Ni##Er Factory (The End Word) [feat. DeJuan Gillespie]

They told us by decree my people had received emancipation. By degrees we slowly made our way to integration. But the key to finally reaching any destination on the freedom train had to be with better education. We were all so simple then, bright eyed, eager to be listening, young minds ripe for some conditioning. Training us to be the future scholars they started out with fables of the figureheads that decorate our dollars. They would often mention cherry trees, adolescent honesty, but rarely touched upon the backbone of their economies and commandeering land had been a factor, yet whenever Natives battled back, they would label that a massacre. Thievery and viciousness, woven into images presented as a necessary portion of our lineage. What’s our definition if we never got percentages but they received the benefits? We know what that meaning is. Lincoln always thought it was beneath him to debate one. Washington would chase ‘em, Jefferson could rape one. Portraits of the “gentlemen” whose minds that it sprang from. Founders of the factory that showed us how to make one.

I was a young black gifted kid fortunate to get a private school education through diversity initiatives. I wondered, were they paying penance? Perhaps the brochures needed melanin to modernize their image hmm. Could I be a test case for racial mixing? Were they grooming me to be the type of Negro I resented? Ain’t no way, but I embraced whatever role it represented because what better game to play than a scrimmage with the privileged. I’m taking steps. Earning my respect mastering advanced concepts and foreign social etiquette but what got me perplexed, not the lessons I was learning, but it's what my peers were not that I truly found concerning. So I spoke up and asserted, the fact we should address the black hole in our curriculum and waited for the verdict. But their energy converted and a part of my discernment was they never said the term, but I knew it when I heard it (know your place ni**er). History would always change the narrative to frame ‘em. Martin was a safe one, Malcolm made them hate one. Then it got more troublesome because Baldwin said there ain’t none. That’s why he left the factory that showed him how to make one.

I used to think that fairy tales were for kids but I remember freshman year. Carolina blue skies, walking campus with my peers. Elevated he appeared and what fell upon my ears were the legends of a statue that had stood so many years. Looking down on everyone Silent Sam was on his shift and his rifle would go off it there were virgins in his midst. Or at least that was another of the many playful myths but the truth of his arrival was a fact they’d rather skip. They never told us he was meant to honor white supremacists and about a stone’s throw away a black woman had been whipped. So enslaved we laid the bricks, then we hung up championships, for our pain and sacrifice the school rewarded us with this? Made no sense. Why would they protect a monument attacking me? Unless it was the symbol for a new brutality reminding me of a past I only thought was still in back of me. Support staff, students, and the faculty. It’s still a ni**er factory.

The hateful establishment of the word **** is so deeply embedded in society, that credibly redefining it would require a suspension of consciousness.

And though **** does have a positive alternative, we haven’t changed its meaning, we only added to its definition. Do we only express **** with positivity? No. Because the original use never left, and now it’s an inescapable part of our lives. The abolition of its use is too inconvenient. Maybe in our attempt to survive, we unwittingly ensured this word's survival... The Public Weapon.