Well Charles, its not like you're going to hear it in Wedgewood or Ballard. You have to enjoy in those few parts of town where you can get it.

is anyone else having trouble seeing the right side of the posts? i'm losing the last couple of letters under the ads.

"If we don't protect the Freedom of Speech, how will we know who the assholes are?"

More delightful "Black English"

--
I was a made man at fifteen years
Cuz momma didn't raise no faggotty queer

ANT BANKS featuring KING TEE - West Riden

Though I can freak, fly, flow, fuck up a faggot

Don't understand their ways I ain't down with gays

BRAND NUBIAN - Punks Jump Up To Get Beat Down

Wags - Yes, I'm having the same trouble.

Anybody ever wonder why niggers can make millions of dollars selling songs about killing faggots?

Isn't faggot just as bad as saying nigger?

The question of comparative offensiveness aside, I think the esteemed editor of this paper did quite a lot to popularize "faggot" (as in: "Hey, Faggot!" instead of "Dear Dan") as a not-so-nuclear epithet.

there are few things as melodious to the ear as black english, particularly when overheard on such a lovely spring day.

i hope the greens worked out for you, charles.

Why not a new column "Hey Nigger!" with answers to questions about english usage? Or else "Hey Nigger Scholar!"?

Using "Hey Nigger" would be a great publicity gimmick. Everyone would be talking about a "Hey Nigger" column. "Hey Faggot" sure got people talking and made it OK to use Faggot in a funny way.

Why not popularize "nigger" and desensitize readers to nigger in the same way "Hey Faggot" made faggot a not-so-nuclear epithet?

Only in Seattle could you call "the hood" a federally-subsidized shopping center (the Promenade was created via Empowerment Zone $) facing a massive wall of city-subsized condos that sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece a few years ago and would probably sell for much more now. Yes Red Apple plays soul music and the Starbucks has photos of the Jackson Street Jazz scene and was used as a model by Magic Johnson when he underwrote the expansion of Starbucks into poor black neighborhoods around the country. I'm just saying: this isn't a typical "hood," whatever its lingo.

Yeah, I can't see the right side of the posts either.

Uh...it's pretty obvious that gays can speak of "faggots" and blacks can speak of "niggers" and Italians can talk about "wops"etc etc etc etc but for anyone else to do so is rightly still a no-no. And that is not being "PC" but only courteous and prudent. Unless you are OF that group, it's not cute.

I'm not gay and do you think I am so stupid as to walk into some bar on Pine with my 36C sweetheart and say "Hey! What a cool faggot bar!" I don't think people would find it "cute."

Trevor, what's your point with 'only in Seattle'? I mean, the Central Dist has been an African-American neighborhood for like, a hundred years. Seriously. Read Quintard Taylor. Those condos just opened. So?

Thank you, Charles, for your work these past two weeks.

"...Central Dist has been an African-American neighborhood for like, a hundred years."

Not so.

Actually my post was kinda dumb. My geeky obsession with land use got the best of me and I pressed send while thinking aloud.

But, while on the subject, raw data is right. The CD has been a place that African Americans lived in Seattle for over 100 years. But it was just as much a Jewish neighborhood and Asian American neighborhood until the 1950s and even into the 1960s as it was anything else. Taylor's focus on African Americans in his book obscures the very multiracial history of the neighborhood.

O, I see. This little section of town wan't a "'hood" historically; it was just the pace where Jews, Blacks and Asians were concentrated. O yes. thank you for the illumination.

For those of you not from here: Until the 1970's, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, for blacks or Jews to buy property north of the Ship Canal (Asians had it bad also, but not quite so bad), so the black population in Seattle tended to live down towards 12th & Jackson. (Keep in mind that there weren't that many black people in Seattle until WWII.)

The CD was overwhelmingly white until the 50's when the growing black population, coupled with the new suburbs, caused many white folks to sell their homes and move (i.e. "white flight", most of it racially motivated).

By the mid-60's, it was becoming a "black" neighborhood, along with the Rainier Valley.

The Boeing Bust drove real estate values down all over the region, but especially in the CD and Southeast Seattle. When Seattle started to recover, the CD started to get "gentrified". This was generally a good thing for the black homeowners, and a real pain for the renters, and has lead to some bad feelings on both sides.

So yes, the CD was/is the Seattle version of "the hood", but that is a relatively new phenomina.

It's still difficult for blacks today to buy property north of the ship canal.

Hey Nigger Scholar,

So are you claiming those Niggers who make millions singing about killing faggots really gay themselves?

I doubt that.

