head farther south on our six-hour trek from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I am post-St. Albans, post-college, post-everything that the East Coast offered me. I have moved to California because its enduring promise of finding a new life resonated with me as I rolled up my diploma and packed my boxes. San Francisco is my new home but the allure of the road, of traveling to other California towns for music, art, and the unknown has become a core practice.

We cruise through the depths of the Central Valley, a gloomy stretch between the Bay Area and So Cal where a dense fog sometimes fills the air and the vast fields of agriculture surround us. The cassette player is permanently jammed and the radio just spits out static, so mostly we talk to each other the whole way down. I am laughing at something one of my friends said, but I am also slightly discomforted when he drops the f-bomb. He is one of the most progressive people I know and a deeply intelligent individual, so it contradicts everything I have ever heard him say in defense of equity for all people. “Hey man, do you have a problem with gay people?” I ask. “You’re always calling out people as ‘fags.’”

He turns to me and in earnest says, “No, not at all. Not at all. I am totally fine with gay people. I just hate faggots.”

I’m not quite laughing. I’m not quite angry. I am entirely unsettled. I am reminded at how many times I have also participated in the muddled, callous vortex of humor and disrespect.

A double-edged vocabulary list—nigger and faggot—sowing unity or drawing blood depending which side of the blade is used and, of course, who happens to be using it. Gay people call each other fags and we call each other niggers when none of us is required to do so. A gay person might say to another with a smile, oh don’t be such a fag, and a black friend will call out to me, what’s up, my nigga, and it will feel warm. Alternately, a gay person might look at another with a scowl and scream, get out of the room, you dirty faggot, just as a black person might grimace at me from the window of a car, their hand in the shape of a gun, and yell, step off my block, nigger. Human language bends so flexibly; such subtle shifts in situation and intonation turn salutations into weapons. And to cross the line, to take our malleable words outside of our own circles: for any non-black person to call me a nigger or for me to call anyone a faggot twists those volatile weapons into sharp tools of torture. There was a time when I would have called a friend of mine a fag for being too picky, too annoying or soft. I was stabbing wildly into the air, my blade ripping spiritual flesh—I was too foolish, too uncaring to see the damage.

In his 2008 HBO comedy special, Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock opines at considerable length about appropriate uses of the word faggot, although one must wonder who granted him— straight black man—license to stand as authority on the topic. “If you’re having a fight with somebody,” he says, “you should be able to say whatever you think is going to hurt this person the most… you one-legged bastard.”

He discusses actor Isaiah Washington’s dismissal from the television show Grey’s Anatomy. Washington had allegedly called fellow cast-member T.R. Knight a faggot during an argument. Rock questions, “What if the person [Washington] called a faggot was acting like a faggot?” Washington is black and Knight would later come out as gay. While there is no end to the amount of white people who need to be corrected on their use of homophobic language, there is also a sickness within black culture—American and elsewhere—that rallies against the rights and emotions of gay people. I have observed it my entire life— through friends, family, the music I listen to, and the popular figures I follow. At my worst moments I have been a participant in it. Our culture vigorously reminds us that no one really wants to be on the bottom alone; that when given the opportunity to strike out with language, legislation, or other forms of violence against others—despite our own battles for fairness—we might indulge ourselves more than we like to admit. It is not unlike kicking someone in the back when both of you are down.

In his discussion of hate language, Chris Rock clarifies for his audience: “You don’t have to be gay to act like a faggot.” He explains that if he were sitting at an intersection, singing along to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” with such enthusiasm that it caused him to miss the green light, then the driver behind him would have license to call him a faggot. At the punchline, the video cuts to a black man in the audience standing up and clapping. I want to understand why they picked that hard cut at that moment to the black man standing up and clapping; when someone stands up and claps at a comedian’s joke, it’s not just an affirmation of humor but a vote of confidence in the ideology that has just been publicly offered. Rock concludes, “Shit, even Elton John would call me a faggot.”

Get on wid it. An’ make it good.

Castro Street is alive and this is my home. Rainbow flags hang from telephone poles, replacing the day-glo colorama of ’60s San Francisco. There are gay men, so many different kinds: the burly leather-adorned bears, the club-kid fashionistas, the Brooks Brothers-clad professionals, the extravagant losers with opiate-streaked eyes, and the elder statesmen wearing their blue denim shirts tucked into blue denim jeans—each strand of their white hair is a stripe of survival from the late 20th century AIDS detonation. Standing here on the streets of gay pride, the Castro is some kind of paradise.

