American Nigger is carefully and boldly executed. In these poems Marc Stallion weaponizes poetry to dismantle the culture of white supremacy, bigotry, sexism and injustice. With perfectly ragged language, Stallion highlights some personal challenges and experiences as a black man in America. American Nigger is about the curses and blessings of being black in America, and it targets systems created to oppress generation after generation. In this book Stallion raises some questions about the N-Word and it's uses throughout history, and in today's pop culture.

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Randall Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence—with a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial. It’s “the nuclear bomb of racial epithets,” a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many Black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment. The word, of course, is nigger, and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it. Should Blacks be able to use nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law treat it as a provocation that reduces the culpability of those who respond to it violently? Should it cost a person his job, or a book like Huckleberry Finn its place on library shelves?

An engrossing autobiographical exploration of black masculinity as a mode of racial and verbal performance. In Your Average Nigga, Vershawn Ashanti Young disputes the belief that speaking Standard English and giving up Black English Vernacular helps black students succeed academically. Young argues that this assumption not only exaggerates the differences between two compatible varieties of English but forces black males to choose between an education and their masculinity, by choosing to act either white or black. As one would expect from a scholar who is subject to the very circumstances he studies, Young shares his own experiences as he exposes the factors that make black racial identity irreconcilable with literacy for blacks, especially black males. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary scholarship in performance theory and African American literary and cultural studies, Young shows that the linguistic conflict that exists between black and white language styles harms black students from the inner city the most. If these students choose to speak Standard English they risk alienating themselves from their families and communities, and if they choose to retain their customary speech and behavior they may isolate themselves from mainstream society. Young argues that this conflict leaves blacks in the impossible position of either trying to be white or forever struggling to prove that they are black enough. For men, this also becomes an endless struggle to prove that they are masculine enough. Young calls this constant effort to display proper masculine and racial identity the burden of racial performance. Ultimately, Young argues that racial and verbal performances are a burden because they cannot reduce the causes or effects of racism, nor can they denaturalize supposedly fixed identity categories, as many theorists contend. On the contrary, racial and verbal performances only reinscribe the essentialism that they are believed to subvert. Scholars and teachers of rhetoric, performance studies, and African American studies will enjoy this insightful volume.

The story of Dick Greagory, welfare case, star athelete, hit comedian, and front-line participant in the battle for Civil Rights.

One of many regional reprints of Jerry Farber's 1967 Los Angeles Free Press essay comparing the relationship between universities and students to that of masters and slaves.

More than any other black leader, H. Rap Brown, chairman of the radical Black Power organization Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), came to symbolize the ideology of black revolution. This autobiography—which was first published in 1969, went through seven printings and has long been unavailable—chronicles the making of a revolutionary. It is much more than a personal history, however; it is a call to arms, an urgent message to the black community to be the vanguard force in the struggle of oppressed people. Forthright, sardonic, and shocking, this book is not only illuminating and dynamic but also a vitally important document that is essential to understanding the upheavals of the late 1960s. University of Massachusetts professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell has updated this edition, covering Brown's decades of harassment by law enforcement agencies, his extraordinary transformation into an important Muslim leader, and his sensational trial.

There are countless self help books flooding the market, but few are specific to the current needs and concerns of the broad African American community. There have been numerous significant studies researching the subject of whether, and to what degree, Black Americans still suffer from the self-hatred engendered by years of enslavement and oppression. Yet none of those studies has anything to offer the average Black American who is functioning with the normal problems of living of the modern world. With more than thirty years of experience as a psychotherapist, educator, Yoruba Priest, and student of African practices and traditions, Dr. Lee presents practical and simple KEYS to unlock the remaining psychological and physical chains that impair healthy functioning for African Americans. Acknowledging the "Nigger" in Us All picks up where Harold Cruse's Crisis of the Negro Intellectual and Franz Fanon's Black Skin, White Mask left off more than forty years ago. In presenting a book that informs with living examples rather than with theory, New African KEYS offers the reader 12 interconnected KEYS developed to arm Black Americans or anyone else with tools for individual and group self improvement. Dr. Lee emphasizes that the work of individual transformation has to include work toward changing the world, but all of this "work" must be done in a playful and compassionate way. The book also provides a major critique of our current approaches to relationships based on romantic love and suggests an approach that offers the possibilities for deeper and more satisfying intimate relationships. The book initiates a re-investigation of the history of Africans in the Americas and examines the adverse effects that this history has had on the African self. Dr. Lee exposes why the concept of the "nigger" was created and advises African Americans not to repeat the destructive mistake that White Americans made by creating some scapegoat in order to feel good about themselves. He makes the diagnosis that all humans individually and collectively have "good" and "bad" qualities and potentials; and he prescripts unconditional self acceptance as the only prescription to prevent the scapegoat trap. This concept of unconditional self acceptance that Dr. Lee calls - ASHE - is a simple and ancient, yet revolutionary concept. The KEYS are offered to assist in the internalization of this concept that can also assist in the development of alternative coping mechanisms. Dr. Lee's goal is to empower readers to do battle both individually and collectively with the strains of living within our sexist and racist society. More importantly, he attempts to empower readers with the keys to change their world.

The scathing second novel by the legendary poet, musician and Godfather of Rap is a work of “biting social satire” (Daily Express). Originally published in 1972, Gil Scott-Heron’s striking novel The Nigger Factory is a powerful parable of the way in which human beings are conditioned to think, drawing inspiration from Scott-Heron’s own experiences as a student in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Earl Thomas, student body president at Sutton University, is in a difficult position: struggling with the fact that even a historically black college could be part of a system that still privileges whites, he’s also threatened by his fellow students, members of radical activist group MJUMBE. Claiming the time has come for revolution, not reform, the leaders of MJUMBE are poised not only to bring Earl down personally, but also to instigate larger scale acts of violence. An electrifying novel, The Nigger Factory is a penetrating examination of the different forms of resistance and the motivations behind them, and a major document of an era of black thought.

A Message to My Black People: Stop Being the Nigga in America, first of all, is not meant to anger or disparage anyone. I wrote this book to help my people understand that we can do things a whole lot better as a people in order to earn and gain the respect as a people that we feel we deserve. Our slave ancestors endured too much for too long for us not to respect and reflect upon that and to make ourselves better. Our people and others devoted to the cause during the civil