Editor’s Note: This column is an edited excerpt from a longer piece written by H. Lewis Smith, founder and president of United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc.
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Plantation owners, overseers, merchants, bankers - all of those who were benefactors of the American enslavement of black people - had a huge stake in eliminating the true identity of the newly arrived Africans.

These benefactors knew that, in order for their scheme to be effective, they would have to maintain total control over the captives. This objective could be achieved only if Africans were detached from their roots and forced to live in an environment that would birth a warped mentality.

Even though African Americans no longer are (physically) enslaved, this same notion of helplessness and inferiority has been passed down from generation to generation through a lack of cultural dignity and the continued use of the n-word.

For more than three centuries, blacks were chastised, beaten and tortured into accepting a self-hating, self-destructing, self-abasing and self-abnegating image of themselves -- all carried out with the ranting of "n**ger, n**ger" ringing in their ears.

Their tormentors believed their acts were justified, convinced that in the eyes of God, blacks were sub-human – three-fifths of a person.

Even after World War II, when black soldiers had shed blood and given their lives for a land that returned them no appreciation, they were greeted home with chants of "Don’t forget your place, n**ger."

During the 1950s and '60s, hurling the epithet “n**ger” at civil rights demonstrators wasn’t done solely to insult. It was a twisted way for biased whites to justify to themselves the pointless beatings, releasing of police dogs and use of high-pressure fire hoses on black protesters, and the fondling of black women jailed for their participation in the civil rights demonstrations.

Today, the continued use of the n-word by blacks as a term of endearment signifies an ongoing inability to break free from a cultivated self-hatred.

Although 145 years have passed since the abolishment of slavery, the needed healing for blacks never took place. The Osiris Group, made up of black psychologists, refers to this problem as “Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder.

Black psychologist Joy DeGruy says: "The real recovery from the ongoing trauma of slavery and racism has to start from within."

Black America, though liberated from physical enslavement, has never been [mentally] liberated from the n-word.

Perhaps as a step in the right direction, the black community should consider a national day of liberation. In New Orleans fashion, we could celebrate the burial of the n-word on Juneteenth 2011.

Blacks as a collective and united group are accustomed to locking arms to fight racial injustices -- holding all accountable for their actions. We need to expand such efforts to include black public figures who continue to use the n-word. We must NOW -- at this very moment -- come together to fight a common foe from within.

The n-word has no good in it -- never has, never will. Time has come to ban together, hold one another accountable, and stop the self-abnegating, self-defeating use of the n-word and all other related mentalities and lifestyles associated with "staying in our place."
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H. Lewis Smith is founder and president of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc. (www.theunitedvoices.com). He also writes for the New England Informer Online and is author of the book "Bury that Sucka: A Scandalous Love Affair with the N-Word." Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thescoop1
 

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