Field N---- vs. House N---

I know! The title is rather profane; but for the purpose of this blog, it is extremely necessary. Earlier this week, former NFL player and ESPN personality Hugh Douglas was fired after news surfaced that he threatened former colleague and Number Never Lie co-host Michael Smith while also using a "racial slurs" towards Smith in a drunken tirade. You may wonder why I put racial slurs in quotation marks. If it's a racial slur if white people say the n-word (just ask NFL wide receiver Riley Cooper) then it is a racial slur if anyone says it right? I'll spare you the analytical history lesson on the complexity of the word nigger and its many connotations. Instead, I will focus on the fact that Douglas allegedly called Smith a House Nigga and an Uncle Tom. I was more insulted by the fact that Douglas called Smith a Tom & a House Nigga than I was by Cooper threatening to fight "every nigger here" while at a Kenny Chesney concert. Why do we still refer to each other in this manner? Why have we allowed the original meaning of these phrases to be come misconstrued to buttress the crabs in the barrel mentality that we as black people possess? I cannot answer all of those questions free of personal bias, but this story hit home for me in many ways.

The Douglas-Smith spat puts all of  the black communities dirty laundry out in the open. It's no coincidence that the Field Nigga (Douglas) was reported as calling the House Nigga (Smith) an Uncle Tom. While I'm too young to truly understand the significance of the brutal history of slavery and the Jim Crow era, its remnants remain to this day. Why is it that dark-skinned black men are often portrayed as brutish thugs that serve as a threat to anyone that opposes them? Why is the light-skinned black men seen as more clean cut, educated, and refined? How have we allowed this stereotype to remain in the black community almost 150 years after slavery was abolished in 1865? These are the discussion we need to be having as society at large and in the black community specifically. For too long we have allowed articulation and education to be synonymous with whiteness. Then again, in our quest to be on a level playing field, have we lost our cultural identity? Have we become House Niggas? Are we too afraid of losing the positions we manage to attain to take a stand on inequality?

I won't criticize Douglas or Smith because I was not there, nor do I know the extent of their relationship. Perhaps, this was just the media's way of getting revenge for the justified backlash Riley Cooper got for calling the security guards niggers. who knows? The bottom line is simply this, whether you are considered a Field Nigga or a House Nigga, a racist bigot considers all of us just Niggas! Who cares that President Obama is mixed? He still gets called a monkey the same way you or I would. Kanye West said it best, "Even if you in a Benz, you still a Nigga in a Coupe". The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can fight the enemy instead of each other. That last sentence crosses racial lines and is true of everybody from all cultures, but especially my people!



"All Falls Down", The College Dropout. West, Kanye. Roc-a-Fella Records 2004

http://deadspin.com/espn-fight-hugh-douglas-called-colleague-michael-smith-1042188473