Jill Scott Gets Called the N-Word
Posted by Bossip Staff
Jill Scott explains a recent incident where she was called a nigger and how she handled it:
“I was waiting outside for the valet to bring the car round, and these … I say kids, but they must have been 25, looking wealthy, five-o’clock-in-the-morning wasted. And this guy’s saying, ‘Step back nigger, step back nigger.’ He’s saying it like it’s a song, but there’s nobody out there but me. I was taken aback, and I said, ‘Excuse me?’
And he said, ‘Shut your mouth and don’t say a word when a white man is talking.’
“I’m not kidding. I started laughing, and I followed him and his cohorts through the parking lot laughing hysterically, and they became more and more uncomfortable. It was one of the best moments of outrageous laughter I’ve had. To think for one moment I could possibly fit into that box … I am so far from that word that it is funny. They looked so uncomfortable; I wanted to emasculate him, to make sure he was getting no nookie that night. The girls sobered up and were looking scared. It was something else – the first time in my life I’ve been called that. Wow. But I enjoyed it. You must fight back; it’s imperative. I like the fight in me now.”
Image via WENN
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History repeats itself…we are making another transition through a racist time period Some people just dont wanna admit it…..
For some strange reason I would have laughed too! Like, “Are you serious? That ish is so played.”
She did the right thing by not giving them the reaction they wanted.
This is so incredibly sad. It’s amazing how ignorant people still are, how “entitled” certain people feel. Those men and all the other people involved in such hate and perpetuation of racism are sickening. I admire Jill Scott for her gracious-yet aggressive- response. I don’t know what I would have done…I might have made the news, if you feel me…
THAT WHAT THE HELL I’M TALKING ABOUT. Laugh at they stupid *****es and then turn around and sell millions of records.
Love this chick- Give meee give meee give mee give it to me give to me
P.S. that pic is fiyah!!!! get’em Jill.
that is exactly the way you should handle some ***** ***** racist who tries to put you down! Show the ***** whippie up for what he is. Sticks and stones mother*****er, sticks and stones. No need to do no marching cause what you say don’t mean *****!! Right On Ms. Scott! That’s the way to do it! Only be careful next time and don’t follow a crowd of them around in no parking lot when you are by yourself.
I saw Jill Scott on TV yesterday, and she stated that she was reading alot of internet BLOG and how her own people were saying such negative things about her!!! Well, thats where the record Haters came from. I am so happy that Jill is so above all this petty bull*****z!! I would *****ume those haters didn’t like the fact that Jill was right there with em’!!
Fuuck him Jill- lil punk ***** would not have said that to a brother
I liked how Jilly handled that i would’ve done the same too
Typical racist talking big in a crowd. The cowardly ***** wouldn’t say ***** on his own. And I agree with William, just laugh at the *****, that will throw em off everytime.
*applauds Jill Scott*
I will most definitely have to handle myself the way this sister did. With a smile on my face and a laugh in my heart to know the TRUTH that I am a black sun goddess-never anybody’s *****.
I hope all brothers and ssiters wake up to the fact that, yes, there are some ugly people who see beautiful black men and women as *****s still, and it’s most than to be believed. At the same time, knowing the truth sets us free. Their ignorance to the greatness of blackness is what will defeat them when we play our cards of life right. And to those few who know better than these ignorant drunk fools; God Bless them.
I saw she has a personal blog on http://www.meetrich.com, a private site for millionaires&celebrities I heard of from a friend of mine. The blog is updated very often. I think it may be ture.
She was raised very well. Because we both come from the same hood and she knows damn well she is about the only one from the hood that wouild have walked away from that!
I love here reaction/response! Laughing will confuse a person in a minute, especially if what they said/did was meant to offend or hurt you. Have em nervous and paranoid. I love Jill
I would have chuckled in these fools face as well, but then got my SS (secret service KGB) on the idiots! Show them who the real ***** is. Send some real mandingo to pumk them in their *****, then have a go at their mama and girlfriends!
I commend Jill on handling this situation with common sense,quite frankly he did not. Unfortunately we still live in these times of racism,which some may think is a joke. One day people like that will encounter a rude awakening to come, they are the minority among respectful human beings. God Bless them!
Grace prevailes once again.
However I am glad those fools were just drunk & harmless and not drunk and dangerous.
The sh^t we go through
there is nothing i dont like about this woman! she handled herself well. a lot better than i would have!
Good for her. If it were me, I would have totally ignored him and acted as if he wasnt even addressing me. I would have just been chill with it. I wouldnt even had said “excuse me?” Its not worth giving those whites an ounce of my time.
Get em Jill!!!
LMAO!! This is exactly how I handled a situation a few years back. White boy called us moolies (sp). I laughed at his *****. ***** sounded funny. I knew what it meant but it sounded funny. the dumbfounded look on his face was priceless. when their #1 weapon in a verbal attack doesn’t work most of them don’t have shyt else.
Somebody above said a race war is coming. I agree. I think that white folks are starting to get real paranoid about being the ‘minority’ in the USA. Revisions on immigrants have been made recently to minimize the number of people they will allow to come to the states. I was told that by 2015 all the minorities together will outnumber the white folks. I think they are starting to get real nervous thinking about all the dirty ish they been doing and they think we will stoop to their level and start hanging folks and acting a fool. I think they are trying to set us up with stupid ish like this. “let’s call them *****s so they can act a fool and we can get them in trouble.”
White people are so racist! There she was standing minding her own business ad here comes the hate. Some blacks try to act like YT don’t think this way about us but they do. He was tryig to be all tough with his YT women. ***** them! That’s why it pains me to see how some black men put YT on a pedestal. They want anyone but a black woman. Deny it if ya wanna but MOST white people do think this way and so does their family. This is coming from someone who has always grown up with white people,went to white schools, and worked with them. Wake up my people!
@hope
Sorry but I disagree that “MOST white people do think this way”. But I do agree that it was unnecessary since she was minding her own business but hey that’s what white folks have been known for throughout history…effing with people minding they own business.
Very true. Thank god they weren’t dangerous. Go Jill, that’s a cl***** act right there!!!
yes, I’ve also noticed an escalation in racial anger.
real talk: if it does go down, how many have we already lost to our own violence against eachother?
NEXT TIME JILL KEEP A BLACK SKI MASK IN YOUR TRUNK AND ACID IN A BOTTLE.
THE VERY NEXT TIME SOME SAVAGE WHITE DOG CALL YOU THAT NAME……
DROP A “BOMB” ON THERE *****ES!
ROTFLMBAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I hate that Jill had to witness that, In the words of Sophia off the color purple “I would have mister head in and thank about heaven later” Jill is famous I (body guards)would have beat them white boys and hired an attorney, cause famous ppl get away with a lot more than average folks. Riddle me this how many times has Diddy been in club fights over a woman? and how many times has he been to jail?
” I would have bashed mister head in and thank about heaven later.”
WOW…go Jill!
No violence. That is just how folks too dumb to express themselves with words would react. Ms. Scott, thought about her reaction and handled it just the right way. Never give a fool what he wants, and that simple-minded, drunk *****got wanted Jill to be hurt and act violently. She showed him that he was the only ***** out there that night by not jumping up ranting and raving. Kudo’s to you Jill. We should all be so smart.
*****CATFUN
NEXT TIME JILL KEEP A BLACK SKI MASK IN YOUR TRUNK AND ACID IN A BOTTLE.
THE VERY NEXT TIME SOME SAVAGE WHITE DOG CALL YOU THAT NAME……
DROP A “BOMB” ON THERE *****ES!
ROTFLMBAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
__________________________________________________
LMAO^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I absolutely loved her response to those fools! It’s never happened to me but I hope I am strong enough to give an intellegent response like her if it does. I don’t know though, I might have to crack a dome or two!
Props to Jill on how she handled the situation. Very adult approach. Guess I’ve still got some growing up to do. I woulda been fighting myself with all my might to keep the ghetto ***** from coming outta me, LOL!
The situation is sad but not surprising. There are still too many White ppl that feel entitled to belittling ppl of color.
I’ve always like Jilly from Philly…she did the right thing, don’t let them see that it affects you and then maybe they’ll stop using the word….
aww hell who am I kidding….*shrugs*
he say what?! Jill is too much of a lady to handle his *****…but still she did the right thing.
What I find most amusing is that there are people coming to this country illegally, every single day and those that still harbor racism find that their energy is best used in attacks on people that have been loyal to this country for over 400 years. Why not focus on the folks that are invading this country and that if left unchecked, will ultimately become their bosses? I am by no means advocating that they shift their racism from us to them, what I’m saying is Jill Scott and more than 90% of the black population are American citizens. Why hate the descendants of those that helped build this country?
This reminds me of a time when one of my white friends asked me “why do black people get so mad about the N-Word?” I remeber think WTH, but b/c I am about spreading knowledge I told her the the N-word is like someone spitting in your face and telling saying you’re worthless. I later found out that one of her white friends had used that word infront of her and she slapped the taste out her mouth and started lecturing her on how horrible that word is. I almost died laughing when I found out.
@idkmybffJillBoinChicaBoinBoin
Damn, I have never seen it that way. You are soo right. Hell our ancestors made them rich.
Haters….what you goin do? They are all over, come in all colors. Ppl you know, ppl you don’t. I try my best not to give them the reaction they want. Jill is my hero!!!
jii handled herself welll…she should not have even bothered following them
Good for Jill! I think she do the only thing she can do to handled this situation!
and you black azz men still feel the need to put these whites *****ers up on a pedestal! what a bunch of sell out losers.
This is indicative of a much greater problem brewing.
Although I concur that racism has never died I must *****ert that it has lateley been more visual, publicly I mean.
The revolution is being called forth brothas and sistas. When do we say enough is a enough.
JerseyBred
Props to Jill on how she handled the situation. Very adult approach. Guess I’ve still got some growing up to do. I woulda been fighting myself with all my might to keep the ghetto ***** from coming outta me, LOL!
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I understand you completely. I probably would’ve been acting all kinds of ignant!
@ idkmybffJillBoinChicaBoinBoin
I can understand what your saying, but why put hate out there in the first place??
@Ayatollah Blaq
I agree. A revolution is being called but we can’t unite to fight those that hate us if we are still fighting ourselves. We need to stop all this black on black hate first and foremost.
I thought black women and white men had a more cozy relationship? I am disappointed to find that there is trouble in paradise. I thought white dudes knew how to treat a woman. Oh well! Shout out to Halle and Shar!
I love Jill Scott…I’m actually listening to her album right now. She is soooo positive and she handled that situation very well.
Ignorance is definitely not bliss…
I wonder what her reaction would have been if he called her a n*gga instead of a n*gger? Black people are ok with n*gga, right?
*sarcasm*
By the way, I love Jill Scott. Now that is a Black Woman who others should look up to.
To further,
I think all the old conventional methods need be stockpiled and burned.
We need a new more radical approach. Throw a few rounds through the rooves of a few police squad cars with white officers in them.
I think that’s a brazen statement from the HOOD anonymous. Maybe that’s going too far but we need to do something to get the world’s attention.
Black American’s are catching hell right now.
Mrs
Fuuck him Jill- lil punk ***** would not have said that to a brother
^^^^^
They wouldn’t have said that if one of em’ was by theirselves, I know because I have seen it!!! They NEVER act alone…NEVER!!! They need an audience or else they are not empowered to do bull***** like that. If that white boy was by himself esp DRUNK, she would have been able to smell his fear a block a way and he would have shuttered when walking by her.
I would have reacted the same way. It really IS funny because they expect a negative reaction and they don’t get one so they are easily defeated!!!!
But, I wouldn’t have dared to follow them or anyone else even if I had my pistol because that could have turned into a ***** situation very easily ya dig?
And I love that pic of her. Very pretty woman. She only uses make-up to enhance her already existant beauty, not to draw on a face.
Great response Jill!!!!
People always expect black people to act a fool and fuss & cuss when they say or do something they think insults or upsets us……stop giving people what they want!!!!
a lotta people say “I woulda did this, I woulda did that”
why?? then you would have given him the power, stop letting people that don’t matter get the best of you!!!!
I would’ve laughed at him my damned self. I would’ve f*cked with him big time.
Racism is alive and well and it will always be as long as there are dumb azz people talking about blacks should not be so sensitive. Crackers got to be put in there place I don’t care how rich they are.
Yes that was a good response but I wouldn’t have minded them gettin a good beatdown or a scare either. Sounds like they deserved it.
Now that is what I am talking about…shut em down! I bet that lil boy will think four times before he fixed his lips to say that word again! Now, what I want to know is how did Jill get that courage to follow them into the parking lot. With these crazy mf’s kidnapping folks and keeping them hostage for 6 days, making a sista drink out of a toilet and drinking rat blood.
Maybe she saw they were some pequito ninos with no cajones.
Ayatollah Blaq
To further,
I think all the old conventional methods need be stockpiled and burned.
We need a new more radical approach. Throw a few rounds through the rooves of a few police squad cars with white officers in them.
I think that’s a brazen statement from the HOOD anonymous. Maybe that’s going too far but we need to do something to get the world’s attention.
Black American’s are catching hell right now.
__________________________________________
I agree we need to do something to get the world’s attention and what would be more powerful than to stop all the crime that is putting our young black men in jail or to stop infecting each other with HIV, or to get more degrees. Yes these things take longer to achieve but the effects of them will last a lot longer than killing some white folks are doing something drastic. I was watching something on BET over the weekend and did you know that 1 in 20 black people in DC are infected in HIV? and in some areas 1 in 10. Did you know that those areas are blocks away from the white house and that there has been on call for national emergency? Why? b/c it’s black folks killing black folks. We have to stop this b/c YT don’t need to do anything but sit back and watch. We are doing their “job” for them. They put the drugs on the street and we buy. They open up the liquour store on the corner and we buy. They open up the shopping malls and we buy. They open up the doors to schools so that we can get an education and we run the other way. (Obviously an exaggeration but you get what I’m saying). We have to help us cuz no one else is going to do it.
and it’s incidents like these that remind me NEVER to touch a white guy with a 3498meter pole!! when drunk, your true self comes out and I guess he wanted a confrontation not an audience — remember to ALWAYS LAUGH don’t get mad [his point will be proven] just laugh and say “really” “are you serious?” and just laugh .. she has that devilish laugh too, so, they were probably scared she was going to bash them in with a pipe anyway! lol!
Wow…Im glad she let them know she wasnt fazed and still carried herself as if she was better than them…because she is!
@karma .. she had it coming, she was dating that white boy .. when you go and date them.. anything is possible and however sad, blacks like me have to turn a blind eye and say ’she had it coming’ and keep it moving .. sorry and sad but true
so sad! the way she reacted really caught them off guard! jill handled herself well
This is coming from someone who has always grown up with white people,went to white schools, and worked with them. Wake up my people!
^^^^^^^^^^
I’m sorry that was your experience but I too grew up around predominantly whites, had all white friends, some white boyfriends etc up untill I was 14 and moved to L.A. (I’m from San Jose) and I was NEVER called a ***** until I started hanging around black people who tried their BEST to make me feel like I wasn’t black enough. I have even dated white kids who’s parents didn’t think they liked black people until they met me and felt comfortable enought to tell me so. They were going off of what the media showed them about us and had never interacted with to many of us (this is back in 1989-1994).
The fact that I dated white boys that were strong enough to make up their own minds and not go by the ignorance they were taught shows growth!!! There ARE white people that are raised to be racist and grow up and marry outside of their race and live very happily.
I KNOW RACISM EXISTS. I will never deny that and I will alwayz be aware of that eventhough at my level, it is corporate racism, it still exists. But I do have to admit, I have had more doors shut because I am a young woman more than for the color of my skin.
It hurts the most when you get it from your own kind, trust me it does!!! I almost expect it from white men because they are so insecure because of all the bull***** they have pulled on everyone, even their own women, but to have black women, especially the ones that say they go to church every Sunday blatently HATE on you simply hurts.
To vjhe:
EXCELLENT point. Enough said.
@TRINA!
I can’t believe u said that! IT’S TRUE!
In college, i would do something called the (3 BEER TEST): get a white boy…any white boy,and invite him to a mixed party. Let him drink 3 or 4 beers. When this happens, just sit back and laugh at the racist comments, like the infamous:U GUYS KNOW THAT O.J. DID IT–or the obigatory white guilt reply: u know, i love everybody, no matter what color…yanno?-
see kiddies! Whites cannot NOT be racist! THE WHOLE AMERICAN SYSTEM IS BUILT ON RACISM!
1.Master bedroom.
2.picnic..( when yt sold slaves, they would make lunches while bidding on niger’s–( niger–the old dutch spelling of *****!)
WE ARE WINNING!
think
obama 08′
http://www.blackwiz.biz
Where wz she comin’ frm @5AM? That’s the real question:)Besides,there will alwayz B igorant people. U handled tht w/CL*****-Just next time B careful-U shld NEVER follow Stupid people-U don’t know where they will lead U…
idkmybffJillBoinChicaBoinBoin
What I find most amusing is that there are people coming to this country illegally, every single day and those that still harbor racism find that their energy is best used in attacks on people that have been loyal to this country for over 400 years. Why not focus on the folks that are invading this country and that if left unchecked, will ultimately become their bosses? I am by no means advocating that they shift their racism from us to them, what I’m saying is Jill Scott and more than 90% of the black population are American citizens. Why hate the descendants of those that helped build this country?
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I have said this SO MANY TIMES!!! And in California, we get it DIRECT!!! I don’t have a problem with ANY race because I have lived long enough to know nice people AND *****holes of damn near every race on this planet, but BLACK PEOPLE HELPED BUILD THIS COUNTRY WITH OUR HANDS!!!
