Apollonia Jordan

We speak amongst ourselves disrespectfully as young Black women, but we get upset when a guy says "bitch." Then we wonder why many handsome successful Black men don't look our way and date outside their race. How is someone else going to respect us, if we don't respect each other?

Sad, but true ... the word bitch has become a common word used in the vocabulary of young Black men and women. Just like the word nigga, the word bitch used to be looked down upon as being degrading and dehumanizing. A Black woman would get offended by a man who called her a bitch or a hoe and a Black man would get offended at a white person or someone of any other race who called him a nigga (or nigger).

Now, we don't even get offended when these things happen because we have allowed it to seep into our culture and become part of our basic language. We try to adopt the word bitch like Black people have adopted the word nigga - both attempts have failed and have caused us to be looked at as an ignorant race in the eyes of other races and a generation that has failed our ancestors and past leaders.

How many times have you gotten on a bus or on the BART and heard a group of young women or men of any race other then Black (or who weren't tryna act Black) speak to each other with open disrespect or use racial phrases that were invented to degrade their race? Never ... and you never will because we as a race are allowing the words that people have created to dehumanize our race lower our self-worth and make us look un-educated and made it a part of our daily lives.

The word bitch in an insult that attacks the identity of a young Black woman and it's like we are OK with being called and calling ourselves bitches. I have to admit that I am also a victim of this ignorance because my friends and I used to do it all the time, but I realized how stupid it made me feel and look amongst the outside world. Black people have to stop allowing ourselves to be down rated and we have to stop accepting these words into our vocabulary - we must delete these words from our vocabulary and make it something that is as horrible as being called a coon or being hung from a noose.

Some of the definitions that I found in the Merriam-Webster's online dictionary of the word bitch were "the female of a dog or some other carnivorous mammals," "a lewd or immoral woman," "something that is extremely difficult, objectionable or unpleasant," "a malicious, spiteful or overbearing woman - sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse." We are accepting this definition and placing these types of labels on ourselves.

We must eliminate the word bitch from our vocabulary! We cannot allow another generation of young Black women to grow up thinking it is OK to call each other bitches. We can't allow another generation of Black men to grow up thinking it's okay to degrade Black women by calling them bitches or by calling each other nigga.

I know I want my son to have respect for women and I know that, growing up, I never heard my grandmother speak with her friends the way I speak to my friends. Yes, times have changed, but does that mean Black women and men have lost our self-respect or the respect for our race?

Black women, our ancestors were queens and kings; therefore we are queens and kings. Here are a few steps I have been taking to eliminate the word from my vocabulary and I hope they will help you delete this word from yours as well ...

• Call each other by our names: Erykah Badu said it best in her song titled "On and On": "Peace and blessings manifest with every lesson learned. If your knowledge were your wealth, then it would be well earned. If we were made in his image, then call us by our names."

• Look at the reaction of the people around you when you are using disrespectful terms against each other and watch how they look at you and try to look down on you, judging you by the form of your communication amongst each other.

• Don't call yourself or accept it when others call you a bitch. Let them know that you have respect for yourself by not speaking negatively about yourself and not allowing your friends to do so.

• Practice saying queen instead of bitch. This goes for the men and women. When you think about saying bitch, replace it with the word queen.

Email Bay View staff writer Apollonia Jordan at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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