Jigga What?!

A reporter from Cleveland named Kristi Capel that works, at the moment, as an anchor on Fox 8 News in the Morning is in some deep shit after using the term “jigaboo” to describe the singer Lady Gaga's music. While reporting on the Academy Awards with another anchor, Wayne Dawson, she watched the highlights of the show and let this sentence leave her lips. “It's hard to really hear her voice with all that jigaboo music that she does, or whatever you want to call it.” Then she paused for a moment and said it again. “Jigaboo. She has a gorgeous voice. I never knew. Very nice.” For anyone that doesn't know what that term means, here ya go.

Jigaboo: noun, plural jigaboos. Slang: extremely disparaging and offensive; a contemptuous term used to refer to a black person; used as a disparaging term for a black person. Jiggaboo or jigabo is from a Bantu verb tshikabo, meaning meek or servile.

Capel grew up in Northern Kentucky and was born in 1983 and is a former beauty pageant queen that went to some religious schools, studied public relations, meteorology, and broadcasting. After she realized that, oopsy, she said something offensive, she went on Twitter and said “I do apologize if I offended you, I didn't know the meaning behind it or that it was even a word” adding “Thank you for watching.” The same message was sent to multiple people. As someone that got a degree in public relations you'd think she would be able to whip up a better apology.

This is one of those fucked up words that is sneaky. Late comedian Patrice Oneal once said that he has heard the term “n-word” used more than “nigger” because it is now a sneaky way for someone to use the word publicly. I personally prefer “n-bomb.” You look up jigaboo and it used to be big lipped, dark skinned characters. Now its this woman. Fox News director Andy Fishman said in a statement “I want to sincerely apologize for Kristi's comment this morning. She did not know the meaning of that word or how offensive it is. That is still no excuse for her using it on the air. She apologized a short time after saying it and we have spoken to her.” That's closer to what she should've said. This will probably be followed up by sensitivity training and speaking to some Black people publicly to make sure we're all cool.

Not really. No.

And for anyone that is wondering why the Black guy next to her just chuckled and didn't say anything to her because he for sure heard what she said and knows what that term means, welcome to the world of being a Black man! Oh, and what a world it is! No matter how upset you get at someone for saying or doing something racist you know from the jump that chances are you will be accused of guilt. If he said anything he wouldn't be a reporter chastising this ignorant woman for using a really offensive term. He'd be a big Black man scaring a little White woman.

Black men walk around fully aware of how we look to the world. My ancestors were a bunch of people that were brought to a country to build it for free while being raped and beaten. Know a light skinned old woman? Chances are her great grandmother was raped by someone that owned her. Then we were set free with a percentage of the rights as someone from any other country that arrived with the correct skin color. Then we were given more rights but hung and chased for just being seen. Now we get shot and killed by police. Even with a Black president this has not improved. If anything it has gotten worse.

On a side note, Malcolm X's own daughter Ilyasah Shabazz recently said in regards to rappers dropping n-bombs “I mean, you know, I think if we're going to, I don’t know that you can, if you're gonna use it, then everybody should be able use it. So if you don't like other people using it, then we shouldn't use it.” 

Louis CK once said that if you see a Black man with gray hair chances are that at one point in his life he was not allowed to drink from certain water fountains and had dogs sicced on him. My fathers side of the family is from Mississippi so its a safe assumption they went through that shit. Now we have this woman using a word that was used to make Blacks feel even shittier than they already did to describe a White singer singing a song from The Sound of Music which is about people running from Nazis while sitting two feet from a Black man. What the fuck?!

She can not say that she did not understand a word and use it two times in the proper context. Its that old racism. That kind that makes you cringe and your gut churn. I have read online some people defending her and others saying if Dawson, the reporter next to her, can let it go then why can't everyone else. Because he is not allowed to get outraged unless he wants to lose his job. He has a better chance of being unemployed by reacting to her statement than she does for making it. 

So what do I think should happen to her? Well, since Laser Cannon Sentence isn't a thing yet I think she needs to just pretend it never happened. What will happen is a shame tour followed by being overly nice to Black people and shedding a tear or two during an interview with a Black interviewer. Then Wayne Dawson will defend her and say that she doesn't have a racist bone in her body. Finally all of us will remember that this is Fox News, do a collective “Oh...right!” and go about our day.