Black men helped build this country with their hands, and in almost EVERY war fought in this country, EVEN AS SLAVES IN THE CIVIL WAR and the black woman have tought white women how to properly clean their houses, cook meals and raise and disiplin their children!!! Yet, people just comming to this country get more respect and advantage than us????
I don’t get it either…
@ MzGapeach you said it all there is nothing left to say!! Amen sister!
I don’t get it. How did she fight back by laughing loudly? Is she as stupid as she is overweight and ugly?
I salute the sister for showing cl*****, dignity and grace why should we sink to the level of people who are beneath us. We must stop fooling ourselves that the struggle is over and that whites have changed, they never have and never will even those that take up with black partners it is always because they are after something fame, money, sex, they hate their parents-we need unity and respect in our communities.
That was great the way she handled it. I’m glad those girlies didn’t do anything stupid to harm her. Racism will never end because ‘they’ won’t let it. We need to teach our own that the N word is a ugly word no matter how we try to dress it up.
@Jauron – i doubt you’ll make it through next year .. you should buy your ‘plot’ now .. and oh, i have your isp address and am pinpointing to your exact location .. won’t it be something when your family goes for a viewing by Wednesday?
I am so sorry she had to go through that. Or that anyone has to go through that. I don’t know how I would have handled that either but I would have let them know i’m not less of a person because of the color of my skin.
Jauron…
smh…you just don’t get it….he response has nothing to do with her being overweight or “ugly” as you so ignorantly stated….the whole point was to catch fools like this off guard…people say things such as this to hurt you and to incite a reaction such as anger…she laughed….her reaction was brilliant…laugh at fools when they think they have done something to bring you down
Jauron *hahahahahahahaLOLOLOTFLMBAO!HEHEHEHhahaha* you ***** FOOL
That’s the best way to handle ignorance.
http://www.my*****e.com/GOTSTRONG
LOL @ Jaraun
even bigger LOL @ fade2black
yall *****z crazy
She’s a good one. I applaud Jill…as for me, since me and Jill are big girls, I would have sat on his *****…’***** that, *****’! Hahaha!
ps, i see that the usual crazys like “And..” are still on their arguing grind
and ps, Bahama Mama, your ***** knows you wont laugh it off
That’s why I don’t fool with groups of drunk white people. They get real loose at the lips when they got a few drinks in em’. lol A white guy called me that when I was riding in my car. It was the first time anyone has EVER called me that. I’ve gone to a predominantly white school, had white friends, etc. and no one has ever called me that. It really took me aback. Like, the wind was just knocked right out of me. Despite what people say, there is power in that word, but her reaction was pure genius. I wish I had seen this before it happened to me. I would have definitely reacted differently. I hope more people like Jauron read this, so that they can understand that just because someone calls you that word doesn’t mean you have to prove them right and act like one.
Europe and American are using white supremacy to pacify the white population of the world; to preoccupy them. This creates an arrogance that will not allow them to disagree with “their” government. So they’re poised to accept anything thier elite ruling cl***** tells them (i.e. the Veri Chip, 911, income tax, and Christianity). The white majority are getting played. The same mis-education getting fed to the negro population is getting fed to the blanco population. Think about it; their religion is false, their culture is false, even their spoon fed supremacist views are based on half truths and manipulation.
So I laugh when people of color attempt to imitate and internalize “white” culture, because essentially they’re trying to copy an idiot culture that stands for nothing and falls for everything. Whites have always been controlled by their elite ruling cl*****, and their elite ruling cl***** has always used the white majority to get incredibly *****ing rich.
Look around you, it’s like the *****ing Borg, they’ve all been *****imilated.
. . . this is just plain fact.
This is a system. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. ©
They told you Jesus was white and you believed them. ©
Oh F@ck That!!!
This is coming from someone who has always grown up with white people,went to white schools, and worked with them. Wake up my people!
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I’m sorry that was your experience but I too grew up around predominantly whites, had all white friends, some white boyfriends etc up untill I was 14 and moved to L.A. (I’m from San Jose) and I was NEVER called a ***** until I started hanging around black people who tried their BEST to make me feel like I wasn’t black enough. I have even dated white kids who’s parents didn’t think they liked black people until they met me and felt comfortable enought to tell me so. They were going off of what the media showed them about us and had never interacted with to many of us (this is back in 1989-1994).
The fact that I dated white boys that were strong enough to make up their own minds and not go by the ignorance they were taught shows growth!!! There ARE white people that are raised to be racist and grow up and marry outside of their race and live very happily.
I KNOW RACISM EXISTS. I will never deny that and I will alwayz be aware of that eventhough at my level, it is corporate racism, it still exists. But I do have to admit, I have had more doors shut because I am a young woman more than for the color of my skin.
It hurts the most when you get it from your own kind, trust me it does!!! I almost expect it from white men because they are so insecure because of all the bull***** they have pulled on everyone, even their own women, but to have black women, especially the ones that say they go to church every Sunday blatently HATE on you simply hurts.
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Damn this is soo parallel to my life for a second I thought I wrote it. What’s even funnier is all the black folks who can’t stand Oprah and think she doesn’t help black folks enough. Where were all these black folks when she needed help? She wasn’t born with a silver spoon in here mouth but when her own people (and this is something I heard her say) were telling her she was wasting her time reading and going to school the white folks encouraged her. I have had more non-whites help me than blacks and I live in the south. *****s here a blatant with their racism when they wanna be. This is the exact position I have on using the N-word. White folks made it up and some of them still hate us okay but to hear your own people use just a horrible word towards each other just hurts. It wrong when a white person uses it but they will never understand the burn in my soul when I hear that word. I am yet to understand a black person using that word.
tiray
Whites cannot NOT be racist! THE WHOLE AMERICAN SYSTEM IS BUILT ON RACISM!_______________________
If your above statement is true then how do you explain white people who marry and adopt black kids and kids of other races?
I think that laughing sometimes is a good way to throw them off, but again like somebody mentioned before, it’s good they didn’t use violence.
Because trust me, if a group of skinheads say that to you, and you are alone, especially being a woman, then laughing WOULD NOT be the best way to deal with that kind of situation.
These were just some drunk yuppies, so in this case, she was fine.
Racism runs deep in this country, it’s more subtle, but it’s definitly there. Whites feel they are entitled to everyone and everything like it’s their birthright. They don’t want an even playing field, they want it just as it is….. them running things. The sad thing is it will remain that way as long as we continue to get strung out on drugs and alcohol,continue to have babies out of wedlock that we can’t provide for, dropping out of school and simply not loving ourselves and taking pride in ourselves as we should. Especially the drug thing that’s just modern day slavery, no visible chains but the chains are still there. As long as we continue this type of behavior we are not a threat to anyone and that is the way they want it. I know whites do some of the same negative things but they have more things working for them in this society. Another thing white men think its automatic when they approach black women, part of that slavery mentality and we all know what type of relationship black woman and white men had during slavery.
@ Mr O Dot
I would TOO laugh it off, whilst kick ole boy in the nuts!!! hahahaha I kid tho the word doesn’t bother me like it does other folk…So yea I would’ve laughed…And where the hell u been???
FOLKS THINK RACISM DIED WITH MLK….It got worst.
I love Jill Scott and am happy that she handled this situation the way she did. Somethings are just REALLY not worth giving time and energy to.
She did handle the situation well and I am so glad that nothing else happened and the situation did not esculate.
some white peoople are just plain ol’ ignorant losers!!!
Jilly look like she can scrap!
Well – as I always say – as long as he sees the black man disrespect us, he’s not going to respect us too much either..
Remember Don Imus and how he quickly admitted how easy it was for him to call those college ball players hoes because of how often the black man calls black women hoes???
As long as the black man is out there showing him that he has no respect for us, expect it to get worse.. Though the black man LOVEs to think he is a threat to the white man, the white man knwos that all he has to do is sit back and wait for the black man to self destruct and he’ll go away.. Its the strong black woman who is his true threat.. He cant understand a group of women being faced with all of our strife and STILL making it.. He’s used to the downtrodden giving up, like the black man!!
And i know they were shook.. The black man would have either ignored it liek a coward or acted in a way that would have gotten him arrested -STILL LETTING THE WHITE MAN WIN!! But look how gracefully the SISTA handled herself.. Thats one of the thing I mean about the black man self destructing!!!
@ fade2black, stop speakin in tongues you scared little girl. i don’t read riddles you little c*nt, so be clear. those people probably thought jill scott was mentally retarded..
Whatchaknoaboutdat?
Jilly look like she can scrap!
_______________________________________________
You you know this. Remember that video “You Getting In The Way” She told that girl I’m trying to conduct myself like a lady but I will drag yo’ ***** out in the street and stomp her *****.
Devils are cowards by nature
It’s way too many generalizations. With no facts to support them. But this is an opinion blog, so, oh well.
Groups of drunk white people scare the hell out of me. I can’t applaud Jill enough for how she handled this. Beautiful, beautiful black woman right there.
I don’t believe this story happened. Any witnesses? Black people just keep makin this sh*t up.
That happened to me to recently in Georgia and I had to laugh my ***** off at this inbred hillbilly thinking he was superior, that mf got so red in the face it was not funny. I did not even take the time to tell him about himself, they fail to understand they are a minority on the planet and that white supremacy crap does not intimidate us anymore.
Go Jill!!!!!!!!!!!!! w/ya bad self
I LOVE YOU JILL SCOTT.
she said “They looked so uncomfortable; I wanted to emasculate him, to make sure he was getting no nookie that night.”
i love you girl. lol.
in the words of Kanye West… “I wish a ***** what? I wish a ***** would..”
testing
One day I was in my car headed to the bank and this guy yelled out *****. I’ve always experienced racism because I’ve always been around white people due to school, where I live, and work. But its always hidden racism. There I was minding my business driving my car he was p*****ing in his truck and yells out *****. (This isn’t the south either its PA) Amazingly the word just didn’t even affect me at all because I moreso appreciate knowing how you REALLY feel about me. I hate how YT hides behid racism in school ad the corporate world. They get you by not giving you the job, promotion, talking down to you, talking behind your back, the list goes on and on. His words had no power over me at all it was just a confirmation of their ignorance and need to hurt people. Here I was, I never even seen this *****hole in my life didn’t even have to do anything to him. They are just full of hate.
And to the person who says she gets it more from black people and whites like you. What you get from black people isn’t racism! You may get jealousy which is common in ANY race. Of course greed and jealousy will bring out the worst in some but racism is a whole other level where they don’t even have respect for you as a human being. And PUHLEASE if you think its so great that YT told you after they got to know you how they used to think a certain way until they met you, I just feel really sorry for you when reality hits. Why do you need to be an EXAMPLE to them that not all blacks are so bad. If they didn’t think they were so supperior they wouldn’t need you to be their little example of proof that blacks aren’t so bad. I’ve had ignorant neighbors say the same thing to me and guess what its just an example of YT getting comfortable enough to let you know they are racist…but not against you of course pfft. These people are a joke!
White Celebrity: I’m not racist, some of my best kids are black!
And by the way, Affirmative Action was black people’s gift to Oprah!
i would have done the same thing! go jill! laugh hysterically! feel into a seizure on the ground laughing and jumped right up and socked one of them in the *****in face and laughed again…
sorry MLK Jr. i know u said non-violence but imma have to say stop the singing of we shall overcome and start swinging on fools LMAO
lol j.k
God is watching fool and have some damn respect.
Racism exists in EVERY race. As long as people are different there will be others to hate on them for that very reason. I’m proud of Jill Scott for holding her own and having the grace and dignity to not give this man the reaction he wanted. I am however sad to see so many people commenting who feel that all whites are the same. That is racist and you don’t even realize it. I’ve heard racism come from the mouth of blacks, asians, whites and hispanics alike. Different cultures are what makes our planet beautiful but realize that each person within that culture is an INDIVIDUAL and they responsible for their own actions. Hold the person accountable, not the entire race.
The end of Gentiles is hear this is why racism is so crazy now…We got only about five years left in this country.. Read Romans 11…..
The pits of hell is where these bloodclots will dwell..So the so-called negroe relax times is up for dem mon!
Mimi
Racism exists in EVERY race. As long as people are different there will be others to hate on them for that very reason. I’m proud of Jill Scott for holding her own and having the grace and dignity to not give this man the reaction he wanted. I am however sad to see so many people commenting who feel that all whites are the same. That is racist and you don’t even realize it. I’ve heard racism come from the mouth of blacks, asians, whites and hispanics alike. Different cultures are what makes our planet beautiful but realize that each person within that culture is an INDIVIDUAL and they responsible for their own actions. Hold the person accountable, not the entire race.
_____________________________________________
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Especially “I am however sad to see so many people commenting who feel that all whites are the same. That is racist and you don’t even realize it.” This is so shocking to me. They REALLY don’t understand that they are doing exactly what they are pointing the finger at somebody else for doing.
Pot met Kettle…
good reaction from Jill Scott, i love it. let them hate, but you gettin money any way..ahahahahahah
Sur-freaking-prise! Jill Scott handled it well though, because that type of boundless ignorance is funny in a sad kind of way.
@Bahama…I’m not advocating hate of any kind. But racists act as if African-Americans are subhuman. Like we “asked” to come here or that we had a choice. All I’m saying is I think it’s pathetic to hate a race of people that helped build this country. Especially when there are people coming here illegally every single day. Why hate the people whose blood, sweat, and tears built this country?
@idkmybffJillBoinChicaBoinBoin
They are just mad b/c we didn’t stay in the place they intended for us to stay in so now they have to do dirty ***** to try to get us caught up. It’s okay give it another 15 years and white folks will be the minority in this country. We’ll see what will happen then.
Go Jill! I like the way you handled that!
I think we as as a people (Americans of African Descent) tend to mistake racism for an obvlivious behavior….I personally feel that white people walk around with the sense of privilege that they don’t necessarily recognize (not necessarily racist) and we tend to walk around with a sense that we are still here because they allow us to be here….once we realize that we deserve to be here in America just as much as any other foreigner, including whites we won’t be bothered by those who really are racist….
MzGapeach is correct. We seem to be seeing an increasingly growing racial conflict in America. Too bad we exist in a ‘no snitching’, blaming Mr. Cosby for calling us out, N-word using black low-life ego-maniac artists and government policy that totally ignore domestic social needs environment. It seems that the only good that will come from the increasing American racial hatred is that blacks will finally wake up and get tired of it. Surely the bums amongst us won’t be helpful. Blacks operating in the negative realm of the political economy either won’t accept leadership/guidance or personal responsibility but can tolerate and parti*****te in self-hate which help fuel white behavior. No wonder the attacks are evident everywhere. This is the sad part about being black, but if I were with sista on the night those white boys pulled that crap, THEY WOULD SURELY HAVE BEEN VAPORIZED. These racists and self-hating blacks will soon run into an unforgiving black response.
When racism, like AIDS, becomes more dangerous for whites, then, and only then, will we see a real effort to curb it.
@Kurt Eric Munroe
How is AIDS racism?
Right on, Ms. Scott!! You are a queen. Jill handled the situation with the cl***** and grace. As you can see, white folks are scarred of us. But not scarred enough. They outnumbered Jill, however, but were afraid when one lone sistah laughed at their ignorant behinds and to follow them laughing all the way. I wish I could have seen it.
do it Jill
MOST Crackers are Racist.
I love how Jill Scott handled that situation. I hope I would choose her approach rather than Jena Six-ing their *****es.
she is attractive. It’s said she recently joined a celebrity and millionaire dating site named searchingmillionaire.com. Many men winked at her there.
Maybe its just me, but I don’t see how following behind them and “laughing hysterically” really proved anything!
To me, all it did is make her look and sound like some insane bag lady, while placing her in danger, by following a group that could easily have turned on her, and severely injured or even killed her!
I can’t see where Jill did anything of any real meaning, in the face of being called a “*****”.
im glad she said she is far from a *****. i hate the fact that black people are trying to embrace this word. as if it can be embraced. i don’t care what anyone says, the word is horrible, and should not be used.
@ jauron
Wow I am surprised your able to function with a brain so small. lol
At the all the einsteins who question what Jill did, what would you have her do ignore them? She felt she could handle them, so she quickly changed the situation to let them know that the n-word wasnt bigger than her, and how quickly THEY could be intimidated. Trust they will think twice before doing it again!
You go Jill!
I *****in Love you Jill!!! I Swear I do!
@ mimi Blacks can not be racist, they do not have the power to oppress other people or races. Racism exist at the highest levels of this country’s federal government. Do you remember when Dr. Martin Luther King was marching and protesting peacefully for civil rights….the government tried to destroy that entire movement through cointelpro. Don’t think that they are not busy at work now. This is systematic racism at the highest level. Hell, the FBI har*****ed one of it’s employees simply because she was not interested in dating white men. Crazy but true.
@Leesa and everybody else – When you’re called a byword which is what that word is, by someone other than black, they’re looking for a reaction of anger. If you give them the opposite reaction of what they expect it throws them off rhythm and they can’t regroup fast enough (duh, what about this coach?). That’s why they looked confused. People, WAKE UP! The next time someone out of your race calls you a ***** or anything else (“byword” Deut. 28:37) Give them a standing ovation and let them know what a great job they are doing for their father. Trust me, deep in within themselves they will know what you mean. Then you’ll be laughing just like Jill when you see the expression on their face.
I LOVE YOU JILL SCOTT! That’s the best response to a racist comment ever!
I like your comment anonymous3. Racism is a lot more than some random white person feeling comfortable enough to call you a *****. It’s a structured SYSTEM of economic and cultural privilege vs. economic and cultural oppression that was built a loooong time ago.
The negative and self-hating comments AND… received from the black community she(?) lived in is a great example of how this oppression has manifested itself. All negative and self-hating remarks that glorify Euro ideals (“good hair”, “black men are no good”, etc) to me, are evidence of a white supremacist system still permeating the minds of black people.
