The Nigger Bible

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup.
Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (January 2008)

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (September 2007)

The Nigger Bible by Robert H. deCoy (MFA, Yale, 1951), is a social and linguistic analysis of the word "nigger" and of the origins and contemporary circumstances of the black [sic] peoples of America. Published by Holloway House, Los Angeles, in 1967, 299 pages, it examines not just the word "nigger", but attempts to tease apart the cultural, philosophical, and scriptural origins of an "Alabaster Man" that could come to the conclusions and prejudices at the root of their oppression. It examines, among other sources, the Christian bible and its terminology words "words" and their power, and re-interprets and critiques core western religious and philosophical constructs, including those at the very core of much of the modern african-american religious experience.

Not so much a frontal assault on whites, deCoy goes deeper into the underlying causes and thought processes. deCoy re-examines the word "nigger", demystifies it, and attempts to embed critical thinking skills about black personality types and categories. The author deconstructs the Christianity of "Niggers" (including, in his view, Black Muslims) as well as the values of the New Left. The book contains a pointed analysis of the cultural and racial significance of Mardi Gras.

The form is varied and might be described as a series of reflections. In the preface, Dick Gregory writes: "In abolishing and eliminating the Caucasian-Christian philosophical and literary forms while recording his Black Experiences, this writer has removed himself from their double-standard frames of reference."

The book foreshadows much of modern social and political reality as the preferred terminology therein has become widely accepted in Black America.

[edit] Chapters

(included solely to give some idea of the content of a book that is unusually difficult to characterize by other means):

Preface by Dick Gregory
Foreword: The First Nigger Testament
1: The Word Was Not for a Nigger
2: (1) Words in Testament to My Nigger Son, (2) The First Dictionary of Nigrite Words
3: Separation is "The Nigger Salvation"
4: What A Nigger Needs Most is a God
5: (1) Prelude to a Nigger Genesis, (2) deCoy's Song of Genesis
6: A Sermon to My Nigger Soul: (1) The Prayer, (2) The Text
7: What is this Power of Positive Thinking?
8: History Does Not Happen, It is Made
9: The Departure or "The Northward Flight of the Niggers"
10: Proverbs and Notes to My Nigger Son
11: Letters to the Nigger Children: (1) Discard the "Act of Christening," (2) Justice is a "White Woman," (3) Epistles to My Nigger Beings, (4) Niggers, God, Church and Ministry
12: A Drama in Nigger Neurosis
13: A Journey Back to the Mother City
14: The Mardi Gras! (1) National Observance of the Nigger Dream, (2) Oh Come to a Mardi Gras Morning
15: The Black Blueprint
16: Two Parables: (1) Dream of the Alabaster Daughter, (2) Super Spade at the Pearly Gates