We Don' Need No Steenkin' *N* Word...

All the controversy over who CAN say this word, who CANNOT, and why we even bother to say it anyway has continued to fan the flames of human discontent in recent years. And why shouldn't it? After all, it was a word created by white people to demean black people, without regard to their status, education, or moral integrity.

There are now (and probably always will be) those who use the word as a slur against ALL blacks, and that's wrong for too many reasons. There are those that use it as a sign of "affectation"...again wrong for all the wrong reasons. There are those who even use it to refer to ANYONE of a specific lifestyle, and although that would most certainly represent the closest approximation to any current meaning, it's still wrong. And in today's overly PC-SP world, we can't really say what we think any longer (in public anyway), without being taken to task for saying what we might honestly feel (or think). It's more Orwellian every year...where's the thought police?

Many have tried to "mainstream" the word as a way of diluting the meaning...and that has not worked worth a damn. This word has power, and any attempt to wrest such power from any lexicon is a task of near-Biblical proportions. Others have tried to BAN the word altogether, and we know from experience that ANYTHING that is banned becomes all the more enticing, because we force whatever it is to go "underground" to a realm not unlike prohibition (which never worked either). Or it could lead to banning more than words....like books (and that never really went over in post-depression Germany too well, did it?).

Can you imagine a private club where you can freely speak the *N* word? Oh wait, we already have such a venue...it's call the KKK. And those people are the worst kind of racially-charged citizens we could possibly have. Their only motivational skill is hate...not a good thing.

I think a more "novel" idea would be to use a word or phrase that could more correctly describe the people we find morally and ethically lacking by their actions, words, and/or deeds.

So, how about the term...GHETTO-CRACKER?

This would refer to any person of a "cracker" mentality (which by itself smacks of the old southern whites) that basically remind us (today) of those people that do nothing and get paid by the government to do it. And since any ghetto is primarily made up of lower-class blacks, hispanics along with whites as well as whatever other ethnic flotsam we can dredge up, what better word to fully embrace the nuances of what they REALLY are?

Thomas Sowell, in his book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals", states that what is often construed as "urban black culture" has striking similarities to the cracker culture of the old South.This cracker culture emerged in the American South through the immigration of culturally lowbrow English immigrants (yep, them's rednecks). In the antebellum era, about 90 percent of U.S. blacks were immersed in this expression of southern living. When blacks migrated into major northern cities, beginning in the early twentieth century, they brought redneck culture with them, incorporating it into their own culture.

The dominant social, moral, and cultural values among Southern rednecks that have been explained in works such as Grady McWhiney’s "Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South", include aversion to work, proclivity for violence, contentment with little to no education, sexual promiscuity, short-term thinking, drunkenness, an anti-entrepreneurial spirit, reckless pursuit of excitement, and wild music and dance. Rednecks always had a type of touchy pride, what you might call today a “bling-bling” vanity, a boastfully dramatized sense of self, and little (if any) self-control.

Only a Ghetto Cracker would ridicule the pursuit of education, the speaking of correct English, and working hard. They boast of violent activities, sexual promiscuity, and “gettin’ high and drunk,” “acting a fool up in da’ club,” or bumping and grinding on the dance floor. The Ghetto Cracker celebrates being out of control and spending money instead of saving and investing.

Now if that doesn't sound like the people that reside in ANY neighborhood in trouble in ANY major city in America today, I fon't know ehat does.

Ghetto IS...as Ghetto DOES.

But don't take my word word for it...just ask Anthony Bradley, research fellow at the Acton Institute (A former high school teacher and administrator, he holds a BS in biological sciences from Clemson University, a Master of Divinity from Covenant Theological Seminary, and is completing his PhD at Westminster Theological Seminary).

Being a Ghetto-Cracker, regardless of race, is the pursuit of a lifestyle of self-sabotage that undermines human dignity and despises the morality that undergirds civil society. Selling out one’s dignity and future to regressive moral standards is the way of the Ghetto-Cracker. (Now you know what a lot of my "neighbors" are like).

Many urban blacks today maintain this Ghetto-Cracker lifestyle while calling anyone else of their race that is not of "this" persuasion a "sell out" to the white man. I should think that selling out is the wrong term to use. I'd much rather think of it as "buying in" to the white man. I have often stated that if, for example, the black community wants to see themselves as EQUAL with "whitey", then they have to "out-white whitey". And if that means being a better CITIZEN, BUSINESS OWNER, TEACHER, DOCTOR (or whatever) than most of their white counterparts... than so be it. It IS well within the realm of opportunity in this country for any of them to make it happen. Any many of them already have, albeit way too few.

Much the same can be said for the womens' movement. Women had to be a "better man than most men" to make it in a "man's world", and with the number of successful women in business today, it's looks like THEY got the message loud and clear.

So we really don't need to use that despicable *N* word any longer to call these people what they really wish to be. Let's just call them all (much less despicable and highly apropos) GHETTO-CRACKERS ("GeeCees" or "Ghcs" for short)....and hell, let's even start a freaking monthly periodical JUST for them. I can see it now...GC magazine...so much better than GQ.

Go steal a copy at your local bookseller today!