We can’t wait for them to change their minds! We have to do it ourselves!
Love it !
I agree with Jills’ reaction totally. We don’t need to call each other N@##$% to take away the vemon that word represents. We need to not react with hurt and anger. We must remember in these situations that any person using that word to hurt us is basically ignorant and has low self-esteem. They need to feel good about themselves, so they resort to hurting us. Never let any racist,of any race use you to fill the void in their empty soul. Turn that intended hurt on them, laugh at their stupidity. One of my favorite retorts is ” are you people still using that word, can’t you come up with something original?”.
Take your God-given power and turn it on them. It’s only a word, it has no power over our souls.
I live in a white neighborhood, and I’ve already decided, if anyone paints “***** get out” or anything racist slogan on my house, it will stay up until the white neighbors get together and spend THEIR money on paint. The first thing the neighbors will be worried about after a week or two is their property values plummeting because of graffiti.
We must reclaim our sense of identity. Racists have for hundreds of years defined us. We know we are no worse than any other human beings on this planet. Lets act with confidence in our God-given intelligence.
Love it.
I must say I loved Jill’s response to their ignorance. I will have to remember that if it ever happens to me. I probably would have responded saying “I don’t see any men” when he said shut up when a white MAN is talking, but I like her response better. I agree that racism is getting quite prevelent again, with the nooses and whatnot. It’s because the white man is running scared. He knows his days are numbered. He knows that all the non- white races are going to come together in a minute and rise up against his demonic *****. He has dogged every race on the earth and now it’s his turn to feel what he has been dishing out. I think it scared the sh-t out of him when he learned that his money could no longer buy him a friend anywhere. Even the peasants wouldn’t take all of his millions to tell where Bin Laden was. Instead of taking the money they would rather sit back and watch him (YT)get his ***** tore out the frame.They have the right idea as far as not letting the white man buy his way out of everything. People should stop making money their god. Jesus is Lord!!
I love her and the way she handled that!! I would have laughed too. Sometimes, that’s the only way to deal with ludicrous people.
Yes, Sh should fight back!
Her response was ON POINT!!!!! THAT is how you handle stupid people…..laugh at them. LOL!!
Jill should have reached into her purse and got something for his *****.
No matter who you are or how much you make, in the eyes of the Amorite, you’re still a *****.
I did not equate AIDS with racism. I was attempting to equate one form of danger to another, then *****ociating group-specific responses to those vulnerabilities. For instance, not too many key agents were making a big stink out of the fact that blacks were dying from guns at an alarming rate in Philadelphia until the killings recently ‘jumped’ over to a different segment of that city – the police. The same arguments were made concerning AIDS – how it was not taken seriously enough because of the mentality that it only impacted ‘certain’ groups. That mentality, it is argued, had changed when AIDS began to impact other groups. But thanks for your input.
A lot has been written about AIDS as a man-made disease created as biological warfare for “moral” and economic purposes. But most people just write it off as conspiracy theory, and believe that white gay male community and African community were the first to be ravaged and nearly destroyed by it because they are either ignorant, stupid or can’t stop having sex like some perverse freaks.
It’s kinda funny how if you even mention AIDS as a tool of racism, people will eat you alive.
I’m not really hung up on why and where AIDS came from, but it’s interesting to talk about. We need to focus on more solutions.
I find it strange that when black people simply look at each other ‘the wrong way’ a fight, or at least an insult, is not far behind. Hell, blacks can barely live in peace over the number of record sales they have made. I don’t need to run down the many examples of black-on-black attacks and murders as a result of this behavior. What is most interesting is how many non-blacks, for the moment, actually survive their racist attacks on blacks. So my question goes out to all those in our midst who ‘murk’ on the low: why do racists get a p*****?
Kurt Eric Munroe
When racism, like AIDS, becomes more dangerous for whites, then, and only then, will we see a real effort to curb it.
^^^^^^^^^
I was just saying that to my mother. NOTHING changes until little white kids are effected by it….THEN YT MAKES CHANGES HAPPEN!!!!
@AND…He didn’t mean AIDS was racist, I think he meant what I just said. When little white kids start getting effected by this ***** that their parents have started and perpetuated, then USUALLY you can’t expect any REAL change to happen because as mentioned before, they (YT)still have too much control over everything.
^^^I meant, until YT kids start getting effected by this *****, we can’t really expect any change cuz YT holds all of the power and purse strings still in this world. Deny it if you want to, it doesn’t make it any less true.
She definitely reacted the right way and for toppers she should have pulled her cellphone out and taken a pic of them. Folks hate to have their pics taken when they’re acting a fool.
She shouldn’t have responded to him, You are What you answer to!!! Jus ignore them!!
***** happens and it’s how you handle it that’s important. She could have gotten sad or angry or whatever. That was amazing. Kudos to her. LOVE HER
I commend her for not stepping back and giving him a ***** slap because that is what instintively I would have wanted to do and then kick him in his butt and punch him in his mouth. HA! I am so tired of these idiots calling our beautiful people *****s. I’m telling you I’m not one of those people to walk away and do nothing he most definetly would have been shut down, for real. It did sound funny how she described it but damn! I would have started sing ” and I am telling you we’re not going America, *****s are the best thing you’ve ever had , NO, no NO no way we’re not going *****s are here to stay and you’re going to love *****s love *****s loooooooooooooooooooooooooove niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggers! I’m sure that fool would have fell over and died by then! Good riddance! Okay I’m done. Thank’s Jill Scott I’ll have to handle situations like that more comically next time.
@ E, oh, my gosh that is to funny click! Gotcha! Damn I’m Doing that next time too, funny!
Kurt Eric Munroe
I find it strange that when black people simply look at each other ‘the wrong way’ a fight, or at least an insult, is not far behind. Hell, blacks can barely live in peace over the number of record sales they have made. I don’t need to run down the many examples of black-on-black attacks and murders as a result of this behavior. What is most interesting is how many non-blacks, for the moment, actually survive their racist attacks on blacks. So my question goes out to all those in our midst who ‘murk’ on the low: why do racists get a p*****?
THAT WAS A GREAT QUESTION U POSED AND REALLY SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL THINK ABOUT. MY ANSWER WOULD BE: PROBABLY BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE FEEL THE WHITE MANS WORD IS LAW. AND *****ODY HATES THEMSELVES MORE THAN WE DO. Y HURT THE WHITE MAN WHEN U CAN HURT THE MAN THAT LOOKS LIKE U. SELLOUTS HAVE BEEN TELLIN THEIR YTE FRIENDS FOR YEARS THAT THEY CAN SAY *****, AND SO HAVE RAPPERS. PERSONALLY I DISAGREE W/ JILL I DONT BELIEVE HER REACTION AFFECTED THIS TRASH ONE BIT. U RARELY HEAR US BREAKIN YTES DOWN WHEN THEY STEP OUT OF LINE. WE HAVE TO DECLARE SOME KIND OF WAR AGAINST THIS TREATMENT. THIS IS NOT THE 60′S, YTES SHOULD NOT STILL BE GETTING AWAY THIS. AS WE CAN SEE TURNIN THE OTHER CHEEK AINT GON CUT IT, WE BEEN THERE DONE THAT, IT DOESNT WORK THEY’RE STILL PULLIN THE SAME STUNTS. SO NOW MY QUESTION IS: WHAT APPROACH DO WE TAKE WHEN FACED W/ THIS TYPE OF INSULT. WHAT EXACTLY IS THE RIGHT WAY TO HANDLE THIS
Yep Jill, you’re my girl!!!
She kept her self control cause she’s not a hater.
She is the antitesis of these white dudes.
Taz?- is that you, I wonder you did tell me about this site.
KENNEDY, you have asked the right question, “WHAT EXACTLY IS THE RIGHT WAY TO HANDLE THIS”? My answer goes a bit further than what most people are willing to advance. We have to weaken our competition/enemies in the political economy by strengthening ourselves. Without allowing ourselves to have true strength in this society we will forever be at the bottom of the American economic community and, as such, the most vulnerable w*****s always reading and posting about the next case of “they did it to us again”. The political economy is basically the pecking order or totem pole for who controls production, distribution, and thus gains the most political power in any society. When any particular group refuses to establish their secure place in society, they render themselves at the mercy of those who do insist on having power. Therefore, Kennedy, you can see that we are either crying to the government, relying on shady ‘black leadership’, or giving our money to people like Creflo Dollar when we are feeling oppressed. We rarely take direct and definitive action with our own crafted tools in our own strong black hands. You are most correct for wanting to rid ourselves of the failed ideology of the 1960’s. As a people we have been weakened by the policy of that era’s ‘leadership.’ We will not survive very well on somebody’s dream that little black children and little white children will all be happily holding hands as one big happy family. As good as it sounds, and for all the many good Americans who try to make it happen, we still have some serious problems to address. One very horrible problem is not that some whites refuse to live up to the promise of what it means to be an American, but what do we as blacks bring to the table of a great and equal America when some of us call ourselves the N-word? Can you imagine what impact this has on ANY white person, good or bad, who is trying to figure out their own identity in this society? Just imagine the process going on in their heads when they ask themselves “who am I?” The answer, for some at least, might be “well, I am not a N-word because the blacks call themselves that. Therefore, I must be…” In any case Kennedy, the main thing we must do is get the hell away from the bottom-dwelling position in the social order. We must remove ourselves both physically and mentally from last place. The fact of American life is ‘every group for itself and if your ***** gets caught at the bottom, it is on you’. With real power we will be able to exact a nasty and terrible blow to anyone who dare attempt to hurt our people. The way out of this mess is exactly what Bill Cosby has been saying all along – PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I took some of Cosby’s concerns and the criticisms he had received from the black community and elaborated on both to produce an outline on exactly the question you asked. People have been dumping on Mr. Cosby for his direct and strong approach for getting blacks to stop being cry-babies and manning up. The cry-babies were arguing that he should have taken a different tact. My response, which I will post here, was made in that context and relates to your appropriate question. Please see my next post.
If Mr. Cosby should happen to ask for my humble advice, it would be to use his funds to hire a person who had nation-building skills and tour the critical areas with this person by his side. Hire a person who understands the current globalized world with both its perils and opportunities. Hire a person who can explain the black position and potential within the U.S. political economy. This person would be adept at large-scale organization strategies and would be personable enough to motivate the targeted group of Mr. Cosby’s important message. This new organizer would have conducted previous hands-on research in the promising economies around the globe, such as in Asia and Africa. This organizer would have a keen eye for linking the resources available abroad to potential resources available within black America. How so? This organizer would have studied how various nations have made the transition from low-yield agriculture production to high-yield industrial and high tech productivity. This organizer would have the mind-set to take macro nation-building fundamentals and apply them directly to the African-American dilemma, thus, treating this group as a special nation, itself. This organizer would not be deterred by the apparent magnitude or complexity of the task ahead because this person would calmly understand that the difficulties facing black America, though seemingly insurmountable to the common eye could, in fact, be broken down to manageable phases and sectors. The organizer would understand that one does not require the consent of the entire group to gain momentum in the right direction. The organizer would know that one does not need to steer people into accepting a self-improvement ideology, but rather, a demonstration of a successful development process is all that is required to lure the target group into the fold. The organizer would understand the essential problems in the relations between community authority (particularly schools and parents) and the youths. Authority often speaks about morals and direction but fail to lead the youths by example. Some youths actually demand much more than the youths (parents) of the past. Therefore, parents cannot always advise them very well. Thus, the organizer would also be a scholar in the nascent field of deliberative polling, where advanced techniques help *****ysts to more skillfully measure and understand youth preferences, interests, and dexterity and can compromise with the school system to address their direct needs rather than producing dropouts. The organizer would understand that while it is always a primary directive to encourage more people to seek higher education, the desired critical knowledge for economic and political growth should not be accessed only at the college level. Thus, the organizer would include the local school system in the African-American development process by making national/local development part of the daily curriculum from grades 6-12. In this way, highly trained educators rather than unsavory characters become the idols and influence that connect the youths to what they desire – the faster track out of poverty. To be sure, there are many details missing, but the organizer would have foreseen this day coming many years before and would be prepared to meet with Mr. Cosby at a moment’s notice to work out the details. Though helpful, we have to now move beyond discussion and get to a phase where the creative amongst us can show their worth in making it happen. There are no absolute right and wrong ways to advance. There are only many lessons we could learn from within our own and other people’s experience combined with input from the m*****es and proper *****ysis. We have to initiate a shock to the status quo. If you notice, Mr. Cosby is attempting to shock us out of our blinders and onto a new path. Let us harmoniously and willingly join this wonderful opportunity to DARE rule every part of the days we live as good Americans. I swear the fruits are bountiful on the side of victory. Come and get some.
yO I CAN NOT cOUNT HOW MANY TIMES i HAVE *****tED oN A rACIST/jEALOUS pERSON. wE WOULD BE HERE ALL DAY !
i DONT GET MAD…i JUST PULL OUT THAT CARD…. IT KILLS THEM EVERYTIME!!!
YOU GO GIRL!!!
i remember when i was sing sing them white boyz would be so scared they would shake uncontrollably.they would wash our drawers and be our slaves.it may sound foul but i used to love taking there manhood me and my boys would rip them good.10 stitches and better was our motto and when they left the infirmary they had to wear pampers.i got props to have them white punks hold my belt buckle when i walked the yard.some i would feminize you know lipstick,daisy dukes and clean shaven.my ***** knew that if i saw any stubble on that chin he was catching a beatdown.just had to share that with yall white boyz are weak and also give amazing *****s when under pressure!
i woulda kicked his *****
Thats what Im talkin about……Love the way she delt with the situation…..Cause me I would of ended up in jail after I had beat them down like sofia did in the color purple lol lol lol
Racism is not increasing. It’s the same as it ever was.
The media is purposely flooding the air waves with stories of racially charged incidences to preoccupy the people before the election and draw attention away from the war in Iraq and possibly Iran. This is how the elite ruling cl***** controls the population; with a culture of fear. We fight amongst each other while they’re collecting cash money from everyone regardless of race. The middle cl***** is getting *****ed by the government worse than any one group in the U.S. If you’re making high five figures, low six figures you are paying out the ***** when the tax man comes around. As long as we fight amongst ourselves the elite ruling cl***** are happy because then they’re free to do what ever the ***** they want.
Do the research: The Elite Ruling Cl*****
The controlled media manipulates the information to control the emotions of many to benefit the agendas of a few.
If black and white people didn’t argue the most, we would figure out the government is screwing us both. © KRS1
Wake up and pay attention.
@Lanski, you are 100% correct .. nothing has changed, not more not less .. some blacks are just choosing to take it to the media [more] thus making it seem as if it is on the rise .. it’s not. The way they hated us back then, and played around with the nooses, they are doing now and WILL continue to do so until … [????] how sad it is to be a minority in this country, hell, world
I love it Jill!! You go head and rock hun!!! I don’t know about that following and taunting though, but whatever works for you booboo! LOL Much luv…
You go Jill!
I will laugh hysterically when Nas’ album “*****” comes out too.
I will never, EVER embrace that word with any type of “normalcy”
@thinkquick – they were only intimidated because they thought she would eat them.
Maybe they had just finished listening to that new album by Nas. *shrugs*
Sing with me: “Hate on me cause my mind is free. Feel my destiny so shall it be. If I gave you diamonds from my own womb, you’d still hate on me.”
Just another sign that God is on Her way.To quote Tupac, “God is coming, she just taking her time.” Hold it down!One Love.
@thatNegroMike
Peace.
People of color are actually the world majority. Colorless people are globally the minority.
@Astrid
Nas is naming his album after the ***** Gregory biography entitled “*****”.
No ideas are original under the sun, it’s not what you do but how it’s done. © nasir jones
To quote Tupac: “God is coming, she just taking Her time.” Hold it down. One Love.
“We have no cause to hang our heads in shame, because our fathers/mothers reached the highest pinnacle of glory first, and so if others laugh at you, return the laughter to them, if they mimic you, return the compliment with equal force; for they have nothing over you, because they have come out of no finer mould than you have come out of. You came out of the same mould as they…If they mimic you return it, because you are men/women. They have no more right to dishonor you, disrespect and disregard your feelings and man/womanhood than you have in dealing with them. That is the position that the black man/woman must take up throughout the world. He/she can be as proud as any other man/woman of any other race. We are not desirious of insulting any one, but if anyone insult us we shall return him the insult.” Marcus Garvey from the book “Life and Lessons”
LANSKI
Europe and American are using white supremacy to pacify the white population of the world; to preoccupy them. This creates an arrogance that will not allow them to disagree with “their” government. So they’re poised to accept anything thier elite ruling cl***** tells them (i.e. the Veri Chip, 911, income tax, and Christianity). The white majority are getting played. The same mis-education getting fed to the negro population is getting fed to the blanco population. Think about it; their religion is false, their culture is false, even their spoon fed supremacist views are based on half truths and manipulation.
So I laugh when people of color attempt to imitate and internalize “white” culture, because essentially they’re trying to copy an idiot culture that stands for nothing and falls for everything. Whites have always been controlled by their elite ruling cl*****, and their elite ruling cl***** has always used the white majority to get incredibly *****ing rich.
Look around you, it’s like the *****ing Borg, they’ve all been *****imilated.
. . . this is just plain fact.
This is a system. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. ©
They told you Jesus was white and you believed them. ©
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I agree with you 100% but on a lighter note, that ***** sounded like it was from The Matrix.
^^^^interesting
@ jauron
They were intimidated because she didnt react the way they expected her to. Thats one thing we can control is our actions. Ther lucky it wasnt Foxy Brown, she would threw a phone at them or something.