So why is it straight niggers make money selling songs about killing faggots? What's the NAACP position on that?

It's only blacks who cannot afford buy property north of the Ship Canal. Any other race can easily afford it.

The same is true of Mercer Island. Every other race besides blacks can easily purchase a home on Mercer Island. Why is Seattle so racist, why are blacks the only ones who can't afford homes in the fine neighborhoods?

Instead of nit-picking about what race can or cannot buy property where (at least it's not codified anymore) I think the consideration/complaint should be about how the middle class finds it difficult to buy property anywhere in Seattle anymore. Call it equal opportunity economic discrimination.

"So why is it straight niggers make money selling songs about killing faggots? What's the NAACP position on that?"

The NAACP should say fuck you to that. No nigga in this society owns the means of mass producing, mass promoting, and mass distributing music. The real reason that shit is on the radio and in Walmart is because of white billionaires and the white consumers they supply. Lots of black people are not homophobic but white billionaires are not promoting (and white consumers aren't buying) tolerant brothers on the market--they will, however, pay big bucks for a raw nigga. So go to the white billionaires and white consumers and do your fucking bitching.

If a black man can make a million dollars singing a song about killing faggots he should do it. White billionaires are the ones who force black artists to sing about killing faggots.

It's not fair to expect Black artists to be strong enough to resist the white billionaires
who put words into their mouths, and control what they sing about.

Show me one artist black or white who would turn down a million dollars if all they had to do is sing about killing faggots.

Fuck You to white people who think black artists shouldn't make millions selling songs about killing faggots. It's all Walmart's fault songs like that exist.

You call yourself Black Power, but then you offer the pathetic excuse that black artists are too weak to resist white Billionaires. What's up with that?

I agree that Blacks get shit on in this country, but sometimes you have to take responsibility for your actions.

No nigga in this society owns the means of mass producing, mass promoting, and mass distributing music. The real reason that shit is on the radio and in Walmart is because of white billionaires...

Show me one black artist who has the power to resist that.

White people are to blame for the songs blacks write about killing faggots. So go picket Walmart and leave black artists alone.

Clearly, crack is not only a problem in the hood. Sir English Student, put the pipe down for a minute and listen very closely: It's an issue of amplification. Do you get it? What is amplified and what is muted. Those who have the power to manage what goes through the channels and what does not, are the ones you should really be worried about. If you don't get it, I understand. Crack can be like that.

I want to follow-up my earlier posts with a couple of citations regarding the historical hoodliness of the vicinity around The Most Rev. Dr. Charles "N.S." Mudede's Saturday morning stroll.

First: This link to a concise history of the Douglass-Truth Branch Library. http://www.historylink.org/_output.cfm?file_id=4056

It's at 23rd and Yesler, about two blocks north of the Red Apple, etc. that are described in Charles' and Trevor's posts. The library opened in 1914 and was originally named in honor of Henry Yesler and his wife. Here are some of the highlights:

" The makeup of the neighborhood was reflected when the library received a petition asking for more books in Yiddish. The area along the Yesler cable car line attracted many Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia because of several synagogues in the area and the Hebrew Shelter and Immigrant Aid Society. "

"In the 1920s, Japanese immigrants began moving into the neighborhood, confined to that area by deed covenants that discriminated against people of color including Asians. The Japanese American patrons asked for works in their native language as did other groups. "

"By 1932, the Yesler Branch featured books in 13 different languages and was home to the library system's Yiddish, Hebrew, and Japanese collections. That year, Yesler had the highest branch circulation in the system and the system's all-time high of some 239,000 books loaned."

"World War II brought economic recovery and monumental change to the neighborhood. The forced evacuation of Japanese Americans to internment camps in 1942 robbed the branch of its most loyal borrowers. The Japanese collection was removed.

There followed an influx of thousands of African Americans who sought jobs in war industries. They found their way to the Central Area, the only neighborhood open to them given Seattle's discriminatory housing practices. The migrants from Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas occupied many of the homes of the Japanese American evacuees. This migration commenced a clash of cultures that continued for decades.

Librarians tried to accommodate the newcomers and "books about the Negro by Negro authors" were ordered. Black visitors were asked if they would prefer these books, which were kept separate from the rest of the collection or catalogued with works about slavery. Branch librarian Doris Hopkins met with the Christian Friends for Racial Equality in order "to understand the Negro," but that group was made up largely of white women and discussed issues more than they took action. In 1942, the library advertised a deposit station near 23rd Avenue and Madison Street to entice African American borrowers to use the library. The ads had to be amended to reflect that anyone could use the station. "

So, yes Trevor and Raw Data. A hundred years ago, the CD was not an "African-American" neighborhood; but for a hundred years, the CD has been a 'hood and ghetto. My reaction to Trevor's "Only in Seattle" remark i provoked by many years hearing Caucasians talk about "How White" Seattle is. To my eye, it's not a white city at all, it's a segregated city, or at least there seem to be vast reaches of the city where the white people can't seem to see beyond themselves.

