If you spend any time on social media, like Twitter and YouTube, you probably have seen the term “Dindu”, or “dindu nuffin”. These are new terms that sprang up during the Ferguson Riots in Missouri in 2014. The term “dindu nuffin” was “derived from a bastardization of the phrase “didn’t do nothing”, a plea for innocence often used in reference to unarmed black men killed by police.” The riots were a response to the shooting of Michael Brown.
It’s been said that one of the most famous usages of the phrase was shown in the following comic from 2014:
Aside from the Ferguson Protests, the phrase has been used ad nauseum in reference to the Baltimore Riots, The Death of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin’s death, and many other, if not almost all, black or Hispanic victims of police brutality. Dindu is a term that is not only used to mock black people, (mostly those suspected of committing a crime), as well as their dialect/culture, but was originally used to make fun of the mothers and family members of people killed by police for defending their children in the media and courtrooms.
THE NEW “NIGGER”
By the early 1800s, it was firmly established, in the USA, that the term “nigger” was a racial slur used primarily towards black people.Today the term nigger carries with it too much baggage from the past, even for most of those who are racist against black people. Just like the term “Holocaust Denialism”, which many anti-Semitic people have dropped in favor of “Holocaust Revisionism”, since it sounds less offensive and more politically correct, the term “nigger” has been dropped by many in favor of “Dindu”.
“The term nigger was also used as a way to caricature Black people. These caricatures featured 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 extremely gaudy. His slow, exaggerated walk 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 stuffed with malapropisms. His piercing, high-pitched voice made Whites laugh. The Coon caricature dehumanized Blacks, and served to justify social, economic, and political discrimination.”What’s often overlooked is that the term “nigger” was generally used as an “umbrella term” — a way of saying that blacks have the negative characteristics of the “Coon, Buck, Tom, Mammy, Sambo, Pickaninny, and other anti-Black caricatures.”
If you look at some of the caricatures of a “dindu” today, they are based on the same caricatures that were used to depict or describe a “nigger” — Dark skin, oversized (red) lips, poorly dressed/gaudy, uneducated…
Depiction of black “Dindu” – 2014
Vintage book cover – Circa 1900s
The term dindu is relatively new, and as such, is less readily identified as a replacement term for nigger. However, because the term dindu is primarily used as a way of mocking and ridiculing black people, and because of how it originated, you cannot argue that it is anything but a replacement for the term nigger — that it is a highly racist term.
Vintage racist toy
One of the groups of black people that this term is currently being squarely aimed at is the Black Lives Matter movement, which was also born out of the Ferguson Riots in Missouri in 2014.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a highly controversial movement where a lot of hatred for the police and racism towards white people can be found. It is a movement whose members put the blame for all the ills of the black community directly at the feet of the police and white people. They demand things like reparations, and that all white people need to feel guilty (AKA: have “white guilt”) for things like slavery, institutional racism, and the systematic oppression of black people. Some members of BLM have accosted innocent white people in public, taken over speaking events to list their demands or shame and bully people, like during one of US Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ speeches, the Mizzou vigil for victims of the Orlando night club shooting, and Toronto’s Gay Pride parade. Some BLM members have publicly advocated for violence against the police, and have engaged in controversial tactics that border on the criminal in many instances.
Many on the far left support BLM, even in the face of their blatantly racist attitudes and questionable tactics, and excuse/rationalize their bad behavior because they are minorities. Some have even gone so far as to claim that black people, and minorities in general, cannot be racist because they do not have the power or privilege in society that is required to be racist.
The truth though, is that anyone who excuses bad and exclusionary behavior because a “minority” is doing it — is also engaging in racist behavior. This type of racist behavior however, is usually called “the racism of low expectations”. When you treat black people as a special class that can do no wrong, or as a group of people that automatically gets a free pass on anything they do or say because of their skin color or lineage, that is racist.
Because of the special pass that BLM is currently being given for any and all of their behavior, some of those who are not on the far left or in support of this type of behavior have begun pushing back by exposing the inconsistencies, bad behavior and racism within BLM. This is usually met with accusations of racism by the far left and BLM activists and supporters. They see any opposition or criticism of BLM as being racist, which is just a ridiculous position to hold and nothing more than an attempt to shut down the discussion that BLM activists and the community at large needs to have.
While exposing the inconsistencies, bad behavior and racism within BLM is not itself racist, hateful and completely acceptable as a means of push back, some have seen this as an opportunity to be openly racist towards black people. These are usually people who already held racist ideas and positions about minorities before BLM, but BLM has now provided them with an opportunity to be openly racist under the guise of righteousness, justice, and counter attacks.
This is where the term dindu comes in as the replacement for the term “nigger”. It is the “acceptable” racist slur used primarily by many Gen-Xers and millenials because it can be easily excused as humor or sarcasm, even though the term is a slur that carries with it the same racist characterizations and connotations that the term nigger did. Nigger was once an acceptable term used to mock, express hatred for, and demean, black people — now we have the term “dindu”.
Just because you use a different term to disparage and mock black people does not change the racist and hateful meaning behind it, and yes, you are engaging in racist behavior when you use the term dindu to describe, mock, or belittle black people. We get it. You don’t like black people. Your usage of the term dindu ad nauseum is not meant to be funny, cute, or satirical. You see black people as somehow less of a person or less civilized than you. They are “thugs”, prone to be more violent and commit more crime because they are black. Whenever a black person is victimized by the cops they should have just “listened and not resisted arrest” and that would have prevented them from being abused or shot. Whenever a black person is pulled over, stopped and frisked, or approached by the police they “must have been doing something” to warrant it. And when black people bring up any of these issues, which are all too real, they “dindu nuffin” right?
Of course, you are free to use the word as often as you like. The consequences of using the word, however, are that you will likely be called a racist, especially if you are also against the activities that groups like BLM engage in, and especially if you are white. It’s a tits and ass world. White people encourage the use of the word racist against themselves when they encourage the use of the word dindu against minorities. Consequences.
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