And be more original, she was going to eat them? Like them all the saw was a N*, all you see is fat, too shallow be more creative.
Peace.
What’s the difference between a ***** and a snow tire?
A snow tire doesn’t sing when you put chains on it.
What would you call the Flintstones if they were black?
*****s.
Why don’t sharks eat *****s?
They think it’s whale *****.
What do you call a ***** in a tree with a briefcase?
Branch manager.
How come there aren’t any Mexicans on Star Trek?
They don’t work in the future, either.
Why do *****s cry during sex?
The Mace.
How do you stop a ***** from drowning?
Take your foot off the back of his head.
How do you get a ***** out of a tree?
Cut the rope.
What did the Alabama sherriff call the ***** who had been shot 15 times?
Worst case of suicide he had ever seen.
What do you get when you cross a retard with a gang banger?
Someone who spray paints on a chain link fence.
Why do *****s stink?
So blind people can hate them too.
What do you get when you cross a ***** and a spic?
Someone too lazy to steal.
Why don’t *****s take aspirin?
They refuse to pick the cotton out.
What do ***** kids get for Christmas?
Your bike.
What’s a *****s idea of foreplay?
“Don’t scream or I’ll cut you, *****.”
Why do spics drive low-riders?
So they can cruise and pick lettuce at the same time.
What do you get when you cross a jew and a gypsy?
A chain of empty retail stores.
Why don’t ***** kids play in the sandbox?
Cats keep covering them up.
What do you call an apartment full of *****s?
A COON-dominium.
Why are there no ***** astronauts?
Their lips explode at 50,000 feet.
How do you babysit a niglet?
Wet his lips and stick him to the wall.
How do you get him down?
Teach him to say “Mother*****er.”
How else do you babysit a niglet?
Put Velcro on the ceiling and tell him to jump.
How do you get him down?
Invite the spics over, blindfold them and tell them it’s a piñata party.
Why do jews have big noses?
Air is free.
What is a ***** on a bike?
Thief.
What’s long and black and smells like *****?
The welfare line.
What do you call 50 *****s at the bottom of the ocean?
Good start.
What is the worst 3 years of a *****s life?
First grade.
How was break dancing invented?
*****s trying to steal hubcaps from moving cars.
Why do *****s keep chickens in their back yards?
To teach their kids how to walk.
How do you know Adam and Eve were not black?
You ever try to take a rib from a *****?
What is a *****?
Proof that skunks ***** monkeys.
What’s the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead ***** in the road?
The dead dog has skid marks in front of it.
What did Abe Lincoln say after a 3 day drunk?
“I set WHO free?”
Why are chimps always frowning?
They know in a million years they are going to turn into *****s.
Why is interrogating a Mexican like a pool ball?
The harder you hit it the more English you get.
How many jews can you fit in a VolksWagon?
All of them if you put them in the ashtray.
A ***** and a spic jump off the Empire State Building, who hits the ground first?
Who cares.
A ***** and a spic jump off the Empire State Building, who hits the ground first?
The spic, because the ***** had to stop on the way down and spray paint “mother*****er” on the wall.
Why don’t spics have barbeques?
The beans keep falling through the grill.
You hear about the new car made in Israel?
Not only can it stop on a dime, it will go back and pick it up.
What do you call an Ethiopian with a pickle on his head?
A quarter-pounder.
How many Ethiopians can you fit in a phone booth?
All of them.
How do you start a foot race in Ethiopia?
Roll a doughnut down the street.
How many *****s does it take to pave a driveway?
One if you spread him real thin.
How do you blindfold a *****?
Dental floss.
How do *****s name their kids?
They throw silverware down the stairs.
What’s the difference between a ***** and a bag of *****?
The bag.
What’s the most confusing day in Harlem?
Father’s Day.
When does a Black man turn into a *****?
As soon as he leaves the room.
What do you call a ***** with a Harvard education?
*****.
What do you call a ***** in a courtroom in a 3 piece suit?
The defendant.
There is a ***** and a spic in a car, who’s driving?
The cop.
Why is Stevie Wonder always smiling?
He doesn’t know he’s black.
How long does it take a ***** ***** to take a *****?
9 months.
Why don’t ***** women wear panties to picnics?
To keep the flies off the chicken.
Why does Alabama have *****s and California have earthquakes?
California got first pick.
Why do Mexican cars have those little steering wheels?
So they can drive handcuffed.
Why are *****s like sperm?
Only one in a million actually work.
What do you call Mike Tyson with no arms?
Niger ***** *****.
How do you fit 100 Cubans in a shoe box?
Tell them its a raft.
Why do police dogs lick their *****?
To get the taste of ***** out of their mouth.
What can a pizza do that a ***** can’t?
Feed a family of four.
Why did the ***** carry a piece of ***** in his wallet?
I.D.
What is red green yellow orange purple and pink?
A ***** dressed for church.
Why do *****s have flat noses?
That’s where god put his feet when he was pulling off their tails.
Did you hear that the KKK bought the movie rights to Roots?
They’re going to play it backwards so it has a happy ending.
What is the difference between a white owl and a black owl?
A white owl goes, “Who, who,” a black owl goes, “Who dat? Who dat?”
Did you hear about the new Black Barbie?
It comes with 12 kids, AIDS and a welfare check.
What is black, white, and rolls off the end of the pier?
A ***** and a seagull fighting over a chicken wing.
What do you get when you cross a ***** with a gorilla?
A dumb gorilla.
What is the difference between Batman and a black man?
Batman can go out at night without Robin.
Did you hear about the new Chap Stick for *****s?
It comes in a spray can.
What’s the difference between *****s and pit-bulls?
It’s still legal to own a pit-bull.
What do you say to a black man in uniform?
“I’ll have a Big Mac with cheese and a *****e.”
Why do *****s walk the way they do?
Because they spent the first nine months of their lives dodging a coat hanger.
What happened when the Ethiopian fell in the crocodile pit?
He ate six crocs before they could pull him out.
Why do *****s call white people “honkies”?
That’s the last sound they hear before the white people run them over.
How do you stop a ***** from going out?
Pour more gas on him.
Did you hear about the ***** with insomnia?
He kept waking up twice a week.
What do you do if you run over a *****?
Reverse.
Why do decent white folks shop at ***** yard sales?
To get all their stuff back.
Who were the three most famous women in black history?
Aunt Jemima, Diana Ross, and Mother *****er!
Hear about the new bumper sticker that says “Run, Jesse, Run”?
You put it on the front of your car.
What do Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles have in common?
They’re both *****s.
How come Stevie Wonder & Ray Charles can’t read?
They’re both *****s.
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HEY! If you think these jokes are funny, wait until you hear 30 of the funniest racist country songs ever produced, like “Some *****s Never Die, They Just Smell that Way.” Click HERE.
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Why do *****s wear wide-brimmed hats?
So pigeons can’t ***** on their lips.
Why did so many ***** soldiers get killed in Vietnam?
Every time someone yelled “Get down!” the *****s would jump up and start dancing.
What do you get when you cross a ***** with a Vietnamese?
Nothing. There are some things even a Vietnamese won’t do.
What’s black and tan and looks good on a *****?
A Doberman Pinscher.
What’s the fastest animal in the world?
The Ethiopian chicken.
Did you hear about Evel Knieval’s new motorcycle stunt?
He’s going to ride through Ethiopia with a sandwich tied to his back.
Did you hear about Ku Klux Knieval?
He tried to jump 50 *****s with a steam roller.
Why was golf invented?
So white people get a chance to dress like *****s.
What do you do if you see a ***** with half a head?
Stop laughing and reload.
Why did god create orgasms?
So *****s know when to stop.
Why did god give *****s rhythm?
Because he *****ed up their hair, nose and lips.
Why are so many *****s moving to Detroit?
They heard there were no jobs there.
Why can’t ***** women become nuns?
Because they can’t get used to saying ’superior’ after ‘Mother’.
How do you fit 15 *****s in the back of a Cadillac?
Don’t worry, they’ll figure it out.
What’s yellow and black and makes you laugh ?
A bus full of *****s going over a cliff.
How do you stop a ***** from drowning?
You don’t.
Whats blue and hangs in my front yard?
My ***** I can paint him whatever color I want.
Why do seagulls have wings?
To beat the *****s to the dump.
What’s a crying shame?
When a bus full of *****s drives off a cliff and there were 3 empty seats.
What do you call an Ethiopian with a feather up his *****?
A dart.
Why did the Jews wander in the desert for 40 years?
Because one of them lost a quarter.
What does N.A.A.C.P stand for?
*****s Are Always Causing Problems
How many spics does it take to have a bath?
Five, one to lie in the tub and four to spit on him.
What do a ***** and an apple have in common?
They both look good hanging from a tree.
Why are *****s always buried 12 feet deep?
Deep down they’re good people.
What’s the difference between a porch monkey and a yard ape?
The length of the chain.
What’s black, orange, and very pretty?
A ***** on fire.
What do you have if you’ve got a ***** up to his neck in cement?
Not enough cement.
How was copper wire invented?
Two jews fighting over a penny.
How do you starve a *****?
Hide his welfare check under his work boots.
How do you get 12 *****s in a Volkswagen?
Throw in a welfare check.
How do you get them out?
Throw in a job application.
Why are there trees in Harlem?
Public transportation.
How does a black woman fight crime?
She has an abortion.
What do you say when you see your T.V. floating around at night?
“Drop it *****.”
Although blacks are 12% of the population in reality it is just 2% of the blacks that commit 50% of the murders and a greater percentage of other crimes. Consider: black females – 6%. Blacks from zero yrs. to 12 yrs. and black males from 50-100 years commit an infinitesimal percentage of the crimes. Therefore we are left with two percent. If we eliminate crimes committed by this two percent from the U.S. statistics our country compares very favorably with all Western countries. Fact — blacks kill 7 times more than whites kill. Fact — blacks kill whites 20 times more than whites kill blacks. Fact — blacks mug or commit group crime against whites 50 times more than whites commit against blacks. Fact — blacks rape white women 2000 (yes 2000) times more than whites rape black women. In New York City, about 300 white women are raped by blacks every year BUT there has not been a black woman raped by a white male in anybody’s memory (going back over 20 yrs.) Consider: Al Sharpton had to go upstate New York to find a hoax and that was almost 20 years ago. (Source NYT 4/22/05)
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2004 report (released May 2006), blacks commit 54 percent of the homicides in America even though they constitute only 12 percent of the population.
An individual black male is seven times more likely to commit murder than an individual white male. It so happens that black felons commit 43 percent of aggravated *****aults, 66 percent of armed robberies, 27 percent of rapes and 85 percent of interracial crimes of violence, mainly against whites (this last figure from a Justice Department report 2003). However, it’s not just in the United States. The greatest dicators in recent years have emerged in Africa. People like Idi Amin of Uganda, Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi, Mobutu Sese Seko, in Zaire, self-anointed Emperor Bok*****a of the Central African Republic, Mohammed Saidi Barre in Somalia, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe — the list is endless.
Blacks are dumber as well, statistics *****yzed by the New York Times (July 4, 1999) dispel the poverty argument by establishing that impoverished white children whose parents earn less than $10,000 a year score higher on standardized SAT tests than black children whose parents earn more than $70,000 a year. Also, nearly 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.
The fact of the matter is White people have made the greatest contributions to the world. We have Thomas Hobbes, Niels Bohr, Peter the Great, Guglielmo Marconi, James Joyce, Vasco De Gama, Jonas Salk, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Louis Daguerre, J. Robert Oppenbeimer, Gregg Pincus, Enrico Fermi, William Harvey, Ben Franklin, Pic*****o, Werner Heisenberg, FDR, Magellen, Kant, Walt Disney, D.W Griffith, Jean-Luc Godard, Winston Churchill, Ed Jenner, Charles Babbage, Alexander Graham Bell, Mendel, Bill Gates, The Wright Brothers, Dante, Francis Bacon, Voltaire, Alexander Fleming, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Rene Descartes, Watson & Crick, Beethoven, Henry Ford, Bach, Mozart, Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Karl Marx, Gutenberg, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Freud, Edison, The Beatles, etc. We are the greatest people who ever lived, and who continue to this day, to contribute greatly to society and lead the world in the fields of science, medicine, and engineering. Don’t feel bad, the black people that you love and adore have Mike Tyson, Dolemite, Ike Turner, and Snoop Dog.
Everybody give Jane and Josh a standing ovation for doing an outstanding job for their father(satan). Your time is almost up. Your whole world is about to crumble. Let see if your white man’s genius can get you out of the mess you’re in now. We’re used to living without much and can handle it very well. Let’s see how you genetic deficient dogs do. We’ve got some nice bridges out here.
First of all, Black people were the first people on the planet. Everybody, including White people, come from Black people. White people are a genetic mutation or a genetic deficiency state [which] is what causes skin to be White. Now, the article doesn’t talk about White skin in those terms. It talks about people migrating north and therefore losing color. I maintain that’s not at all what happened. They lost the color through a genetic mutation to albinism, which genetics defines as a genetic deficiency state and they were forced out of Africa into Europe. Scientists who cl*****ify themselves as White don’t want to say [this]. You can’t simultaneously think White is superior and then say that White is a genetic deficiency state.
Dr. Francis Cress Welsing
- Stop caring about what they call you. They’re the ones that are lacking (color, lips, *****es, *****’, rhythm, souls, etc…)
Am I missing something Jane? What was the point of that?
Why are Crackers so obsessed with black people? So obsessed that they’ll take the time to create, write and record ‘***** jokes’?
Because deep down they know we are genetically dominant and can wipe out their albino *****es out in a minute; they know we have a rich cultural and intellectual history that dates back to when they were living in caves, and are severely resentful of the fact that God gave us the richest, most beautiful continent on earth: Africa, while they received puny, cold, dry, unattractive Europe!
OH. They’re also mad about our high cheekbones, built -in sunscreen, hair that reaches for the sun rather than sits dead and flat on our heads, our curves, our muscles, andthe fact that we have lips
Josh I am LMAO at you and I feel sorry for you.
Do you know which group scores higher on SATs and graduates at higher rates than ANY racial group in this country? African immigrants. That’s right! Pure black, African immigrants! Please read up.
Oh and you’re also missing a few heroes on the black side:
IMHOTEP (the father of medicine,philosopher…sorry, Hippocrates was about 1000 years late) Crispus Attucks, Hannibal, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, James Baldwin, Frederick Dougl*****, W.E.B. DuBois, Haile Selaisse, Queen Nzinga, Sojourner Truth, Toussaint L’Ouverture, King Tut, Cleopatra, Queen Nefertiti…and LETS NOT EVEN GET INTO music, dance and art! Or sports!
And you forgot to mention that the most destructive dictators we’ve seen in recent history are white ones:
Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, King Leopold II, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini, etc. etc.
It amazes me how white people love to talk about how they rule the world.
But look at it! The majority of people are living in poverty, we’ve never had so many destructive wars, diseases are running rampant..a new disease is born everyday. Yet they’re proud of all they’ve accomplished! LOL!
Oh and P.S. I think it’s hilarious that you name Pic*****o as a great white contributor to the world. Pic*****o took his style from African art! He wasn’t original at all! Come on, you’re not THAT ignorant are you?
And Jean-Luc Godard? How does his resistance to a linear narrative film structure make him a great white contributor to the world?
And Freud? Seriously? His theories are so impractical its not even funny. Do you even know anything about Freud?
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!
Please Bossipers, Why am I arguing with this Cr@*ker??
It’s such a waste of my time!
Preach Stoney preach!
To Stupid Jane why don’t you just die and take all the other venemous hateful ones with you? I mean after all you are not even human or intelligent. LOVE LOVE LOVE , I’m not wishing death on you but you and your kind are so full of hate it just sounded like you perhaps feel like dying. I will not respond to any comments you might reply back to me. Remember LOVE focus now breathe ask for Love to fill your soul and heart. There is hope for you if you want it. Done.
@ Jane I see you have quite a fascination with Black people, funny I don’t think of you at all.
@ Josh you forgot one other contribution for which whites are known, you produce more serial killers than any other race, you sick Jeffery Darmer trash.
Hey NONO, you dumb coon. JLG reinvented film. He is the greatest living cinematic artist. The wisest, most transformative, most original agent provocateur at work in the fields of cinema. Godard is to his medium what Joyce, Stravinsky, Eliot, and Pic*****o were to theirs: rule-rewriting colossi after whom human expression would never be quite the same. Quentin Tarantino may be the most famous public genuflecter before Godard’s legacy, but Martin Scorsese, Abbas Kiarostami, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee, Lars Von Trier, Leos Carax, Jim Jarmusch, Raul Ruiz, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Richard Linklater, Catherine Breillat, and Wong Kar-wai, among innumerable others, all owe him a debt they could never pay out. Wrestling in any capacity with movies as art means facing his body of work and taking a deep breath. Godard is a one-man aesthetic revolution that hasn’t calmed its cultural mutiny in over four decades. A film is not (or should not be) a free-standing narrative experience that provides a temporary alternative to living, but is as much a factor in the throng of our daily existence as sex, food, work, friendship, illness, music, love. The ordinary visual syntax of movies has been molded since the first years of the last century to stifle this fascinating essence and limit our responses; as a result, almost all filmgoing has been concerned only with a smoothly told story and the stars’ beauty. For Godard, that anesthetizing repression was always political, and from the first minutes of Breathless, when Jean-Paul Belmondo’s non-protagonist turns to the camera to blather while driving, and the film jump-cuts itself into incompleteness, Godard was burning down the palace. Anything could happen here; in many ways, it could be called the first movie.
Sorry he isn’t an empty headed ***** like Tyler Perry. Perhaps you’ve heard the claims: Were it not for the genius and energy of black inventors, we might find ourselves in a world without traffic lights, peanut butter, blood banks, light bulb filaments, and a vast number of other things we now take for granted but could hardly imagine life without.