Halloween feels like a gay Christmas in San Francisco: The streets of the Castro fill with thousands of costumed enthusiasts. And how fitting that the city gives this holiday to gay culture. It’s the one day when everyone can pretend to be someone else: Oh darling, you’d make such a good little queenie; it’s too bad you’re only playing. Put the costume back in the closet by tomorrow morning.

Is the Castro akin to a gay man’s version of early 20th century black Harlem, a safe-haven nestled in a city with more conservative values than its façade would like to admit? This radical openness wouldn’t fly elsewhere. So if you’re a gay man, you have to make a choice that no one should have to make: Stay here, locked up in the Castro, with all of your people, or venture outside where you’ll be subjected to hatred. Maybe on a warm white night they’ll come down here to knock a riot upside your head just to remind you that you’re a fag in their eyes.

Nella Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance-era novel, Quicksand, follows a feminine protagonist, a tragic mulatto, who finds herself torn between living within the elitist confines of black Harlem, or living in a white European society that embraces her but still sees her as “the other.” Is the Castro so different for young gay kids showing up, green from college on the East Coast, filled with hopes of freedom of expression? They can choose to navigate the “free” but class-structured world of the Castro or swim through the “liberal” seas of San Francisco’s other scenes where they are met by smiles, handshakes, and pats on the back, but left to wonder who murmurs “faggot” when they leave the room. At once San Francisco is the most liberal American town and the town where liberals think of themselves as most immune from the -isms they publicly rally against.

It’s 2003 and I am 25, black, and frequently straight, and I like living here in the Castro. I walk outside and feel good. I am in the company of the persecuted, people who can empathize with my existential pain; people who know what it’s like to be pissed on for years. On top of the empathy, they might even want to fuck me and it feels good to be wanted. Some of my roommates can’t stand the long stares but I feed into it. I go to the Pilsner Inn, next to our apartment, behind their backs. I sit alone at the bar and drink glasses of Wild Turkey. They can’t always tell if I’m straight or gay in there and I like that I am capable of passing. But even when they know I am straight they don’t care because they think, he’s black and he’s been through enough. I smile, throw back the whiskey, and head out the door to get into trouble on the north side of town.

Dearest Gay Diary:

I can call you a faggot and I know I’m going to get a laugh from somebody. I’m taking something away from you when I do that. I’m making a point. I guess you could call me a nigger and you’d also be making a point. You know, all we’re doing here is marking each other as different, something less than the full-blown, all-powerful white male image. We’re chipping away at each other’s pure sexuality. Niggers can’t defend their women and faggots ain’t ever gonna be real men. You and I, Gay Diary, we should join forces. We should take ourselves out of the system that plays us against each other.

Yes, I know I should stop using these words but it’s so hard because I want to call that guy who cut me off a faggot, and that guy whining in class about the ten-page term paper the teacher assigned, the people in the office who complain when finances are tight and they stop giving us free booze on Fridays and worst of all those politicians whose actions defy the values they preach. They’re all fags.

And another thing, Gay Diary, could you give me some room here? And by give me some room I mean take your hands off my leg, you dirty little fag… hehe, I called you a fag. Oh dear me, there I go again, Gay Diary. You deserve to be mad at me. I know my hypocrisy comes on hard, like a late-summer rain… hehe, I said hard. I bet you’re thinking about a hard dick. In your mouth. I can’t quit you, Gay Diary. I try not to hate but with all these people coming down on my skin, sometimes not even knowing it — breaking out the joke that buries the night — I need my hate words too.

Your constant other and forever your brother,

Andre

From:louanne-rachel <louanne-rachel@gaydiary.com>

Reply-To: “Louanne-Rachel” <louanne-rachel@gaydiary.com>

Sent: Sunday, June 1, 2002 4:52 PM

To: “Andre Perry” <princehal@hotmail.com>

Subject: RE: Dearest Gay Diary

well andre, you never cease to disgust me but while i’ve got you here I might as well weigh in. you just remember: every topper needs a bottom and my little darkie friend you’ll forever be playing both roles. the cocktail party is the battlefield and language is the weapon. so use your firearm of choice. bullets fly in both directions. en guarde. draw. touché.

you are an eternal thorn in my ass mr. perry. feel my prick, you cocksucker,

--louanne

i couldn’t have given you a straighter answer.

