Lemme guess....Black Rob Taught You That

The burial of the word, nigga, is just days old. And it didn't take long for someone to perform a resurrection.

The chairman of Roger Williams University "accidentally" used nigga during a board meeting. Williams said nigga just, "slipped out." You know, like when you "slip" and call someone by the wrong name or mispronounce it. Just a simple misunderstanding.

"What else can I do?" he told a radio station. "Kill myself?"

I thought it would take days for Ralph Papitto, the chairman of Roger Williams, to say Mos Def taught him 'bout the n-word. Or, that he learned it from watching Stomp The Yard. Nope, it took him just minutes to blame TV and rap.

"The first time I heard it was on television or rap music or something," Papitto said.

That's right, Papitto claimed he never used nigga before that board meeting. And if you believe that, you think that Shawn Kemp owns stock in Trojans. By the way, he used the term because the board was discussing how the universities could better appeal to minorities. With people like Papitto running the university, I'm just so stunned that Negroes have stayed away from that place.

And now you see why I remained ambivalent about the NAACP's burial of the n-word. It's not because I want to keep it alive in our community, or violently oppose such a symbolic gesture. But the new ploy in '07 is to blame the minorities for the racism perpetuated against them. With the burial, the NAACP fed into this game of easing white guilt. White people aren't stupid. They know the history of nigga, know what they're doing when they use it, and have taken to blaming hip hop and TV because it's convenient and forces them not to accept any responsibility.

Instead of this chairman just admitting he's a racist bastard -- and you've got to be pretty damn racist to drop the word nigga in a board meeting -- Papitto is trying to escape without consequence. After all, what are the odds that Papitto, an 80-year-old white guy, was listening to TI when he heard nigga? What are the odds that he was bumping Dre's Chronic before that board meeting? What are the odds that instead of watching CNN, he's trying to pick up vernacular from Menace II Society?

I'm calling major BULL-shit. Odds are this dude has been using nigga since before the 'er' was dropped. The No. 1 sign of an incurable racist is someone who can't take responsibility for their own racism.

The only words out of Papitto's mouth should have been an apology. He knew he was wrong when he said it and he's an even bigger fool if he thinks anyone believes Snoop taught him how to say nigga.

And to think, this fool has a law school named after him. Big surprise, he was pissed at the idea that he would have to let anyone with a hint of melanin into his university.

That, my friends, is Exhibit A of instutitional racism. Here's a guy who runs an institution of higher learning and is the founder of Nortek, a Fortune 500 company. He's in charge of students' futures and people's careers. How do you think his thinking impacted his company and university?

If anything should be buried, it's the belief that minorities and women have somehow done something to earn prejudice, racism and sexism. Sounds very much like blaming a rape victim for what she was wearing, instead of focusing on the real crime that's been committed.