Such beliefs usually originate in books or articles about black history. Since many of the authors have little interest in the history of technology outside of advertising black contributions to it, their stories tend to be fraught with misunderstandings, wishful thinking, or fanciful embellishments with no historical basis. The lack of historical perspective leads to extravagant overestimations of originality and importance: sometimes a slightly modified version of a pre-existing piece of technology is mistaken for the first invention of its type; sometimes a patent or innovation with little or no lasting value is portrayed as a major advance, even if there’s no real evidence it was ever used.
Unfortunately, some of the errors and exaggerations have acquired an illusion of credibility by repetition in mainstream outlets, especially during Black History Month (see examples for the traffic light and ironing board). When myths go unchallenged for too long, they begin to eclipse the truth. Thus I decided to put some records straight. Although this page does not cover every dubious invention claim floating around out there, it should at least serve as a warning never to take any such claim for granted.
Each item below is listed with its supposed black originator beneath it along with the year it was supposedly invented, followed by something about the real origin of the invention or at least an earlier instance of it.
Bibliography
Email
Traffic Signal
Invented by Garrett A. Morgan in 1923? No!
The first known traffic signal appeared in London in 1868 near the Houses of Parliament. Designed by JP Knight, it featured two semap***** arms and two gas lamps. The earliest electric traffic lights include Lester Wire’s two-color version set up in Salt Lake City circa 1912, James Hoge’s system (US patent #1,251,666) installed in Cleveland by the American Traffic Signal Company in 1914, and William Potts’ 4-way red-yellow-green lights introduced in Detroit beginning in 1920. New York City traffic towers began flashing three-color signals also in 1920.
Garrett Morgan’s cross-shaped, crank-operated semap***** was not among the first half-hundred patented traffic signals, nor was it “automatic” as is sometimes claimed, nor did it play any part in the evolution of the modern traffic light. For details see Inventing History: Garrett Morgan and the Traffic Signal.
Gas Mask
Garrett Morgan in 1914? No!
The invention of the gas mask predates Morgan’s breathing device by several decades. Early versions were constructed by the Scottish chemist John Stenhouse in 1854 and the physicist John Tyndall in the 1870s, among many other inventors prior to World War I. See The Invention of the Gas Mask.
Peanut Butter
George Washington Carver (who began his peanut research in 1903)? No!
Peanuts, which are native to the New World tropics, were mashed into paste by Aztecs hundreds of years ago. Evidence of modern peanut butter comes from US patent #306727 issued to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec in 1884, for a process of milling roasted peanuts between heated surfaces until the peanuts reached “a fluid or semi-fluid state.” As the product cooled, it set into what Edson described as “a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment.” In 1890, George A. Bayle Jr., owner of a food business in St. Louis, manufactured peanut butter and sold it out of barrels. J.H. Kellogg, of cereal fame, secured US patent #580787 in 1897 for his “Process of Preparing Nutmeal,” which produced a “pasty adhesive substance” that Kellogg called “nut-butter.”
George Washington Carver
“Discovered” hundreds of new and important uses for the peanut? Fathered the peanut industry? Revolutionized southern US agriculture? No!
Research by Barry Mackintosh, who served as bureau historian for the National Park Service (which manages the G.W. Carver National Monument), demonstrated the following:
Most of Carver’s peanut and sweet potato creations were either unoriginal, impractical, or of uncertain effectiveness. No product born in his laboratory was widely adopted.
The boom years for Southern peanut production came prior to, and not as a result of, Carver’s promotion of the crop.
Carver’s work to improve regional farming practices was not of pioneering scientific importance and had little demonstrable impact.
To see how Carver gained “a popular reputation far transcending the significance of his accomplishments,” read Mackintosh’s excellent article George Washington Carver: The Making of a Myth.
Automatic Lubricator, “Real McCoy”
Elijah McCoy revolutionized industry in 1872 by inventing the first device to automatically oil machinery? No! The phrase “Real McCoy” arose to distinguish Elijah’s inventions from cheap imitations? No!
The oil cup, which automatically delivers a steady trickle of lubricant to machine parts while the machine is running, predates McCoy’s career; a description of one appears in the May 6, 1848 issue of Scientific American. The automatic “displacement lubricator” for steam engines was developed in 1860 by John Ramsbottom of England, and notably improved in 1862 by James Roscoe of the same country. The “hydrostatic” lubricator originated no later than 1871.
Variants of the phrase Real McCoy appear in Scottish literature dating back to at least 1856 — well before Elijah McCoy could have been involved.
Detailed evidence: The not-so-real McCoy
Also see The Fake McCoy and Did Somebody Say McTrash?
Blood Bank
Dr. Charles Drew in 1940? No!
During World War I, Dr. Oswald H. Robertson of the US army preserved blood in a citrate-glucose solution and stored it in cooled containers for later transfusion. This was the first use of “banked” blood. By the mid-1930s the Russians had set up a national network of facilities for the collection, typing, and storage of blood. Bernard Fantus, influenced by the Russian program, established the first hospital blood bank in the United States at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital in 1937. It was Fantus who coined the term “blood bank.” See highlights of transfusion history from the American *****ociation of Blood Banks.
Blood Plasma
Did Charles Drew “discover” (in about 1940) that plasma could be separated and stored apart from the rest of the blood, thereby revolutionizing transfusion medicine? No!
The possibility of using blood plasma for transfusion purposes was known at least since 1918, when English physician Gordon R. Ward suggested it in a medical journal. In the mid-1930s, John Elliott advanced the idea, emphasizing plasma’s advantages in shelf life and donor-recipient compatibility, and in 1939 he and two colleagues reported having used stored plasma in 191 transfusions. (See historical notes on plasma use.) Charles Drew was not responsible for any breakthrough scientific or medical discovery; his main career achievement lay in supervising or co-supervising major programs for the collection and shipment of blood and plasma.
More: Charles Drew Mythology
Washington DC city plan
Benjamin Banneker? No!
Pierre-Charles L’Enfant created the layout of Washington DC. Banneker *****isted Andrew Ellicott in the survey of the federal territory, but played no direct role in the actual planning of the city. The story of Banneker reconstructing the city design from memory after L’Enfant ran away with the plans (with the implication that the project would have failed if not for Banneker) has been debunked by historians.
Filament for Light Bulb
Lewis Latimer invented the carbon filament in 1881 or 1882? No!
English chemist/physicist Joseph Swan experimented with a carbon-filament incandescent light all the way back in 1860, and by 1878 had developed a better design which he patented in Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Edison developed a successful carbon-filament bulb, receiving a patent for it (#223898) in January 1880, before Lewis Latimer did any work in electric lighting. From 1880 onward, countless patents were issued for innovations in filament design and manufacture (Edison had over 50 of them). Neither of Latimer’s two filament-related patents in 1881 and 1882 were among the most important innovations, nor did they make the light bulb last longer, nor is there reason to believe they were adopted outside Hiram Maxim’s company where Latimer worked at the time. (He was not hired by Edison’s company until 1884, primarily as a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigations).
Latimer also did not come up with the first screw socket for the light bulb or the first book on electric lighting.
Heart Surgery (first successful)
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in 1893? No!
Dr. Williams repaired a wound not in the heart muscle itself, but in the sac surrounding it, the pericardium. This operation was not the first of its type: Henry Dalton of St. Louis performed a nearly identical operation two years earlier, with the patient fully recovering. Decades before that, the Spaniard Francisco Romero carried out the first successful pericardial surgery of any type, incising the pericardium to drain fluid compressing the heart.
Surgery on the actual human heart muscle, and not just the pericardium, was first successfully accomplished by Ludwig Rehn of Germany when he repaired a wounded right ventricle in 1896. More than 50 years later came surgery on the open heart, pioneered by John Lewis, C. Walton Lillehei (often called the “father of open heart surgery”) and John Gibbon (who invented the heart-lung machine).
What medical historians say…
“Third Rail”
Granville Woods in 1901? No!
Werner von Siemens pioneered the use of an electrified third rail as a means for powering railway vehicles when he demonstrated an experimental electric train at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exhibition. In the US, English-born Leo Daft used a third-rail system to electrify the Baltimore & Hampden lines in 1885. The first electrically powered subway trains, which debuted in London in the autumn of 1890, likewise drew power from a third rail. Details…
Railway Telegraph
Granville Woods prevented railway accidents and saved countless lives by inventing the train telegraph (patented in 1887), which allowed communication to and from moving trains? No!
The earliest patents for train telegraphs go back to at least 1873. Lucius Phelps was the first inventor in the field to attract widespread notice, and the telegrams he exchanged on the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad in January 1885 were hailed in the Feb. 21, 1885 issue of Scientific American as “perhaps the first ever sent to and from a moving train.” Phelps remained at the forefront in developing the technology and by the end of 1887 already held 14 US patents on his system. He joined a team led by Thomas Edison, who had been working on his “gr*****hopper telegraph” for trains, and together they constructed on the Lehigh Valley Railroad one of the only induction telegraph systems ever put to commercial use. Although this telegraph was a technical success, it fulfilled no public need, and the market for on-board train telegraphy never took off. There is no evidence that any commercial railway telegraph based on Granville Woods’s patents was ever built. About the patent interference case
Refrigerated Truck
Frederick Jones (with Joseph Numero) in 1938? No! Did Jones change America’s eating habits by making possible the long-distance shipment of perishable foods? No!
Refrigerated ships and railcars had been moving perishables across oceans and continents even before Jones was born (see refrigerated transport timeline). Trucks with mechanically refrigerated cargo *****es appeared on the roads at least as early as the late 1920s (see the proof). Further development of truck refrigeration was more a process of gradual evolution than radical change.
Air Brake / Automatic Air Brake
Granville Woods in 1904? No!
In 1869, a 22-year-old George Westinghouse received US patent #88929 for a brake device operated by compressed air, and in the same year organized the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Many of the 361 patents he ac*****ulated during his career were for air brake variations and improvements, including his first “automatic” version in 1872 (US #124404).
Air Conditioner
Frederick Jones in 1949? No!
Dr. Willis Carrier built the first machine to control both the temperature and humidity of indoor air. He received the first of many patents in 1906 (US patent #808897, for the “Apparatus for Treating Air”). In 1911 he published the formulae that became the scientific basis for air conditioning design, and four years later formed the Carrier Engineering Corporation to develop and manufacture AC systems.
Airship
J.F. Pickering in 1900? No!
French engineer Henri Giffard successfully flew a powered navigable airship in 1852. The La France airship built by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs in 1884 featured an electric motor and improved steering capabilities. In 1900 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s first rigid-framed dirigible took to the air. Of the hundreds of inventors granted patents for early airship designs and modifications, few succeeded in building or flying their craft. There doesn’t appear to be any record of a “Pickering Airship” ever getting off the ground.
US Aviation Patent Database, 1799-1909
Automatic Railroad Car Coupler
Andrew Beard invented the “Jenny [sic] coupler” in 1897? No!
The Janney coupler is named for US Civil War veteran Eli H. Janney, who in 1873 invented a device (US patent #138405) which automatically linked together two railroad cars upon their being brought into contact. Also known as the “knuckle coupler,” Janney’s invention superseded the dangerous link-and-pin coupler and became the basis for standard coupler design through the remainder of the millennium. Andrew Beard’s modified knuckle coupler was just one of approximately eight thousand coupler variations patented by 1900. See a history of the automatic coupler and also The Janney Coupler.
Automatic Transmission/Gearshift
Richard Spikes in 1932? No!
The first automatic-transmission automobile to enter the market was designed by the Sturtevant brothers of M*****achusetts in 1904. US Patent #766551 was the first of several patents on their gearshift mechanism. Automatic transmission technology continued to develop, s*****ing hundreds of patents and numerous experimental units; but because of cost, reliability issues and an initial lack of demand, several decades p*****ed before vehicles with automatic transmission became common on the roads.
Bicycle Frame
Isaac R. Johnson in 1899? No!
Comte Mede de Sivrac and Karl von Sauerbronn built primitive versions of the bicycle in 1791 and 1816 respectively. The frame of John Starley’s 1885 “safety bicycle” resembled that of a modern bicycle.
Cellular Phone
Henry T. Sampson in 1971? No!
On July 6, 1971, Sampson and co-inventor George Miley received a patent on a “gamma electric cell” that converted a gamma ray input into an electrical output (Among the first to do that was Bernhard Gross, US patent #3122640, 1964). What, you ask, does gamma radiation have to do with cellular communications technology? The answer: nothing. Some multiculturalist pseudo-historian must have seen the words “electric” and “cell” and thought “cell phone.”
The father of the cell phone is Martin Cooper who first demonstrated the technology in 1973.
Clock or Watch (First in America)
Benjamin Banneker built the first American timepiece in 1753? No!
Abel Cottey, a Quaker clockmaker from Philadelphia, built a clock that is dated 1709 (source: Six Quaker Clockmakers, by Edward C. Chandlee; Philadelphia, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1943). Banneker biographer Silvio Bedini further refutes the myth:
Several watch and clockmakers were already established in the colony [Maryland] prior to the time that Banneker made the clock. In Annapolis alone there were at least four such craftsmen prior to 1750. Among these may be mentioned John Batterson, a watchmaker who moved to Annapolis in 1723; James Newberry, a watch and clockmaker who advertised in the Maryland Gazette on July 20, 1748; John Powell, a watch and clockmaker believed to have been indentured and to have been working in 1745; and Powell’s master, William Roberts.
Silvio Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1999)
Clothes Dryer
George T. Sampson in 1892? No!
The “clothes-drier” described in Sampson’s patent was actually a rack for holding clothes near a stove, and was intended as an “improvement” on similar contraptions:
My invention relates to improvements in clothes-driers…. The object of my invention is to suspend clothing in close relation to a stove by means of frames so constructed that they can be readily placed in proper position and put aside when not required for use.
US patent #476416, 1892
Nineteen years earlier, there were already over 300 US patents for such “clothes-driers” (Subject-Matter Index of Patents…1790 to 1873).
A Frenchman named Pochon in 1799 built the first known tumble dryer — a crank-driven, rotating metal drum pierced with ventilation holes and held over heat. Electric tumble dryers appeared in the first half of the 20th century.
Dustpan
Lloyd P. Ray in 1897? No!
While the ultimate origin of the dustpan is lost in the mists (dusts?) of time, at least we know that US patent #20811 for “Dust-pan” was granted to T.E. McNeill in 1858. That was the first of about 164 US dustpan patents predating Lloyd Ray’s. See the dustpan patent list.
Egg Beater
Willie Johnson in 1884? No!
The hand-cranked egg beater with two intermeshed, counter-rotating whisks was invented by Turner Williams of Providence, Rhode Island in 1870 (US Patent #103811). It was an improvement on earlier rotary egg beaters that had only one whisk.
Electric Trolley
Did Granville Woods invent the electric trolley car, the overhead wire that powers it, or the “troller” wheel that makes contact with the trolley wire, in 1888? No!
Dr. Werner von Siemens demonstrated his electric trolleybus, the Elektromote, near Berlin on April 29, 1882. The vehicle’s two electric motors collected power through contact wheels rolling atop a pair of overhead wires. The earliest patentee of an electric trolley in the United States appears to be Eugene Cowles (#252193 in 1881), followed by Dr. Joseph R. Finney (#268476 in 1882) who operated an experimental trolley car near Pittsburgh, PA in the summer of 1882. In early 1885, John C. Henry established in Kansas City, MO, the first overhead-wire electric transit system to enter regular service in the United States. Belgian-born Charles van Depoele, who earned 240+ patents in electric railway technology and other fields, set up trolley lines in several North American cities by 1887. In February 1888, a trolley system designed by Frank Sprague began operating in Richmond, Virginia. Sprague’s system became the lasting prototype for electric street railways in the US.
Elevator
Alexander Miles in 1887? No!
Was Miles the first to patent a self-closing shaft door? No!
Steam-powered hoisting devices were used in England by 1800. Elisha Graves Otis’ 1853 “safety elevator” prevented the car from falling if the cable broke, and thus paved the way for the first commercial p*****enger elevator, installed in New York City’s Haughwout Department Store in 1857. The first electric elevator appeared in Mannheim, Germany in 1880, built by the German firm of Siemens and Halske. A self-closing shaft door was invented by J.W. Meaker in 1874 (“Improvement in Self-closing Hatchways,” US Patent No. 147,853). See Elevator Timeline
Fastest Computer/Computation
Was Philip Emeagwali responsible for the world’s fastest computer or computation in 1989? Did he win the “*****el Prize of computing”? Is he a “father of the Internet”? No!
The fastest performance of a computer application in 1989 was 6 billion floating point operations per second (6 Gflops), achieved by a team from Mobil and Thinking Machines Corp. on a 64,000-processor “Connection Machine” invented by Danny Hillis. That was almost double the 3.1 Gflops of Emeagwali’s computation. Computing’s *****el Prize equivalent is the Turing Award, which Emeagwali has never won. More…
Fire Escape
Joseph Winters in 1878? No!
Winters’ “fire escape” was a wagon-mounted ladder. The first such contraption patented in the US was the work of William P. Withey, 1840 (US patent #1599). The fire escape with a “lazy-tongs” type ladder, more similar to Winters’ patent, was pioneered by Hüttman and Kornelio in 1849 (US patent #6155). One of the first fire escapes of any type was invented in 18th-century England:
In 1784, Daniel Maseres, of England, invented a machine called a fire escape, which, being fastened to the window, would enable anyone to descend to the street without injury.
Benjamin Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art, 1888
By 1888 the US had granted 1,099 patents on fire escapes of “many forms, and of every possible material” (Butterworth).
Fire Extinguisher
Thomas J. Martin in 1872? No!
