In Ossie Davis' The English Language is My Enemy, Davis explores the definition of BLACKNESS, by comparing its synonyms to the the synonyms of WHITENESS. He explains that the thesaurus of his choice has 134 synonyms for WHITENESS and the majority of those were favorable terms. BLACKNESS on the other hand had 120 synonyms, none of which were positive, 60 which were distinctly unfavorable and 20 that were directly related to race. Davis goes on to say that " When you consider the fact that thinking itself is sub-vocal speech-- you will appreciate the enormous heritage of racial prejudgment that lies in wait for any child born into the English Language. Any teacher good or bad, white or black, Jew or Gentile, who uses the English Language as a medium of communication is forced, willy-nilly, to teach the Negro child 60 ways to despise himself, and the white child 60 ways to aid and abet him in the crime." Davis opened my eyes to the fact that blacks are subconsciously debased by the language that we speak. When one thinks of black, the first thing in their mind might be one of the synonyms Davis found :" evil, wicked, blot, blotch, threatening, malignant, unclean, deadly." So it makes a black person like myself wonder, when a white person sees me is this what they are thinking? Is this definition engraved in their mind so well as to think that this is what it means to be black? I hope not, because even though the dictionaries define black in a negative light, I know that black is beautiful. And maybe if they looked past the dictionaries and what they were taught in school for the definition of black-- they could see this too.
Revelations: an anthology of expository essays by and about blacks. Pg 163-164
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