A lot of people thought oh, we caught the dictionary in racism, or all it takes is a whole bunch of people saying that a word is bad for the dictionary to change it. That's not the case. For nude, things that are called nude color, that color palate has broadened very recently, in the last maybe seven to 10 years, and now covers all skin tones.
I also have been called that terrible "N" word straight to my face and not known what to do about it because it was just in like 1993 that someone called me that.
I've grown up with racism my entire life. I've been bullied, sent to the hospital, beat up, I've been called a Chink and a Gook. Every single racial slur an Asian person can be called, I've been called it.
Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.
Some black people who have not heard me interviewed or read my book jump to conclusions and prejudge me... I've been called Uncle Tom. I've been called an Oreo.
I've been called a point guard, I've been called a traffic cop, I've been called a ringmaster, a lion tamer, whatever. And I guess the thing about the traffic cop is I'm more of a rogue traffic cop because a good traffic cop doesn't want any fender benders.
I didn't even know what the word lesbian meant until I was called one... and then I had to look it up in the dictionary.
I called every day to see how she was doin,
Every time that I called her, it seemed somethin was brewin.
I called her on my dime, picked up, and then I called again,
I said, 'Yo, who was that?'
'Oh, he's just a friend.'
I've been called everything. Gangsta rap. I've been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that's on them.
The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me.
What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they'll murder their neighbours for using a word they don't happen to like. A word that probably doesn't mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.
Fail, it's not in my dictionary. I've got a good dictionary up there and the words 'fail' and 'failure' have been ruled out for years. I don't know what people are talking about who use that word. All I do know is temporary non-success, even if I've got to wait another 20 years for what I'm after, and I try to put that into people, no matter what their object in life.
People do come up to me quite a lot. I get called all of it. I rarely get called my name; it's usually "Hey, Dr. Edwards!" or "Algernon." The most common thing is, "You're the black doctor on that show!" I'll take any of it, because I've definitely been called much worse things.
We have common enemies today. It's called childhood poverty. It's called cancer. It's called AIDS. It's called Parkinson's. It's called Muscular Dystrophy.
There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" - recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?
End rhymes are not enough. Every word-sound in a poem should find an echo in another, neighbouring word's sound to achieve what Ezra Pound called melopoeia. (This is something like what the Welsh call Cynghanned.)