In 1813, British army captain George Manby created the first known portable fire extinguisher: a two-foot-tall copper cylinder that held 3 gallons of water and used compressed air as a propellant. One of the earliest extinguishers to use a chemical extinguishing agent, and not just water, was invented in 1849 by the Englishman William Henry Phillips, who patented his “fire annihilator” in England and the United States (US patent #7,269).
Food Additives, Meat Curing
Lloyd Hall “is responsible for the meat curing products, seasonings, emulsions, bakery products, antioxidants, protein hydrolysates, and many other products that keep our food fresh and flavorable”? No! Hall “revolutionized the meatpacking industry”? No!
Hall introduced no major cl***** of additive, certainly not meat curing salts (which are ancient), protein hydrolysates (popularized by Julius Maggi as flavor enhancers in 1886), emulsifiers and antioxidants (lecithin, for example, was used in both roles before Lloyd Hall had any patents in food processing). The so-called revolutionary meat curing product marketed by Hall’s employer was invented primarily by Karl Max Seifert ; the number of Seifert’s patent was printed right on the containers. Hall’s main contribution to this product was to reduce its tendency to cake during storage. Details: Lloyd Hall myth.
Fountain Pen
W.B. Purvis in 1890? No!
The first reference to what seems to be a fountain pen appears in an Arabic text from 969 AD; details of the instrument are not known. A French “Bion” pen, dated 1702, represents the oldest fountain pen that still survives. Later models included John Scheffer’s 1819 pen, possibly the first to be m*****-produced; John Jacob Parker’s “self-filling” pen of 1832; and the famous Lewis Waterman pen of 1884 (US Patents #293545, #307735). Early History of the Fountain Pen
Golf Tee
Dr. George Grant in 1899? No!
A small rubber platform invented by Scotsmen William Bloxsom and Arthur Douglas was the world’s first patented golf tee (British patent #12941 of 1889). The first known tee to penetrate the ground, in contrast to earlier tees that sat on the surface, was the peg-like “Perfectum” patented in 1892 by Percy Ellis of England. American dentist William Lowell introduced the most common form of tee used today, the simple wooden peg with a flared top. Details…
Hairbrush
Lyda Newman in 1898? No!
An early US patent for a recognizably modern hairbrush went to Hugh Rock in 1854 (US Design Patent no. D645), though surely there were hairbrushes long before there was a US Patent Office.
The claim that Lyda Newman’s brush was the first with “synthetic bristles” is false: her patent mentions nothing about synthetic bristles and is concerned only with a new way of making the handle detachable from the head. Besides, a hairbrush that included “elastic wire teeth” in combination with natural bristles had already been patented by Samuel Firey in 1870 (US, #106680). Nylon bristles weren’t possible until the invention of nylon in 1935.
Halogen Lamp
Frederick Mosby? No
The original patent for the tungsten halogen lamp (US #2,883,571; April 21, 1959) is recorded to Elmer G. Fridrich and Emmett H. Wiley of General Electric. The two had built a working prototype as early as 1953. Fred Mosby was part of the GE team charged with developing the prototype lamp into a marketable product, but was not responsible for the original halogen lamp or the concept behind it.
Hand Stamp
William Purvis in 1883? No!
The earliest known postal handstamp was brought into use by Henry Bishop, Postmaster General of Great Britain, in the year 1661. The stamp imprinted the mail with a bisected circle containing the month and the date. See “Bishop marks”
Heating Furnace
Alice Parker in 1919? No!
In the hypocaust heating systems built by the ancient Romans, hot air from a furnace circulated under the floor and up through channels inside the walls, thereby distributing heat evenly around the building. One of the most famous heating systems in recent centuries was the iron furnace stove known as the “Franklin stove,” named after its purported originator Benjamin Franklin around 1745 AD. The US had issued over 4000 patents for heating stoves and furnaces by 1888 (Benjamin Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art, 1888).
Horseshoe
Oscar E. Brown in 1892? No!
Some sources on the web, if not ignorant enough to say Brown invented the first horseshoe ever, will at least try to credit him for the first double or compound horseshoe made of two layers: one permanently secured to the hoof, and one auxiliary layer that can be removed and replaced when it wears out. However, in the US there were already 39 earlier patents for horseshoes using that same concept. The first of these was issued to J.B. Kendall of Boston in 1861, patent #33709.
Ice Cream
Augustus Jackson in 1832? No!
Flavored ices resembling sherbet were known in China in ancient times. In Europe, sherbet-like concoctions evolved into ice cream by the 16th century, and around 1670 or so, the Café Procope in Paris offered creamy frozen dairy desserts to the public. The first written record of ice cream in the New World comes from a letter dated 1700, attesting that Maryland Governor William Bladen served the treat to his guests. In 1777, the New York Gazette advertised the sale of ice cream by confectioner Philip Lenzi. History of Ice Cream
Ironing Board
Sarah Boone in 1892? No!
Of the several hundred US patents on ironing boards granted prior to Sarah Boone’s, the first three went to William Vandenburg in 1858 (patents #19390, #19883, #20231). The first American female patentee of an ironing board is probably Sarah Mort of Dayton, Ohio, who received patent #57170 in 1866. In 1869, Henry Soggs of Columbus, Pennsylvania earned US patent #90966 for an ironing board resembling the modern type, with folding legs, adjustable height, and a cover. Another nice example of a modern-looking board was designed by J.H. Mallory in 1871, patent #120296. Details…
Laser Cataract Surgery
Patricia Bath “transformed eye surgery” by inventing the first laser device to treat cataracts in 1986? No!
Use of lasers to treat cataracts in the eye began to develop in the mid 1970s. M.M. Krasnov of Russia reported the first such procedure in 1975. One of the earliest US patents for laser cataract removal (#3,982,541) was issued to Francis L’Esperance in 1976. In later years, a number of experimenters worked independently on laser devices for removing cataracts, including Daniel Eichenbaum, whose work became the basis of the Paradigm Photon™ device; and Jack Do*****, whose Do***** Laser PhotoLysis System eventually became the first laser unit to win FDA approval for cataract removal in the United States. Still, the majority of cataract surgeries continue to be performed using ultrasound devices, not lasers. Details…
Lawn Mower
John Burr in 1899? No!
English engineer Edwin Budding invented the first reel-type lawn mower (with blades arranged in a cylindrical pattern) and had it patented in England in 1830. In 1868 the United States issued patent #73807 to Amariah M. Hills of Connecticut, who went on to establish the Archimedean Lawn Mower Co. in 1871. By 1888, the US Patent Office had granted 138 patents for lawn mowers (Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art). Doubtlessly there were even more by the time Burr got his patent in 1899.
Some website authors want Burr to have invented the first “rotary blade” mower, with a centrally mounted spinning blade. But his patent #624749 shows yet another twist on the old reel mower, differing in only a few details with Budding’s original.
Lawn Sprinkler
J. H. Smith in 1897? Elijah McCoy? No!
The first US patent with the title “lawn sprinkler” was issued to J. Lessler of Buffalo, New York in 1871 (#121949). Early examples of water-propelled, rotating lawn sprinklers were patented by J. Oswald in 1890 (#425340) and J. S. Woolsey in 1891 (#457099) among a gazillion others.
Smith’s patent shows just another rotating sprinkler, and McCoy’s 1899 patent was for a turtle-shaped sprinkler.
Mailbox (letter drop box)
P. Downing invented the street letter drop box in 1891? No!
George Becket invented the private mailbox in 1892? No!
The US Postal Service says that “Street boxes for mail collection began to appear in large [US] cities by 1858.” They appeared in Europe even earlier, according to historian Laurin Zilliacus:
Mail boxes as we understand them first appeared on the streets of Belgian towns in 1848. In Paris they came two years later, while the English received their ‘pillar boxes’ in 1855.
Laurin Zilliacus, Mail for the World, p. 178 (New York, J. Day Co., 1953)
From the same book (p.178), “Private mail boxes were invented in the United States in about 1860.”
Eventually, letter drop boxes came equipped with inner lids to prevent miscreants from rummaging through the mail pile. The first of many US patents for such a purpose was granted in 1860 to John North of Middletown, Connecticut (US Pat. #27466).
Mop
Thomas W. Stewart in 1893? No!
Mops go back a long, long way before 1893. Just how long, is hard to determine. Restricting our view to the modern era, we find that the United States issued its first mop patent (#241) in 1837 to Jacob Howe, called “Construction of Mop-Heads and the Mode of Securing them upon Handles.” One of the first patented mops with a built-in wringer was the one H. & J. Morton invented in 1859 (US #24049).
The mop specified in Stewart’s patent #499402 has a lever-operated clamp for “holding the mop rags”; the lever is not a wringing mechanism as erroneously reported on certain websites. Other inventors had already patented mops with lever-operated clamps, one of the first being Greenleaf Stackpole in 1869 (US Pat. #89803).
Paper Punch (hand-held)
Charles Brooks in 1893? No!
Was it the first with a hinged receptacle to catch the clippings? No!
The first numbered US patent for a hand-held hole punch was #636, issued to Solyman Merrick in 1838. Robert James Kellett earned the first two US patents for a chad-catching hole punch, in 1867 (patent #65090) and 1868 (#79232).
Pencil Sharpener
John Lee Love in 1897? No!
Bernard L*****imone of Limoges, France invented one of the earliest sharpeners, receiving French patent number 2444 in 1828. An apparent ancestor of the 20th-century hand-cranked sharpener was patented by G. F. Ballou in 1896 (US #556709) and marketed by the A.B. ***** Company as the “Planetary Pencil Pointer.” As the user held the pencil stationary and turned the crank, twin milling cutters revolved around the tip of the pencil and shaved it into a point.
Love’s patent #594114 shows a variation on a different kind of sharpener, in which one would crank the pencil itself around in a stirring motion. An earlier device of a similar type was devised in 1888 by G.H. Courson (patent #388533), and sold under the name “President Pencil Sharpener.”
Here are several other examples of 19th century sharpeners:
Early Mechanical Pencil Sharpeners
Mechanical Pencil Sharpener Gallery ~ 1884-1899
Permanent Wave Machine (for perming hair)
Marjorie Joyner in 1928? No!
That would be German hairdresser Karl Ludwig Nessler (aka Charles Nestlé) no later than 1906.
Postmarking and Canceling Machine
William Barry in 1897? No!
Try Pearson Hill of England, in 1857. Hill’s machine marked the postage stamp with vertical lines and postmark date. By 1892, US post offices were using several brands of machines, including one that could cancel, postmark, count and stack more than 20,000 pieces of mail per hour (Marshall Cushing, Story of Our Post Office, Boston: A. M. Thayer & co., 1892, pp.189-191).
Printing Press
W.A. Lavalette invented “the advanced printing press” in 1878? No!
Movable-type printing first appeared in East Asia. In Europe, around 1455, Johann Gutenberg adapted the screw press used in other trades such as winemaking and combined it with type-metal alloy characters and oil-based printing ink. Major advances after Gutenberg include the cylinder printing press (c. 1811) by Frederick Koenig and Andreas Bauer, the rotary press (1846) by Richard M. Hoe, and the web press (1865) by William Bullock. Major advances do not include Lavalette’s patent, which was only one of 3,268 printing patents granted in the US by the year 1888 (Butterworth, Growth of Industrial Art). Improvements After Gutenberg
Propeller for Ship
George Tolivar or Benjamin Montgomery? No!
John Stevens constructed a boat with twin steam-powered propellers in 1804 in the first known application of a screw propeller for marine propulsion. Other important pioneers in the early 1800s included Sir Francis Pettit Smith of England, and Swedish-born ship designer John Ericsson (US patent #588) who later designed the USS Monitor.
Refrigerator
Thomas Elkins in 1879? John Stanard in 1891? No!
Oliver Evans proposed a mechanical refrigerator based on a vapor-compression cycle in 1805 and Jacob Perkins had a working machine built in 1834. Dr. John Gorrie created an air-cycle refrigeration system in about 1844, which he installed in a Florida hospital. In the 1850s Alexander Twining in the USA and James Harrison in Australia used mechanical refrigeration to produce ice on a commercial scale. Around the same time, the Carré brothers of France led the development of absorption refrigeration systems. A more detailed timeline
Stanard’s patent describes not a refrigeration machine, but an old-fashioned icebox — an insulated cabinet into which ice is placed to cool the interior. As such, it was a “refrigerator” only in the old sense of the term, which included non-mechanical coolers. Elkins created a similarly low-tech cooler, acknowledging in his patent #221222 that “I am aware that chilling substances inclosed within a porous box or jar by wetting its outer surface is an old and well-known process.”
Rotary Engine
Andrew Beard in 1892? No!
The Subject Matter Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office from 1790 to 1873 Inclusive lists 394 “Rotary Engine” patents from 1810-1873. The *****el engine, a rotary combustion engine with a four-stroke cycle, dates from 1954. History of the Rotary Engine from 1588 Onward
Screw Socket for Light Bulb
Lewis Latimer? No!
The earliest evidence for a light bulb screw base design is a drawing in a Thomas Edison notebook dated Sept. 11, 1880. It is not the work of Latimer, though:
Edison’s long-time *****ociates, Edward H. Johnson and John Ott, were prin*****lly responsible for designing fixtures in the fall of 1880. Their work resulted in the screw socket and base very much like those widely used today.
R. Friedel and P. Israel, Edison’s Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1986).
The 1880 sketch of the screw socket is reproduced in the book cited above.
Smallpox Vaccine
Onesimus the slave in 1721? No! Onesimus knew of variolation, an early inoculation technique practiced in several areas of the world before the discovery of vaccination.
English physician Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1796 after finding that the relatively innocuous cowpox virus built immunity against the deadly smallpox. This discovery led to the eventual eradication of endemic smallpox throughout the world. Vaccination differs from the primitive inoculation method known as variolation, which involved the deliberate planting of live smallpox into a healthy person in hopes of inducing a mild form of the disease that would provide immunity from further infection. Variolation not only was risky to the patient but, more importantly, failed to prevent smallpox from spreading. Known in Asia by 1000 AD, the practice reached the West via more than one channel.
Smokestack for Locomotives
L. Bell in 1871? No!
Even the first steam locomotives, such as the one built by Richard Trevithick in 1804, were equipped with smokestacks. Later smokestacks featured wire netting to prevent hazardous sparks from escaping. Page 115 of John H. White Jr.’s American Locomotives: An Engineering History, 1830-1880 (1997 edition) displays a composite picture showing 57 different types of spark-arresting smokestacks devised before 1860.
Steam Boiler Furnace
Granville Woods in 1884? No!
The steam engine boiler is of course as old as the steam engine itself. The Subject Matter Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office from 1790 to 1873 Inclusive lists several hundred variations and improvements to the steam boiler, including the revolutionary water-tube boiler patented in 1867 by American inventors George Herman Bab***** and Stephen Wil*****.
Street Sweeper
Charles Brooks in 1896? No!
Brooks’ patent was for a modified version of a common type of street sweeper cart that had long been known, with a rotary brush that swept refuse onto an elevator belt and into a trash bin. In the United States, street sweepers started being patented in the 1840s, and by 1900 the Patent Office had issued about 300 patents for such machines. Details…
Supercharger for Automobiles
Joseph Gammel/Gamell in 1976? No!
In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler received a German patent for supercharging an internal combustion engine. Louis Renault patented a centrifugal supercharger in France in 1902. An early supercharged racecar was built by Lee Chadwick of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1908 and reportedly reached a speed of 100 miles per hour. History of Supercharging
Toilet
T. Elkins in 1897? No!
The Minoans of Crete are said to have invented a flush toilet thousands of years ago; however, there is probably no direct ancestral relationship between it and the modern one that evolved primarily in England starting in the late 16th century, when Sir John Harrington devised a flushing device for his godmother Queen Elizabeth. In 1775 Alexander *****mings patented a toilet in which some water remained after each flush, thereby suppressing odors from below. The “water closet” continued to evolve, and in 1885, Thomas Twyford provided us with a single-piece ceramic toilet similar to the one we know today. Who Invented the Toilet?
Toilet for Railroad Cars
Lewis Latimer in 1874? No!
William E. Marsh Jr. of New Jersey took out US patent #95597 for “Improvement in Water-closets for Railroad Cars” five years prior to Latimer’s 1874 patent with the same title. Marsh’s patent specification suggests that railroad-car water closets, i.e., toilets, were already in use:
In the closets or privies of railroad cars, the cold and wind, especially while the train is in motion, are very disagreeable… My invention is to remove these objectionable features….
W. Marsh, US patent #95597, 1869
Tricycle
M.A. Cherry in 1886? No!
In Germany in the year 1680 or thereabouts, paraplegic watchmaker Stephan Farffler built his own tricycle at 22 years of age. He designed it to be pedaled with the hands, for obvious reasons. History of the tricycle
Turn Signals
Richard Spikes in 1913? No! Did the 1913 Pierce Arrow feature Spikes’ turn signals? No!
Electric turn signal lights were devised as early as 1907 (U.S. Patent 912,831), but were not widely offered by major automobile manufacturers until the late 1930s, when GM developed its own version and made it standard on Buicks. The Pierce Arrow Museum in Buffalo, NY denies that directional signals were offered on 1913 Pierce Arrows.
Typewriter
L.S. Burridge & N.R. Marshman in 1885? No!
Henry Mill, an English engineer, was the first person to patent the basic idea of the typewriter in 1714. The first working typewriter known to have actually been built was the work of Pellegrino Turri of Italy in 1808. The familiar QWERTY keyboard, developed by C. L. Sholes and C. Glidden, reached the market in 1874. In 1878 change-case keys were added that enabled the typing of both capital and small letters. Typewriter History
What happened when the ***** looked up his family tree?
