You made it! You are here. Here is Plantationland, the place I created to explore racism and its effects. Yes, raceplay is a bi-product of the horrific acts that were played out here on purely innocent human beings for nearly 400 years. But the country (USA) would not be what it is today without the black experience permeating every state, every city, every nic and cranny of the USA, even Hawaii and Alaska, the US territories and if we are talking about influence, the entire world has been changed and affected by Jazz and Rap music. There is not a place on the map where rap music is unknown. I have always revered Black people in America and studied fervently the Harlem Renaissance and still today am driven to support black artists, all artists who have a voice to stand for equality. My favorite artist living today is Ai WeiWei, while Chinese he understands human struggle and I recommend knowing his art and purpose. He is a human advocate and one of my mentors. Amongst others I look up to are Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes and more modern poets such as Danez Smith.
Sometimes people are fighting battles not known to us.
I was recently diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I am not being mean, complacent or flippant to my fans I have been trying to process, understand and deal with something I was mis and wrongly diagnosed with for 10 years.
I have struggled, lost my homes, my dogs, my career I spent my whole life building. I want to share this journey with you, if you want to understand and see with your own eyes how much it affects your looks, cognitive abilities, focus, and overall demeanor. Not to mention losing hair, skin under your nails growing faster than the nail, dry skin, inability to regulate body temperature, constantly nervous, cannot gain weight, constant movement, insomnia and I could go on. My story is not to have anyone feel sorry for me, my story is similar to many human stories, including you and your story. This is a story of redemption and how in losing everything I found a niche in Raceplay, and built a following and started a brand around this taboo and somewhat bizarre cathartic sexual desire that helped in many ways save my life.
"It's not what your given its what you do with it". I have referenced this quote many times in trying to explain the Black and American Indian plight in America to those acting like they just don't understand. I have a painting of it that sits outside my apartment door so I see it any time I leave or come home. I too have had to deal with something given to me at birth I did not get to choose, but on the outside people cannot see. I look normal, sound educated but am struggling daily just to take a shower, stay focused and try and make money and move forward. At times it would take me 8 hours to just simply get in the shower and get ready for work. My mind a mess and my house a playground for a messy mind to dismiss all of life and losing everything but in some ways not caring, because that is what this disease does to you. For 10 years I have functioned like a shiny teenager new to the world, except in an adult mind and body with adult neuroplasticity and joints aching, not aching on fire and cannot understand why. I would talk to my doctor, ultimately getting told I was depressed. This disease mimics depression, bipolar, schizophrenia and dementia. Only getting blood test and then testing blood consecutively for months while watching thyroid levels reveals this disease. I would make rash decisions while raising a teenager who was watching her dad kill himself slowly with alcohol, it eventually taking his life only 23 years after his first drink. And while destroying his ability to reason, keep hygienic and in 2019 getting Gangrene on his genitals after choosing not to shower for an entire year. I cannot even describe the smell only by saying its the worst human smell next to a dead body left for days.
What is R@cePl@y?
The weight of the "N" word:
History
The word ni**er was used in America as a way to denote the slaves that worked for the plantation owners or any owner, to be a slave you had to have an owner. The owner was 'massa' or master, and the workers were slaves or "ni**ers" The origin is from the word Negro (black in Spanish) the word came from the shortening of the Spanish word or omitting the "O".
Ethnophaulism
The word nigger carries with it much of the hatred and repulsion directed toward Africans and African Americans. Historically, nigger defined, limited, and mocked African Americans. It was a term of exclusion, a verbal justification for discrimination. Whether used as a noun, verb, or adjective, it reinforced the stereotype of the lazy, stupid, dirty, worthless parasite. No other American ethnophaulism carried so much purposeful venom.(Jim Crow Museum )
No American minority group has been caricatured as often, in as many ways, as have black people. These caricatures combined distorted physical descriptions and negative cultural and behavior stereotypes. The Coon caricature, for example, was a tall, skinny, loose-jointed, dark-skinned male, often bald, with oversized, ruby-red lips. His clothing was either ragged and dirty or outlandishly gaudy. His slow, exaggerated gait suggested laziness. He was a pauper, lacking ambition and the skills necessary for upward social mobility. He was a buffoon. When frightened, the Coon's eyes bulged and darted. His speech was slurred, halted, and replete with malapropisms. His shrill, high-pitched voice made white people laugh. The Coon caricature dehumanized black people, and served as a justification for social, economic, and political discrimination.(Jim Crow Museum )
Nigger may be viewed as an umbrella term - a way of saying that black people have the negative characteristics of the Coon, Buck, Tom, Mammy, Sambo, Picaninny, and other anti-black caricatures. Nigger, like the caricatures it encompasses and implies, belittles black people, and rationalizes their mistreatment. The use of the word or its variants by black people has not significantly lessened its sting. This is not surprising. The historical relationship between European Americans and African Americans was shaped by a racial hierarchy which spanned three centuries. Anti-black attitudes, values, and behavior were normative. Historically, nigger more than any word captured the personal antipathy and institutionalized racism directed toward black people. It still does.(Jim Crow Museum )
No black people are niggers, irrespective of behavior, income, ambition, clothing, ability, morals, or skin color. Finally, if continued use of the word lessened its sting then nigger would by now have no sting. Black people, beginning in slavery, have internalized the negative images that white society cultivated and propagated about black skin and black people. This is reflected in periods of self- and same-race loathing. The use of the word nigger by black people reflects this loathing, even when the user is unaware of the psychological forces at play. Nigger is the ultimate expression of white racism and white superiority no matter how it is pronounced. It is a linguistic corruption, a corruption of civility. Nigger is the most infamous word in American culture. Some words carry more weight than others. At the risk of hyperbole, is genocide just another word? Pedophilia? Obviously, no: neither is nigger.(Jim Crow Museum )