Q. Taylor's written a lot of books. Here's a description of one that centers the CD:

The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era By Quintard Taylor

Book Description:
Through much of the twentieth century, black Seattle was synonymous with the Central District--a four square mile section near the geographic center of the city.  Quintard Taylor explores the evolution of this community from its first few residents in the 1870s to a population of early forty thousand in 1970.  With events such as the massive influx of rural African Americans beginning with World War II and the transformation of African American community leadership in the 1960s from an integrationist to a "black power" stance, Seattle both anticipates and mirrors national trends. Thus, this book addresses not only a particular city in the Pacific Northwest but also the process of political change in black America.

This book places black urban history in a broader framework than most urban case studies by analyzing racial perceptions, attitudes, and expectations in light of the presence of another people of color, Asian Americans.  Asians rather than blacks were Seattle's largest racial minority until World War II.  Their presence limited African American employment and housing opportunities by drawing blacks into intense competition with the city's Chinese, Japanese and Filipino populations.  Yet the virulent racism of the 1890-1940 era, usually directed against blacks in urban communities, was diffused among Seattle's four nonwhite groups.  Consequently, Asians and blacks, admittedly uneasy neighbors, became partners in coalitions challenging racial restrictions while remaining competitors for housing and jobs.

Taylor explores the intersection of race and class in a city with a decidedly liberal and at times radical political culture.  He finds that while local blacks operated in a racial environment that allowed relatively open social interactions, at the same time they were subject to restricted employment opportunities, preventing rapid growth of the African American population.  Taylor argues that black Seattle was poised between two worlds, attempting to meld the values and traditions of its rural past with the requisites of modern urban-industrial society.  Thus the community ethos was forged by the process in which the values of the rural, predominately southern migrants--kinship networks, religious and folk beliefs, and sense of shared community--were transformed in the urban environment.

About the Author
Quintard Taylor is Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West,  1528-1990.  
 
Here's some more fact-y facts:

The African-American population in Seattle climbed from 400 in 1900 to 2,300 in 1910, 2,900 in 1920, 3,300 in 1930, and 3,800 in 1940. The black community was not very large, compared to those in other American cities, and it was not especially prosperous. Union regulations, employment discrimination, and other factors kept the great majority of African Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder in menial and service occupations throughout the first four decades of the century. In 1910 45% of black male employees were servants, janitors, and waiters, and 84% of black female employees were domestic or personal servants; in 1940 the figures were 52% and 83%, respectively. Economic opportunities were hardly improving. Moreover, residential discrimination actually worsened during these years. In 1900 blacks lived in all fourteen of the city's wards, but in the ensuing decades discrimination by whites confined them to two primary neighborhoods—along Jackson Street near what became the International District, and along East Madison on Capitol Hill-that merged to form the Central District. African Americans found it impossible to rent or buy housing outside of these areas, and in many parts of the city they were not allowed in theaters, nightclubs, and restaurants.

J Findlay History of the Pacific Northwest quoting from Q. Taylor.
http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/hstaa432/lesson_21/hstaa432_21.html

Jensen,

I think you may have misunderstood me.

I didn't say that Seattle is an all-white city, or that the CD doesn't have African Americans in it. I said the CD is an atypical "hood." I was referring to its rapidly changing demographics and its above $300,000 median home value:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=black22m1&date=20010722

It wasn't a brilliant point: there's gentrification all over the country. The fact that local developers cynnically describe the CD as impoverished in order to get subsidies for market rate housing and shitty chain stores is a pet peeve of mine that is beside the point to this conversation. And who cares what's atypical?

That said, I was not denying the significance of African American history to the CD. In response to your post, I simply pointed out the CD has also been and still is much more than just an African American neighborhood. The CD was maybe majority African American for 40 years, though I'd guess it was probably closer to 30 years (1965-95 or so). Saying it's always been a ghetto oversimplifies too much, in my opinion.

In addition to the info you posted, you might want to check out the work-in-progress web site I've helped develop through my work at the UW, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project:

www.civilrights.washington.edu

Peace,

"Branch librarian Doris Hopkins met with the Christian Friends for Racial Equality in order "to understand the Negro," but that group was made up largely of white women and discussed issues more than they took action."

