As this site grows with irreverent thoughts, I am certain there will be words included which invariably will offend many. Therefore I thought it proper to post a permanent page about words, starting of course with some irreverent ones.

      I was 13 when the following conversation took place.  I hadn’t yet formed a love relationship with words but I believe it was then a part of me understood the power of words and the fun we can have deconstructing them.

 “His name is Gary and the half-breed is just a friend, not that it’s any of your business” I screamed holding the door about to slam it.

 As I started to storm out of my uncle’s house I stopped to look straight into his face and said “By the way when I repeated your words about him being a half-breed, it was the white half I was objecting to” and then I slammed the door. That little performance resulted in my being grounded for the better part of a summer.

      I wish I would have come across Philip K. Dick’s (American science fiction writer) words during the long penitent days I spent in my room reading during that summer. He said: “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words you can control the people who most use the words.” That would have validated my stunt even if only in my mind. An irreverent mind in the making at thirteen, I was developing a fascination with words and what they do to and for people: curse words, bad words, offensive words, mysterious words and phrases which can change meaning depending on who uses them.

      Growing up speaking three languages (and learning others later) provided a broad understanding of words and their history.  An English word with an offensive meaning, for example, can be translated into Spanish or Portuguese and not be insulting or even impolite.  I’ve spent much of my life being fascinated with this difference and, more importantly, the roots of meaning for a myriad of words. How is it words come to have a particular meaning, and become taboo to certain regions, generations, or groups of people?  Is this primarily due to familiar and/or social connections? More importantly, should we be content with allowing society dictate the power of words?  If as individuals we do not recognize Society’s authority, do we have to agree with its definition or meaning of such words?

      “You see these dictators on their pedestals surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken, unspeakable fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts. Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home and all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse of a thought appears in the room and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into a panic.”(Winston Churchill)

      Bear with me irreverent minds. I have a point and I’m about to make it.

      The uncle I was having the argument with was someone I loathed all my life.  He believed the white race was superior, races should not mix and blacks were inferior to whites.  Incredulously, he would also be offended if anyone called him a “white supremacist”.  He had “caught” me walking home with a boy that was half Taino Indian, and thinking I might be dating a non-white threw him into the tail-spin which started our argument.  He decided to use the half-breed comment to show the inferiority of my friend’s Taino heritage, and I used the same word to put down his white half. Years later it gave me great pleasure to watch his face as I attended a very proper (and white) Spanish/Cuban wedding holding hands with my date, a very dark skinned mulato.

      There’s one of “those words:” mulato. Once a word used to describe a person who is half black and half white, this word has, over time, become offensive and highly taboo.  Is it the word itself or the meaning attributed to it? And what has changed over time to gather so much tension around one word? Some words have even totally changed meaning through the years. For example, I am sure the right-wing homophobic Christian preacher using the word “gay” in the 1950’s to describe his congregation’s emotional or spiritual state would not be caught dead using that word about his faithful members today.

      So we learn to speak and think and develop our abilities to complement or insult others with words changing our perspective as the words change meaning through the years. Again giving power to them by accepting their ever changing meanings. Words have started wars and conquered nations. Our generation also has fear inspiring, anger developing taboos in the form of words. Few words incite people as much as the word N……  Do I dare spell it out?  I irreverently will.  Few words are as upsetting as the word nigger.  Yet is it the word? Is it the demeaning connotation attached to it by racist morons? Are we acknowledging their uneducated disturbed agenda by accepting their meaning? Why do we allow the word to dictate our feelings?

      Obviously I am not saying it should not offend our social sensitivity (yes even us irreverent minds can have social sensitivity) when words like nigger are use to provoke or to insult. But why do we feel uneasy when it is not used in a negative way?

      A while back I watched an HBO special by the brilliant (yes I mean brilliant, brilliant as in I wish she would run for public office brilliant) comedian Whoopi Goldberg.  Whoopi expressed her love for words and how they affect people. She finished the act with a joke that, as she said, “will no doubt offend the community”. It went something like this: “There was a little black bat in heaven flying around with his black wings being all happy when all of a sudden he sees God above him so he calls out – ‘God, God, God now that I have wings can I be an angel?’ God stops, looks at him and says – ‘No nigger you’re a bat’.”

      At this point the camera pans the audience and what a vast range of emotions. A few laugh out loud without a problem. Some wanted to laugh but wouldn’t/couldn’t dare; while others were clearly offended (including the friend who was watching the show with me).

      Miss Goldberg let a couple of minutes go by and then said in her usual ‘cuando tu ibas ya yo venia’ (literal translation “when you were going I was already coming back”) meaning been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, sent the postcard. She faced the audience and asked some very interesting questions. “Did you laugh? If you did not, was it because you didn’t think it was funny or because the word stopped you? The joke was funny, maybe you didn’t like the word, but it was funny.”

      In the joke the word nigger referred to a bat not a human, so in reality the derogatory meaning brought on by years of slavery and the white supremacy morons does not apply, yet it offends many.  It illustrated to me even well-intentioned people who work hard on not being prejudiced give racism too much power by keeping the racist meaning of the word alive.

      Miss Goldberg finished by saying and (herein her aforementioned genius) “I laughed; I thought it was funny because to me, there are no niggers here.” She ended by thanking HBO for not censoring the act.

We give power to words, we can take it back.

 The irony does not go unnoticed. I wrote this from “La Negrita” a café on Columbus and 109th. La negrita, the little Negro girl. I’m sure the beautiful black young lady that owns the place didn’t mean to insult herself when she named her establishment after her nickname, a term of endearment in Spanish.

From MEG

“The irreverent mind”