I’m still trippin’ off Tim Hardaway’s statements. Not so much the substance, and not so much the retraction, which was…weak. If he meant what he said, and I’m pretty sure he did, because the radio host actually gave Hardaway the opportunity to take back what he was saying, then Hardaway took it even further, then he should just stand by what he said and accept the consequences. But no, that would go too much against the grain. This is America. Say what you want, then act like you didn’t mean it. Ain’t that how it goes?
Naw, what I’m really trippin off these days is this four-letter word, ‘hate.’ I’m not even sure what it means anymore. I know it’ supposed to be a really strong word, so I try my best not to use it very frequently, but even understanding that its meaning is contextualized based on its use, I’m still not sure what it is. To wit, when we say ‘hate’ speech, what is that, really? Is it necessarily ‘hate’ speech if somebody calls me a nigger? I don’t think there’s any question that it’s ‘mad’ speech, but hate? But let me slow down.
See, in my understanding, hatred is not the opposite of love, it’s the inverse; indifference would be the opposite of love. One way of thinking of it would be to say that hatred is caring, only in a negative sense. Hate is bizarro love. Given that definition, I don’t think that most of what we call hate is actually hate. But to be fair, we don’t just use the word hate to mean that most intense manifestation. We also use ‘hate’ to mean ‘dislike.’ I was about to say ’strongly dislike,’ but sometimes, I don’t even think it’s all that strong. I hate chicken gizzards. I hate bowling poorly. I hate runny grits. I hate the fact that hip-hop is so concerned with the puerile and nihilistic. I hate it when one of my kids drops out of school. Same word, same general meaning, very different degrees. In fact, Tim Hardaway himself points this out in today’s Q & A session with Scoop Jackson on Page 2.
But that’s just the word and that’s how we used it. You know when we got a whopping we’d be like, “I hate my moms” or “I hate my dad,” and at the time you really didn’t hate them, but that was the word you used. You know I can go into a restaurant and say, “I hate this food, I hate the chef, I don’t even know why I came back to this restaurant.” But I know I can’t use the word like that, or let’s say I’m not supposed to. People have come up to me and told me, “Tim, you can’t say that you hate gay people because it’s not the same term.” But that’s how I talk. That’s the way I am.
Well, I think that it all goes back to my thought that as a relatively informal culture, we do not require a lot of precision in our language. We use shortcuts because there’s the assumption of a certain level of shared understanding. Part of that linguistic short-cutting is the use of the same sets of words to apply in very different situations - or at least situations where the word being used captures the idea but is not the most accurate. So nowadays, one of the worst things that can be said of somebody is that they ‘hate.’ But if all they do is talk, is that really hatred?
I keep asking this question because I don’t think I’ve ever gotten or arrived at a satisfying answer, but at what point do positive actions outweigh negative speech? For instance, when I was in high school, I used to spell girl wit a b. Now, I’m pretty sure I didn’t exhibit very much misogynistic behavior, but I was good for using the alternative spelling at a moment’s notice - not at any particular person, you understand, just for g.p. Now, If we look at the inverse, if I said all the right things like I loved somebody, but always did the wrong thing, I don’t think there would be any question that the discrepancy between my words and actions would make it somewhat difficult to label my attitude by what I said. Well, does it work that way with negative speech and positive (or at least, neutral) behavior? Granted, the examples aren’t exactly the inverse of each other because one represents interaction at the individual level while the other is more broad-based, but I think the general question is still valid.
Even beyond that, though, I don’t think much of what we call ‘hate’ is hate. Not in any real sense. I mean, personally, I think that intelligent people should be able to differentiate between ‘hate’ speech and ‘mad’ speech, because they’re very different. Even in Hardaway’s example, which I think is actually pretty common, when kids get punished, they’ll tell their parents (or at least mutter it under their breath), “I hate you.” Except in some rare cases, they may be really, really mad at their parents, but on the actual hatred scale, they wouldn’t even register.
So if all hate is not created equal, then we need some vocabulary to fill in that space between being really mad at a given moment and actually hating (or being homophobic or racist or sexist or whatever the case may be.)
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I agree that context is what really shapes meaning. We typically ignore or downplay the pouting child muttering, “I hate you” as he shuffles off to his bedroom with a dinnerless belly. Shawty’s too young to have the experience necessary to put that word in proper perspective, right? He don’t know what real hate is. Sure.
If we liken the impact of words to the stored potential of a physical object, we carry on that some words are held in higher esteem/contempt than others. A word like, say, “tree” floats along at ground level, “dog” perhaps ankle-high and “bitch” might be as high as that top shelf in the kitchen pantry. Then there’s the heavyweight words like “nigger” that carry megaton explosive power, dropping from stratospheric heights. In the general.
In the specific, there might be a gangly 6-ft grade school girl for whom the word tree feels like a ton o bricks; there are probably some unfortunate girls who from a young age have come to think of “bitch” as a pet name, having no real sense of historical context.
Of course we know that former victims of words-meant-to-hurt have tried to rise up to the bomber heights, to try to wrest control, lessen the impact. Fags call each other “fag” and niggers call each other “nigga.” Intra-victim use renders inert, or so the formula is supposed to go.
Hate speech is meant to dehumanize, demean, devalue. Or, in the truly rare ignorant misuse, usually has this effect. You have to have skills of a laser-guided missile to hit precisely the right audience. Words have power as we all know and Hardaway was irresponsibly using a dirty bomb(s) to light a match.
p.s. remind me to get a blog one of these days so I can spew my blablah somewheres other than your nice funky space.
p.p.s. know any good editors?
Hardaway comes from a sportocracy where manhood is everything, and all are in huge denial as to the many shades of sexual preference. It’s statistically probable, given the gen pop, that at his Chicago h.s., UTEP, or his several pro teams, he’s lockered with men who prefer men. “Hate” is a very strong term, even were sexual preference a choice.