A gorilla ***** on his face.
Why don’t *****s like *****s?
They don’t like any jobs.
What do you call a ***** priest?
Holy *****.
Why do *****s always have sex on their mind?
Because they’ve got pubic hair on their head!
Why do *****s put their garbage out in clear plastic bags?
So mexicans can window shop.
Why do mexicans buy Cabbage Patch dolls?
Because they come with birth certificates.
Why don’t mexicans have any Olympic teams?
Because all the mexicans who can run, jump, or swim have already left the country.
Why don’t mexicans play hide and seek?
Because no one will look for them.
Why do mexicans have re-fried beans?
Have you ever heard of a mexican doing anything right the first time?
How can you tell a mexican airline?
It’s the one with hair under the wings.
What do you get when you cross a mexican with an octopus?
I don’t know but it sure can pick lettuce.
What are three things you can’t give a *****?
A black eye, a fat lip and an education.
What do *****s use to wash their white clothes?
BLEEATCH!
Why can’t spics be firefighters?
They can’t tell Jose from hose B.
What did the ***** say when he slid down the zebra?
Now you see me, now you don’t, now you see me, now you don’t.
What is the difference between a pair of jeans and an Ethiopian?
A pair of jeans only has one fly on it.
What word starts with “N” and ends with “R” that you never want to call a black person?
Neighbor.
What do you call two Ethiopians in a gold sleeping bag?
Twix.
Why is a Spic like a Skunk?
Beause they’re half balck and half white, and smell like *****.
What’s the difference between a ***** and a letter?
You can send a letter back to where it came from.
What’s the difference between the holy grail and a *****’s daddy?
You may find the grail.
What is black, runny, and scratches on gl*****?
A ***** in a microwave.
What do you call 9 mexicans in front of your house?
A spicket fence.
How does the navy use *****s?
They debone them and use them as wetsuits.
What does Pontiac stand for?
Poor Old *****s Think Its A Cadillac.
Do you remember the ***** family on the Jetsons? No?
The future looks pretty good!
Did you hear about the ***** that thought he was bleeding to death?
Turns out he just had diarrhea.
Why don’t jews like oral sex?
It’s too close to the gas chamber.
Why don’t you run over a ***** on a bike?
Its probably your bike.
What do you call 50 *****s burried up to their necks in dirt?
Afro-turf.
Why do *****s drive with their windows up?
They think the smell is coming from outside.
Why do *****s eat tootsie rolls with a fork?
So they don’t bite their fingers.
What do you call two ***** cops on motorcycles?
Chocolate chips.
Why don’t *****s celebrate Thanksgiving?
KFC isn’t open on holidays.
Why do *****s like basket ball?
It involves running, shooting and stealing.
What has four legs and a black arm?
A happy pitbull.
How do you know if a ***** is well hung?
If you can’t fit your finger between his neck and the noose.
Did you hear about the jewish child molestor?
He hid in the bushes and said, “Hey little boy, wanna buy some candy?”
Did you hear about the jew ***** who told her husband, “Give me 10 inches and make it hurt.”?
He *****ed her twice and threw her down the stairs.
How many ***** college students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Only one, but he gets 6 credits for it.
Not Out of Africa
Was Greek Culture Stolen from Africa?
Modern Myth vs. Ancient History
by Mary Lefkowitz
Excerpted from her book: Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History
Why I wrote the book
In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic about Martin Bernal’s Black Athena and its relation to the Afrocentrist movement. The *****ignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on the article I realized that here was a subject that needed all the attention, and more, that I could give to it. Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities.
Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves a radical departure from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend his position by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence from the instructors who claimed that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.
Normally, if one has a question about a text that another instructor is using, one simply asks why he or she is using that book. But since this conventional line of inquiry was closed to me, I had to wait till I could raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February 1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley’s Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a “distinguished Egyptologist,” and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then President of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.
After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same *****ertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians. But others stayed to hear me out, and I *****ured Dr. ben-Jochannan that I simply wanted to know what his evidence was: so far as I knew, and I had studied the subject, Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly only built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle’s and Alexander’s deaths.
A lecture at which serious questions could not be asked, and in fact were greeted with hostility — the occasion seemed more like a political rally than an academic event. As if that were not disturbing enough in itself, there was also the strange silence on the part of many of my faculty colleagues. Several of these were well aware that what Dr. ben-Jochannan was saying was factually wrong. One of them said later that she found the lecture so “hopeless” that she decided to say nothing. Were they afraid of being called racists? If so, their behavior was understandable, but not entirely responsible. Didn’t we as educators owe it to our students, all our students, to see that they got the best education they could possibly get? And that clearly was what they were not getting in a lecture where they were being told myths disguised as history, and where discussion and *****ysis had apparently been forbidden.
Good as the myths they were hearing may have made these students feel, so long as they never left the Afrocentric environment in which they were being nurtured and sheltered, they were being systematically deprived of the most important features of a university education. They were not learning how to question themselves and others, they were not learning to distinguish facts from fiction, nor in fact were they learning how to think for themselves. Their instructors had forgotten, while the rest of us sat by and did nothing about it, that students do not come to universities to be indoctrinated –at least in a free society.
Was Socrates Black?
I first learned about the notion that Socrates was black several years ago, from a student in my second-year Greek course on Plato’s Apology, his account of Socrates’ trial and conviction. Throughout the entire semester the student had regarded me with sullen hostility. A year or so later she apologized. She explained that she thought I had been concealing the truth about Socrates’ origins. In a course in Afro-American studies she had been told that he was black, and my silence about his African ancestry seemed to her to be a confirmation of the Eurocentric arrogance her instructor had warned her about. After she had taken my course, the student pursued the question on her own, and was satisfied that I had been telling her the truth: so far as we know, Socrates was ethnically no different from other Athenians.
What had this student learned in her course in Afro-American studies? The notion that Socrates was black is based on two different kinds of inference. The first “line of proof” is based on inference from possibility. Why couldn’t an Athenian have African ancestors? That of course would have been possible; almost anything is possible. But it is another question whether or not it was probable. Few prominent Athenians claim to have had foreign ancestors of any sort. Athenians were particularly fastidious about their own origins. In Socrates’ day, they did not allow Greeks from other city-states to become naturalized Athenian citizens, and they were even more careful about the non-Greeks or barbaroi. Since Socrates was an Athenian citizen, his parents must have been Athenians, as he himself says they were.
Another reason why I thought it unlikely that Socrates and/or his immediate ancestors were foreigners is that no contemporary calls attention to anything extraordinary in his background. If he had been a foreigner, one of his enemies, or one of the comic poets, would have been sure to point it out. The comic poets never missed an opportunity to make fun of the origins of Athenian celebrities. Socrates was no exception; he is lampooned by Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds. If Socrates and/or his parents had had dark skin, some of his contemporaries would have been likely to mention it, because this, and not just his eccentric ideas about the gods, and the voice that spoke to him alone, would have distinguished him from the rest of the Athenians. Unless, of course, he could not be distinguished from other Athenians because they all had dark skin; but then if they did, why did they not make themselves bear a closer resemblance the Ethiopians in their art?
Was Cleopatra Black?
Until recently, no one ever asked whether Cleopatra might have had an African ancestor, because our surviving ancient sources identify her as a Macedonian Greek. Her ancestors, the Ptolemies, were descended from one of Alexander’s generals. After Alexander’s death in 323 B. C., these generals divided up among themselves the territory in the Mediterranean that Alexander had conquered. The name Cleopatra was one of the names traditionally given to women in the royal family; officially our Cleopatra (69-30 BC) was Cleopatra VII, the daughter of Ptolemy XII and his sister. Cleopatra VII herself followed the family practice of marrying within the family. She married her two brothers (Ptolemy XIII and XIV) in succession (after the first died in suspicious cir*****stances, she had the second murdered). Her first language was Greek; but she was also the first member of the Ptolemaic line who was able to speak Egyptian. She also wore Egyptian dress, and was shown in art in the dress of the goddess Isis. She chose to portray herself as an Egyptian not because she was Egyptian, but because she was ambitious to stay in power. In her surviving portraits on coins and in sculpture she appears to be impressive rather than beautiful, Mediterranean in appearance, with straight hair and a hooked nose. Of course these portraits on metal and stone give no indication of the color of her skin.
The only possibility that she might not have been a full-blooded Macedonian Greek arises from the fact that we do not know the precise identity of one member of her family tree. We do not know who her grandmother was on her father’s side. Her grandmother was the mistress (not the wife) of her grandfather, Ptolemy IX. Because nothing is known about this person, the *****umption has always been that she was a Macedonian Greek, like the other members of Ptolemy’s court. Like other Greeks, the Ptolemies were wary of foreigners. They kept themselves apart from the native population, with brothers usually marrying sisters, or uncles marrying nieces, or in one case a father marrying his daughter (Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra Berenice III). Because the Ptolemies seemed to prefer to marry among themselves, even incestuously, it has always been *****umed that Cleopatra’s grandmother was closely connected with the family. If she had been a foreigner, one of the Roman writers of the time would have mentioned it in their invectives against Cleopatra as an enemy of the Roman state. These writers were supporters of Octavian (later known as Augustus) who defeated Cleopatra’s forces in the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
Does Racial Identity Matter?
The question of race matters only insofar as it is necessary to show that no cl*****icists or ancient historians have tried to conceal the truth about the origins of the Greek people or the ancestry of certain famous ancient figures. It has been suggested that cl*****icists have been reluctant to ask questions about Greek origins, and that we have been so “imbued with conventional preconceptions and patterns of thought” that we are unlikely to question the basic premises of our discipline. But even though we may be more reluctant to speculate about our own field than those outside it might be, none of us has any cultural “territory” in the ancient world that we are trying to insulate from other ancient cultures.
Did ancient Greek religion and culture derive from Egypt?
The idea that Greek religion and philosophy has Egyptian origins derives, at least in part, from the writings of ancient Greek historians. In the fifth century BC Herodotus was told by Egyptian priests that the Greeks owed many aspects of their culture to the older and vastly impressive civilization of the Egyptians. Egyptian priests told Diodorus some of the same stories four centuries later. The church fathers in the second and third centuries AD also were eager to emphasize the dependency of Greece on the earlier cultures of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. They were eager to establish direct links between their civilization and that of Egypt because Egypt was a vastly older culture, with elaborate religious customs and impressive monuments. But despite their enthusiasm for Egypt and its material culture (an enthusiasm that was later revived in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe), they failed to understand Egyptian religion and the purpose of many Egyptian customs.
Cl*****ical scholars tend to be skeptical about the claims of the Greek historians because much of what these writers say does not conform to the facts as they are now known from the modern scholarship on ancient Egypt. For centuries Europeans had believed that the ancient historians knew that certain Greek religious customs and philosophical interests derived from Egypt. But two major discoveries changed that view. The first concerned a group of ancient philosophical treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; these had throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance been thought of as Egyptian and early. But in 1614 the French scholar Isaac Casaubon demonstrated that the treatises were actually late and basically Greek. The second discovery was the decipherment of hieroglyphics, the official system of Egyptian writing, completed by 1836. Before decipherment, scholars had been compelled to rely on Greek sources for their understanding of Egyptian history and civilization. Once they were able to read real Egyptian texts, and could disregard the fanciful interpretations of hieroglyphics that had been circulating since late antiquity, it became clear to them that the relation of Egyptian to Greek culture was less close than they had imagined. Egyptian belonged to the Afroasiatic language family, while Greek was an Indo-European language, akin to Sanskrit and European languages like Latin.
On the basis of these new discoveries, European scholars realized that they could no longer take at face value what Herodotus, Diodorus, and the Church fathers had to say about Greece’s debt to Egypt. Once it was possible to read Egyptian religious do*****ents, and to see how the Egyptians themselves described their gods and told their myths, scholars could see that the ancient Greeks’ accounts of Egyptian religion were superficial, and even misleading. Apparently Greek writers, despite their great admiration for Egypt, looked at Egyptian civilization through cultural blinkers that kept them from understanding any practices or customs that were significantly different from their own. The result was a portrait of Egypt that was both astigmatic and deeply Hellenized. Greek writers operated under other handicaps as well. They did not have access to records; there was no defined system of chronology. They could not read Egyptian inscriptions or question a variety of witnesses because they did not know the language. Hence they were compelled to exaggerate the importance of such resemblances as they could see or find.
Did the theory of the transmigration of souls come from Egypt?
Because he tended to rely on such *****ogies as he could find, Herodotus inevitably made some false conjectures. Herodotus thought that Pythagoras learned about the transmigration of souls from Egypt, when in fact the Egyptians did not believe in the transmigration of souls, as their careful and elaborate burial procedures clearly indicate. Herodotus tells us that he wrote down what the Egyptians told him; but when they spoke, what did he hear? Since he did not know Egyptian, his informants could have been Greeks living in the Greek colony of Naucratis in the Nile Delta, or Egyptians who knew some Greek. How well-informed were his informants? On the question of origins, at least, it seems that neither group had any more than a superficial understanding of the other’s culture. Perhaps someone explained to him about the Egyptian “modes of existence,” in which a human being could manifest itself both materially, or immaterially, as ka or ba or a name, and that death was not an end, but a threshold leading to a new form of life. Belief in these varied modes of existence required that bodies be preserved after death, hence the Egyptian practice of mummification. Greeks, on the other hand, believed that the soul was separated from the body at death, and disposed of bodies either by burial or cremation. In any case, there is no reason to *****ume that Pythagoras or other Greeks who believed in transmigration, like the Orphics and/or the philosopher-poet Empedocles, got their ideas from anyone else: notions of transmigration have developed independently in other parts of the world.
Did Plato Study in Egypt?
Plato never says in any of his writings that he went to Egypt, and there is no reference to such a visit in the semi-biographical Seventh Epistle. But in his dialogues he refers to some Egyptian myths and customs. Plato, of course, was not a historian, and the rather superficial knowledge of Egypt displayed in his dialogues, along with vague chronology, is more characteristic of historical fiction than of history. In fact, anecdotes about his visit to Egypt only turn up in writers of the later Hellenistic period. What better way to explain his several references to Egypt than to *****ume that the author had some first-hand knowledge of the customs he describes? For authors dating from the fourth century and earlier, ancient biographers were compelled to use as their prin*****l source material the author’s own works. Later biographers add details to the story of Plato’s Egyptian travels in order to provide aetiologies for the “Egyptian” reference in his writings. The most ironic anecdote of all is preserved by Clement of Alexandria: Plato studied in Egypt with Hermes the “Thrice Great” (Trismegistus). This is tantamount to saying that Plato studied with himself after his death. The works of Hermes could not have been written without the conceptual vocabulary developed by Plato and Aristotle, and is deeply influenced not just by Plato, but by the writings of Neoplatonist philosophers in the early centuries AD. In any case, whoever these teachers were, Plato seems never to have learned from them anything that is characteristically Egyptian, at least so far as we know about Egyptian theology from Egyptian sources. Instead, Plato’s notion of the Egyptians remains similar to that of other Athenians; he did not so much change the Athenian notion of Egyptian culture as enrich and idealize it, so that it could provide a dramatic and instructive contrast with Athenian customs in his dialogues.
Was there ever such a thing as an “Egyptian Mystery System?”
Even after nineteenth-century scholars had shown that the reports of Greek visitors to Egypt misunderstood and misrepresented what they saw, the myth that Greek philosophy derived from Egypt is still in circulation. The notion of an Egyptian legacy was preserved in the literature and ritual of Freemasonry. It was from that source that Afrocentrists learned about it, and then sought to find confirmation for the primacy of Egypt over Greece in the fantasies of ancient writers. In order to show that Greek philosophy is in reality stolen Egyptian philosophy, Afrocentrist writers *****ume that there was in existence from earliest times an “Egyptian Mystery System,” which was copied by the Greeks. The existence of this “Mystery System” is integral to the notion that Greek philosophy was stolen, because it provides a reason for *****uming that Greek philosophers had a particular reason for studying in Egypt, and for claiming that what they later wrote about in Greek was originally Egyptian philosophy. But in reality, the notion of an Egyptian Mystery System is a relatively modern fiction, based on ancient sources that are distinctively Greek, or Greco-Roman, and from the early centuries AD.
In their original form, ancient mysteries had nothing to do with schools or particular courses of study; rather, the ritual was intended to put the initiate into contact with the divinity, and if special preparation or rituals were involved, it was to familiarize the initiate with the practices and liturgy of that particular cult. The origin of the connection of Mysteries to education in fact dates only to the eighteenth century. It derives from a particular work of European fiction, published in 1731. This was the three-volume work Sethos, a History or Biography, based on Unpublished Memoirs of Ancient Egypt, by the Abbé Jean Terr*****on (1670-1750), a French priest, who was Professor of Greek at the Collège de France. Although now completely forgotten, the novel was widely read in the eighteenth century..Of course Terr*****on did not have access to any Egyptian information about Egypt, since hieroglyphics were not to be deciphered until more than a century later.
Why claim that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt?
Perhaps the most influential Afrocentrist text is Stolen Legacy, a work that has been in wide circulation since its publication in 1954. Its author, George G. M. James, writes that “the term Greek philosophy, to begin with is a misnomer, for there is no such philosophy in existence.” He argues that the Greeks “did not possess the native ability essential to the development of philosophy.” Rather, he states that “the Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the Black people of North Africa, The Egyptians.” It is not hard to understand why James wishes to give credit for the Greek achievement to the Egyptians, even if there is little or no historical foundation for his claims. Like the other nationalistic myths, the story of a “Stolen Legacy” both offers an explanation for past suffering, and provides a source of ethnic pride.
