This comment is how I landed in twitter jail and the offensive word was “negro.” After receiving this notification I have to admit I had to look the word up. Despite my family’s extremely youthful DNA I am almost 50 years old. Negro is a respectful term that was used most memorably by my father and grandfather when retelling a story or experience. It is part of my vernacular and there is a distinct difference between the word Negro and the racial slur Nigger.
This is a excerpt from an article on NPR “Negro Not Allowed On Federal Forms? White House to Decide,” note article was written in December 2017 :
In 2016, President Barack Obama signed a law to “modernize” a couple of 1970s-era laws by replacing “Negro” with “African American.” (It also switched out “Oriental” for “Asian American.”)
These moves allowed the government and its institutions to catch up with generational shifts within the black community. After decades of an ongoing debate about labels, the term “Negro” — once commonly used by Martin Luther King Jr. and other early civil rights era leaders — gave way to the rise of “black” beginning in the mid-1960s and later “African-American” in the late 1980s.
I have observed the “generational shifts” with the labeling of Black Folks in America within my own family and have seen a birth certificate with the term “colored” and a death certificate with the term “negro,” and I have seen a birth certificate with the term “negro” and the death certificate of the same person labeled “black.” Blackness has the unfortunate reality of being subjected to whatever dominant culture deems acceptable. The people that are/ were “Negros” are American Descendants of Slavery that are identified as #ADOS or #AmericanDOS on twitter. ADOS Negros have been called Russian bots, Trump supporters, agents of Cointelpro and everything under the sun to silence a grassroots political movement started by Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore to demand lineage based reparations and substantive ADOS specific policy from 2020 Presidential Candidates, The Congressional Black Caucus, and State/ City Officials .
Self identifying has created waves from recognizable “African-American” pundits including Joy Ann Reid, Symone Sanders, Bakari Sellers, Angela Rye, Malcolm Nance, Roland Martin and most recently Mark Thompson of N’COBRA. None of these individuals has had the journalistic integrity or the personal ethics to research ADOS movement founders or who vocal members in that space are. With little to no evidence they have been allowed platforms on national television and radio to discuss “beliefs.” The critical analysis of 2020 Presidential Candidates has created a backlash as if being informed about the actual policies and track records of the Candidates was to be off limits, particularly “Black” candidates which is irresponsible.
I have no idea what twitter is going to do. It seems I could have ignored the notice and per the fine print been out of twitter jail in 12 hours on March 18th. But I protested and now am waiting for a twitter staffer to review my appeal. Had I not responded I could have used direct message feature and scrolled the timeline, but now that I have appealed, I am “suspended” pending review of appeal. My last option is to delete the tweet because as we know there is no edit feature on twitter but then in place of the tweet will be a public shaming where in place of the tweet there will be some language to the affect that I violated their “hateful conduct clause.” Colored was what was on water fountains back in the day and now People of Color is a thing. I am a Negro, African American, Black, POC, ADOS person talking about another… Forgive me for not knowing the politically correct terms that apply to other Black People by dominant culture in 2019.
Unapologetically,
Friday