INT. A SOUNDSTAGE IN CHICAGO—DAY CUE: APPLAUSE

The lights come up and O is sitting in her plush leather chair. There is an empty seat across from her. She SMILES and WAVES at the audience.

O

Welcome back to today’s show, everyone. This is going to be a tough one, I think. For the first time ever I am going to talk about a book that is not on my book club list. It is Andre Perry’s Faggots Are the New Niggers.

GASPS in the audience.

O (CONT’D)

This book is highly controversial right now. Mr. Perry is catching heat from all sides for his hypocritical views on racism and homophobia. Everyone, please welcome Mr. Perry.

ANDRE walks onstage to a mix of applause and disapproving grunts. He SITS down in a leather chair across from O.

O

Hello, Andre.

ANDRE

Hey, O.

O places her hand on ANDRE’S knee briefly.

O

So, Andre, this here is one interesting book. It’s short but it sure does shock.

O LOOKS at the audience.

BEAT.

O (CONT’D)

Tell me, Andre, where does it all come from?

ANDRE

Well I guess it grew out of an essay that I wrote called “Language and Other Weapons.” I published that on my website, naggotsgo-figger.com, and I received quite a reaction so I thought I might squeeze a book out of it and make some money to help with my car payments.

O

Ha! Ain’t that the truth? Some audience laughter.

O (CONT’D)

But really, what is it inside of you that spawned these radical ideas?

ANDRE

I think it was my own personal issues and, you know, thoughts on the subject matter. I’ve got this idea that just dealing with being a black man might cause us to lash out, especially with anti-gay language. White men are already using this language so they’re not going to stop us from using it. They have no problem with us black folk getting away with homophobia especially within the black community. It spreads us apart even further. Yes, there are a lot of people still throwing around the n-word but seriously let’s all admit it’s a lot easier to get away with calling someone a faggot or even easier to call their style gay. If Peter Jennings called someone’s behavior niggerish on the nightly news he would be cast out but I bet he could get away with calling something gay. He wouldn’t get fired—he would just have to make some formal apology and social media would go nuts but eventually we’d see him back on television.

O

Peter Jennings is dead, Andre.

ANDRE

Whatever, he was a fag anyway.

Audience members GASP and BOO. Jump cut to: one MAN in the back row and his RAUCOUS LAUGHTER.

O

Moving on. Do you really think people can get away with anti-gay language?

ANDRE

Do you go outside? Do you remember when Kanye West came out and said: We need to stop being anti-gay in the hip-hop community. No one gave a damn. His statement received minimal coverage from the mainstream or hip-hop media outlets—and that was way before he went off the deep end.

O looks distressed.

ANDRE (CONT’D)

The system, I think, wants black people to use this language. We’re encouraged to because when we ask for our own rights they can point their fingers and say you guys call people faggots. And they’re right. Anything that makes us look worse and maintains the divide among those who should work together keeps the discussion of the real problems further off the table.

O

And where do you stand?

ANDRE

I used this language. It was built into my DNA of growing up in America. I know it’s not right. But the addict is always the addict even when they’re clean. Relapse is always an available option. And when you try to get better, there’s another drug—you don’t say faggot, but then you substitute words like pussy, cunt, or bitch—they all get back to the same idea which is attacking people, attacking sexuality, attacking gender.

O nervously LOOKS at her cue cards.

O

So what I’m hearing from you is that faggot really is the new nigger?

ANDRE

Well yes and no. The word nigger or a “nigger moment” takes away black manhood while faggot takes away male sexuality. It’s a fine distinction. The erosion of black manhood is the erosion of the patriarchal role of black men. We are made unable to protect our women, and consequently, our children. A black man caught in a nigger moment is no king. When I call your boyfriend a faggot, O, I am saying he is unable to complete the male sexual role in bed. He can only love men and, in a sense, he is left infertile, unable to further his bloodline through traditional sexual means. Gay sex is a dead end in the construct of white male supremacy.

O

So, Andre, why can’t we as a people, and why can’t you as an upright citizen, bring yourself to stop saying faggot when you know it’s wrong?

ANDRE

It’s the nigger in me.

O

Cut the tape.

ANDRE

That was a joke!

RAUCOUS MAN IN AUDIENCE

Get on wid it. An’ make it good, nigger!

O

Cut the goddamn tape.

Author’s Note: The term “nigger moment” was originally conceived by Aaron McGruder in the Boondocks comic strip and television show, although I define it quite differently. Or maybe they’re two sides of the same coin.