But although the myth may encourage and perhaps even “empower” African-Americans, its use has a destructive side, which cannot and should not be overlooked. First of all, it offers them a “story” instead of history. It also suggests that African-Americans need to learn only what they choose to believe about the past. But in so doing, the Afrocentric myth seeks to shelter them from learning what all other ethnic groups must learn, and indeed, face up to, namely the full scope of their history.
What people on earth have had a completely glorious history? While we point to the great achievements of the Greeks, anyone who has studied ancient Greek civilization knows that they also made terrible and foolish mistakes. Isn’t treating African-Americans differently from the rest of humankind just another form of segregation and condescension? Implied discrimination is the most destructive aspect of Afrocentrism, but there are other serious problems as well. Teaching the myth of the Stolen Legacy as if it were history robs the ancient Greeks and their modern descendants of a heritage that rightly belongs to them. Why discriminate against them when discrimination is the issue? In addition, the myth deprives the ancient Egyptians of their proper history and robs them of their actual legacy. The Egypt of the myth of the Stolen Legacy is a wholly European Egypt, as imagined by Greek and Roman writers, and further elaborated in eighteenth-century France. Ancient Egyptian civilization deserves to be remembered (and respected) for what it was, and not for what Europeans, ancient and modern, have imagined it to be.
What is the evidence for a “Stolen Legacy?”
James’s idea of ancient Egypt is fundamentally the imaginary “Mystical Egypt” of Freemasonry. He speaks of grades of initiation. In these Mysteries, as the Freemasons imagined them, Neophyte initiates must learn self-control and self-knowledge. He believes that Moses was an initiate into the Egyptian mysteries, and that Socrates reached the grade of Master Mason. In his description of the Greek philosophy, he emphasizes the Four Elements that play such a key role in Terr*****on’s Memphis and Masonic initiation ceremonies. He speaks of the Masonic symbol of the Open Eye, which based on an Egyptian hieroglyph but in Masonry has come specifically to represent the Master Mind. As in the University/Mystery system invented by Terr*****on, Egyptian temples are used as libraries and observatories.
What then are the Greeks supposed to have stolen from the Egyptians? Are there any texts in existence that be found to verify the claim that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt? How was the “transfer” of Egyptian materials to Greece accomplished? If we examine what James says about the way in which the “transfer” was supposed to have been carried out, we will find that that few or no historical data can be summoned to support it. In fact, in order to construct his argument, James overlooked or ignored much existing evidence.
Did Aristotle raid the Library at Alexandria?
No ancient source says that Alexander and Aristotle raided the Library at Alexandria. That they do not do so is not surprising, because it is unlikely that Aristotle ever went there. Aristotle was Alexander’s tutor when Alexander was young, but he did not accompany him on his military campaign. Even if he had gone there, it is hard to see how he could have stolen books from the library in Alexandria. Although Alexandria was founded in 331 BC, it did not begin to function as a city until after 323. Aristotle died in 322. The library was *****embled around 297 under the direction of Demetrius of Phaleron, a pupil of Aristotle’s. Most of the books it contained were in Greek.
Did Aristotle plagiarize Egyptian sources?
If Aristotle had stolen his ideas from the Egyptians, as James *****erts, James should be able to provide parallel Egyptian and Greek texts showing frequent verbal correspondences. As it is, he can only come up with a vague similarity between two titles. One is Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul, and the other the modern English name of a collection of Egyptian texts, The Book of the Dead. These funerary texts, which the Egyptians themselves called the Book of Coming Forth by Day, are designed to protect the soul during its dangerous journey through Duat, the Egyptian underworld, on its way to life of bliss in the Field of Reeds. Both Aristotle and the Egyptians believed in the notion of a “soul.” But there the similarity ends. Even a cursory glance at a translation of the Book of the Dead reveals that it is not a philosophical treatise, but rather a series of ritual prescriptions to ensure the soul’s p*****age to the next world. It is completely different from Aristotle’s abstract consideration of the nature of the soul. James fails to mention that the two texts cannot be profitably compared, because their aims and methods are so different. Instead, he accounts for the discrepancy by claiming that Aristotle’s theory is only a “very small portion” of the Egyptian “philosophy” of the soul, as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. On that basis, one could claim that any later writer plagiarized from any earlier writer who touched on the same subject. But why not *****ume instead that the later writer was influenced by the earlier writer, or even came up with the some of the same ideas independently, especially if those ideas are widespread, like the notion that human beings have souls?
James also alleges that Aristotle’s theory of matter was taken from the so-called Memphite Theology. The Memphite Theology is a religious do*****ent inscribed on a stone tablet by Egyptian priests in the eighth century BC, but said to have been copied from an ancient papyrus. The archaic language of the text suggests that the original dates from sometime in the second millennium BC. According to James, Aristotle took from the Memphite theology his doctrine that matter, motion, and time are eternal, along with the principle of opposites, and the concept of the unmoved mover. James does not say how Aristotle would have known about this inscription, which was at the time located in Memphis and not in the Library of Alexandria, or explain how he would have been able to read it. But even if Aristotle had had some way of finding out about it, he would have had no use for it in his philosophical writings. The Memphis text, like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, is a work of a totally different character from any of Aristotle’s treatises.
The Memphite text describes the creation of the world as then known (that is, Upper and Lower Egypt). It relates how Ptah’s mind (or “heart”) and thought (or “tongue”) created the universe and all living creatures in it: “for every word of the god came about through what the heart devised and the tongue commanded.” From one of his manifestations, the primordial waters of chaos, the sun-god Atum was born. When Ptah has finished creating the universe, he rests from his labors: “Ptah was satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words.”
In form and in substance this account has virtually nothing in common with Aristotle’s abstract theology. In fact, in Metaphysics Book 11, Aristotle discards the traditional notion of a universe that is created by a divinity or divinities, in favor of a metaphysical argument. If there is eternal motion, there is eternal substance, and behind that, an immaterial and eternal source of activity, whose existence can be deduced from the eternal circular motion of the heavens. The source of this activity is what is called in English translation the “unmoved mover.”All that this theory has in common with the Memphite theology is a concern with creation of the universe. On the same insubstantial basis, it would be possible to argue that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the story of creation in the first book of Genesis.
Is there a diversity of truths?
There are of course many possible interpretations of the truth, but some things are simply not true. It is not true that there was no Holocaust. There was a Holocaust, although we may disagree about the numbers of people killed. Likewise, it is not true that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt; rather, it is true that the Greeks were influenced in various ways over a long period of time by their contact with the Egyptians. But then, what culture at any time has not been influenced by other cultures, and what exactly do we mean by “influence”? If we talk about Greek philosophy as a “Stolen Legacy,” which the Greeks swiped from Egyptian universities, we are not telling the truth, but relating a story, or a myth, or a tall tale. But if we talk about Egyptian influence on Greece, we are discussing an historical issue.
In historical and scientific discussions it is possible to distinguish degrees, and to be more or less accurate. As a cl*****icist, I may overemphasize the achievement of the Greeks because I do not know enough about the rest of the Mediterranean world; Egyptologists may be inclined to make the same mistake in the opposite direction. We recognize that no historian can write without some amount of bias; that is why history must always be rewritten. But not all bias amounts to distortion, or is equivalent to indoctrination. If I am aware that I am likely to be biased for any number of reasons, and try to compensate for them, the result should be very different in quality and character from what I would say if I were consciously setting about to achieve a particular political goal.
Drawing a clear distinction between motivations and evidence has a direct bearing on the question of academic freedom. When it comes to deciding what one can or cannot say in cl***** the question of ethnicity or of motivations, whether personal or cultural, is or ought to be irrelevant. What matters is whether what one says is supported by facts and evidence, texts or formulae. The purpose of diversity, at least in academe, is to ensure that instruction does not become a vehicle for indoctrinating students in the values of the majority culture, or for limiting the curriculum to the study of the history and literature of the majority culture. That means that it is essential for a university to consider developments outside of Europe and North America, and to *****ess the achievements of non-European cultures with respect and sympathy.
It is another question whether or not diversity should be applied to the truth. Are there, can there be, multiple, diverse “truths?” If there are, which “truth” should win? The one that is most loudly argued or most persuasively phrased? Diverse “truths are possible only if “truth” is understood to mean something like “point of view.” But even then not every point of view, no matter how persuasively it is put across, or with what intensity it is argued, can be equally valid. The notion of diversity does not extend to truth.
Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt. They may believe that even if the story is not true, it can be used to serve a positive purpose. But the question, and many others like it, should be a matter of serious concern to everyone, because if you *****ert that he did steal his philosophy, you are prepared to ignore or to conceal a substantial body of historical evidence that proves the contrary. Once you start doing that, you can have no scientific or even social-scientific discourse, nor can you have a community, or a university.
Copyright © 1996 by BasicBooks All Rights Reserved
Mary Lefkowitz is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College. She is the author of many books on ancient Greece and Rome, including Lives of the Greek Poets and Women in Greek Myth, as well as articles for the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic. She is the co-editor of Women’s Life in Greece and Rome and Black Athena Revisited.
Not Out of Africa by Mary Lefkowitz – The book that has sparked widespread debate over the teaching of revisionist history in schools and colleges. Was Socrates black? Did Aristotle steal his ideas from the library in Alexandria? Do we owe the underlying tenets of our democratic civilization to the Africans? Mary Lefkowitz explains why politically motivated histories of the ancient world are being written and shows how Afrocentrist claims blatantly contradict the historical evidence. Not Out of Africa is an important book that protects and argues for the necessity of historical truths and standards in cultural education. Purchase from Amazon.com
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@ Josh White people have killed more people in the history of the world than any other race. They are over there now in Iraq killing people under some bogus pretense. Susan Sontag,a white woman, who is a essayist and social critic said,” the white race is the cancer of human history”. So Josh I say to you STFU!!!
Why do we get mad when someone white calls us that word. We have a major artist getting ready to drop an album called that and we are all excited. But now this is making us mad. I am confused. Do we hate the word or does the word have no meaning.
I think we have done this too ourselves by allowing all of this disrespectful music to come out and do believe we have made these white people think that maybe it is okay they don’t mind being called that until we are called that.
Why I just don’t know who to be mad at anymore. I am really confused.
Those views expressed by the two evidently dedicated racist who apparently frequent a “black entertainment gossip site” stand as perfect examples of how “white” supremacy has deceivingly convinced it’s “youth” of their superiority to serve as a distraction from the real issues that imprison the “white” community and breed or should I say inbreed, mindless automatons that have been continually getting *****ed over by the very individuals they place on a pedal stool as shining examples of “aryan superiority”.
Africans and the African in America are the least of your worries; your own government and subsequent elite ruling cl***** are poised to ***** you right in the *****.
Everything else is just a distraction; the wars, the racism, sub prime loans, the king james version of the bible (lol); all distractions.
The beautiful part; the admiringly stroke of genius in your “democratically” elected governments master plan is this: The very “superiority complex” that has been intentionally force fed to you via the public and private education and religious institutions of this country will not allow you to believe your getting *****ed; even when your actually getting *****ed. Literally blinded by arrogance; while simultaneously completely dependent on the established system; *****ing brilliant.
FYI, we all live in this corrupt system and we all have to survive, regardless. We’re all force fed the bull*****, but you ask for seconds.
Just like the Borg, completely integrated and *****imilated.
@ josh and jane i.e. dumb and dumber
Go post on perez’ site, the atmosphere would suit you better.
Or better yet go over to Iraq and sit on a land mine.
Thanks Lanski.
Hey JOSH (aka Jane aka Amy)…I was GOING to respond to your ridiculously obscene comments, until I saw how much time you spent writing and googling all that information.
It dawned on me. You really are defensive. Trying really hard to protect your ‘white’ history and show how superior it is. And the paper on black egypt was laughable. I mean, your superiority complex is SO deeply ingrained that you STILL can’t fathom dark faces being synonymous with intelligence, creativity, originality. But of course you’ll deny it and say you’re just seeking the truth! HAHAHHAHAAA! I’ve heard it all before, pleeeeease.
When you know you’re the ***** you don’t need to parade it around all the time. You just know.
But white folk like you…wow. You’re just CONSUMED with it. Why is that? Scared of something?
Also, like Lanski pointed out: why are you even on this site?!!
LOL.
Instead of responding to black people whom you believe to be below you, go be one of those ‘great white men’ you took the time to talk about.
Go contribute something amazing to the world, Josh (aka Amy, aka Jane).
Add your name to the list of “great white contributors”.
I know we’re amazing people Josh, but damn! Obsession is not healthy!
I also found it interesting as I scanned your comments, that you started talking about African American inventors that I didn’t even mention. What was THAT all about?
(P.S. As a film grad student currently taking a film theory course who’s studied Godard extensively I read your comments with a smirk. Nice job though! looks like someone’s been reading Wikipedia a lot lately! CUTE!)
I would have additionally got some of their info so i could publicly embarr***** them
What’s the difference between a ***** and a letter?
You can send a letter back to where it came from.
You just prooved that we overpower you by a trillion.
@ Lik_Wid_Cherry
That was from the Matrix which was originally written in 1981 by Sophia Stewart, an African American woman; which led to a law suit that yielded one of the largest Hollywood settlements in history. If you didn’t know; you can do the research.
Research: Sophia Stewart
Once placed in the proper context it isn’t hard to figure the parallels to our current system of society; or why the oracle lived in the projects.
I would have told him it takes one to know one and tell him only that kind uses that word.
Black folks a white person get you mad call him a ***** before he gets a chance to call you one and watch that dummy turn red and have nothing else to say.
They only have one word they know to try to hurt us but black people scare the ***** out of white people period. you see only one of her scared the guys and the girls.
Or if you want to take an even higher road. Black folks need to start suing or presing charges for defamtion of character and racial discrimination or har*****ment.
If gays can do it then black should definitely do it they did not choose to be black.
And please gay people do not start b/c everyone has a choice and everyone can choose to either do right or wrong. Don’t make this the point, do you.
damn who posted their cl***** report on here!!!!
Thats exodus for jill, and I admire my african american queen for that. We as black people need to stand up with vigilance and intelligence to white racist trash. The N word was killed in our community years ago. Divine is the proper terminolgy for our people.
I think this story is BS. No way she followed them, waddling along on her stumpy lil legs, laughing. yeah, that sounds a whole lot like a make believe story.
And how did she know they were “wealthy”? Wait, did they have Duke Lacrosse uniforms on? Yeah, call Fat Al, there’s another fake hate crime against blacks. lol.
awful quiet all of a sudden. hmmm. guess I was right.
Go get em’ girl! There are just some folks in the world who think nothing of showing how ignorant they are!! (No need to watch Jerry Springer on TV when you have a “live” show right in front of you!!) The nerve!! You did the right thing! By laughing at their ignorance, you stumped them completely. So much for the weak-minded fools that they are! Good for you and keep kickin’ it Jill!
No, Josh, you are a dumb lying piece of miserable white trash…..I can smell you through the computer screen. You can believe that old kikette Lefkowitz if you want.
Oh she is lying. This never happened. Just another race baiting black making this shyt up…Real is whites getting beat on buses in baltimore…that’s real..bunch of cowards. All of your power comes from being a victim. So sad. welfare head.
kim, josh , jane,,,whoever else WHITE RASICT ,…come to this site …get a life and stop chasing and obsessing with black people …your like a desperate w*****…The Black Berry is so sweet you can’t get enough to satisfy you ..so you go all around town chasing looking to get more!WE DONT GIVE A ***** ABOUT YOU , WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WIHT US!
Rachel,
I am only kim, don’t know josh or jane…
I am obsessed with truth only. And I know this story to be a LIE. And it hurts all people just like the tawana brawley, just like the duke rape case…lies, like the many fake nooses hung by blacks to inflate racism so they have more reason to hate whites. Welfare heads. Pitiful
josh and jane you are doing a good job *****ing of blacks infact you did so good of i realy took it personal.I got mad good job.I realy would love to meet you and your family.since icould not meet youre family.Ichoose somebody that looks like you
alabama,
LOL ! Ya having a mental breakdown? Some kinda loon. Take care of your self, take those meds…lol.
Kim that is called the master card! It’s easy to spout it’s a lie. But God knows all truth. Oh yeah, the most people on welfare are caucasian. Remember whites are the majority.
Hate blacks some much they search them out. Wow what a p*****ion. Don’t even know why they hate them. I love the hate, because devils days are numbered. Kim, Josh this is your Heaven so enjoy it. God created everything, even the devils.
SOUT:
Don’t hate blacks, stop changing the subject. This story is a LIE. I know this to be fact, Jill chub face LIED about this, there were no dudes calling her the N word, none of it…all LIES ! Not my issue man, it’s hers…she’s messed up.
I REPEAT. THIS STORY IS A LIE. A LIE. SHE IS A LIAR AND IT IS A LIE. FABRICATED, MADE UP, A BIG FIB. So sad that this talented chubby has to make up stories against white folk in order to feel special. Must be cause daddy didn’t love her. tsk. She is a liar. I was there, I know.
white people suck
lena:
I’m BLACK you a**hole ! What a MF thing to say you dumb piece of shyt.
Dumb n*gger.
gal ima black woman and i would have *****ed his ***** up. my friend bessie mae simmons and earl ray say they would’ve shoot that man in his right eye.
let us ever find that man i’ll ***** him up nice. and his life. *****
more power to her cuz she couldve just whupped his ***** and called it quits then he REALLY wouldnt have gotten no booty that night. punk *****… and p.s. kim is a jack***** with nothin better to do….get a life boo
So you graduated hs in may…what are you doing now “boo”? On your third or fourth kid yet?
Jill Scott made this shyt up and I worked for her I was THERE !!! Noting happened that night, she made it up !
So when you or I get jumped by some white KKK dudes and scream racism…no one will listen cause of bytches like jill that lied and cried wolf ! Dumb @ss
Love you so much Omarion.
Omarion cool
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