Boy, the more things change, the more they stay the same ;-)

Dear Trevor,

Thanks for fleshing our your position and sharing some of your work. I celebrate the cry for justice and truth in your peeves.

I aslo dig the informed discussion of race/poverty matters as they exist on-the-ground, in Seattle. They are topics so prone to diffuse abstraction. If The Stranger were to sustain a long term engagement as a forum for participants in the fabric of "Southeast" Seattle and the CD, that would be a great thing for the town. And 'world', even.

. . . . .

I'm fascinated by the fact that Charles, in his usage, has insisted on the the formulation 'nigga'. Yet this, along with 'nigger', seem to have made the NAACP ban. The two seem very different. Evidence of their difference is even apparent in the way they've been used in this thread.

Dear crack smoking english student,

Let me lay this out for you in case you didn't get the amplification idea. Say you're at a concert and some guy is onstage talking all kinds of shit about faggots.

Without that microphone no one would hear him. So the issue is not really what the guy says because he's not responsible for the microphone, the electronic equipment, the loud speakers.

As long as white people make the microphones, and loudspeakers it's their fault what people say. You can blame the people speaking into the microphone because without that microphone no one would hear them. Black people can't be held responsible for the words that come out of their own mouths as long as white people are in charge.

Please stop smoking crack for a few minutes and try to grasp amplification. Black artists are not responsible for the words that come out of their own mouths because in our society white people control all the microphones.

So fuck you to all white people who tell niggas not to make millions singing about killing faggots.

Black Power, what a singularly idiotic arguement. It assumes no intelect, no conscience, no free will on the part of black people. It perpetuates the myth of the black person as childlike and unable to function independently of the white authority figure. It represents a complete submission to supposed superior white intelect. If you are indeed a black person, I feel sorry for you and your inferiority complex.

Black Spin,

Put the pipe down for a minute and listen very closely: It's an issue of amplification. Those who have the power to manage what goes through the channels and what does not, are the ones you should really be worried about.

Billionaire white people control Walmart, they control the music industry. Black people would not even be singing about shooting faggots if white billionaires were less powerful.

If your crack addled brain can't grasp that we all understand.

Crack rehab, I ain't buying it. Mostly because you repeat the same statements over and over and over, which shows you are either not too bright or just parroting something you've been told.

Stop blaming Wal-Mart and "White Billionaires". Nobody likes a whiny victim.

For your inevitable repetitive reply, try to find a better joke than the lameass, and way overdone crack joke, OK?

Hey Nigger Scholar,


Guess nobody likes your crack jokes?

So why is it straight nigger performers

can make millions singing about

killing faggots and not a peep out

of the NAACP?

Your "blame the white billionaire"
and "blame Walmart" excuse don't

convince anyone.

The Stranger's crusade to put "Nigger"

back into regular usage will benefit

all english speakers. After all if

straight niggers can make millions

singing about killing fags, why can't

everyone say "nigger" for fun or profit?

We can all just say "those Walmart
billionaires made me do it" ;)

P.S. If someone can ride a "Hey Faggot" column
to wealth and fame, "Hey Nigger Scholar"
could work even better.

Black Power is a troll who's mocking Mudede, and you keep feeding him/her. Stop it.

Richard Parsons, CEO of TIME-WARNER, the current 'overseer' of roughly 15% of the planet's commercial media output, and distribution channels, and supplier of numerous microphones, and owner of the world's largest CD/DVD production facility, is an American descended from the African slave diaspora.

http://www.timewarner.com/corp/management/corp_executives/bio/parsons_richard.html

I knew someone would bring up Richard Parsons. But, Richard Jensen, Ricard Parsons is the exception, not the rule. And yes, Inhibitionist, I know who black spin is and what he is doing. I will say no more on that dulling matter.

Hey Charles, did you go to the panel discussion at the UW about "gentrification/revival" in the Central District last week? Just curious what your opinion was if you did go, I couldn't make it. (I know, "panel discussions" often suck ass, but it seemed like an interesting group.)

As an aside, that Red Apple is the shit. I shop there all the time since I live right down in Judkins--a friend of mine calls it the "Sweat Mart" because half the time he's there, they've got Keith Sweat booming out of the speakers. I hope that no matter what insane development continues in our neighborhood, somehow that place sticks around.

The Red Apple is a great store. And they are troopers - If I recall correctly, they were the first store to go in there when that intersection was just a burned out mess. They showed faith in the neighborhood when few others would.