Robert H. deCoy presents a doctrine for the niggers that need a mantra
Black History Month is really getting a kick in the nuts this year with our second book, which for some needs no introduction. For those who ain’t hip to the jive, Robert H. deCoy, way before Amazon got in the game and fucked up self-publishing, jumped out there in 1967 and self-published by himself the definitive book America didn’t ask for but he felt compelled to do, The Nigger Bible. Not only that, he got a book deal with Holloway House the following year for a re-release with an astounding gleeful rant introduction from none other than Nigger author Dick Gregory, who explains this book is going to knock the Alabaster Man aka white people on their ass and their expectation of Black experiences in America.
The Nigger Bible is written in a surreal state by niggers for niggers. Now let’s get into the shit.
There’s no easy way to jump into this surreal nonfiction doctrine that gives a parable to define what it is and what it ain’t to be a nigger in America. It’s part bitterness in its disdainment for the treatment of Black Americans both religiously and politically. It’s part dictionary (see Chapter Two for a complete annotated list of all the niggeresque words in creation at the time). part historical doctrine (especially in Chapter Five in a manifesto to Children Of The Niggaristic). Oh, and I can’t forget it’s half religious doctrine that not only embraces a religious moral consent of Black America to Judeo Christianity but holds it in moral turpitude for Judeo Christianity’s failures upon Black people in the Civile Rights Movement.
And hell yes, the word nigger is used ad nauseum throughout the book where it’s probably 40% of the word count.
The Nigger Bible holds no punches in its ranting vignettes. It boldly proclaims how angry the author is at the poor singing and praying niggers for being passive aggressive against the Alabaster Man and turning our youth away from the religion in the face of blatant attacks on Black America’s constitutional rights. It gives a creation biblical story in an alternative Genesis, in which The Tribe Of The Niggers, The Tribe Of The Jew, and The Pale Skinned Tribe Of Adam spawned pigmentation which later spawns a rant about the groups of Niggers and their predisposition to behavior based on the book’s theories on complexion in the book. When that’s like the what the fuck moment right there, Chapter 10 gives us a real Proverbs type of chapter with eighty-nine versus to stand on business as a Black American navigating through such perilous American plights.
It’s enough religion in here to make me think niggers got too much religion.
Now the real tea is that the book is nothing but a dated piece that you had to be around in the 1960s to dig, alternating from religious proclivity, cultural persuasion and all the little bits of historical enigma in between. Consider The Nigger Bible as an instructional manual for niggers told in a overexplained, over educated sonnet to analyze and embrace the American traditional nigger as it were and redefine and reappropriate the term in an effort to create a survival manifesto for Black American life if you will. The Nigger Bible flips and flops across African traditions, Black religious shit, and genealogy with a splash of misplaced philosophy while explaining the etymology of American Christianity, specifically the deconstruction doctrine of the American Christianity of Niggers (which includes a complete dissection of Black Muslims under Elijah Muhammad) and how that has influenced and continues to create a new value system of the counterculture of the 1960s and how niggers should embrace it using the book as a guide.
This isn’t a book for the brave of heart.
The Nigger Bible sometimes feels like it’s trying to be witty and comical at times, and at others it’s definitely a bitterness flowing through its veins. Readers have to lower all expectations and just get in where they fit in, because without an open mind and a twisted sense of humor your attention span isn’t going to make it. For the record, this book did not age well. A lot of the points come across as elongated rants that get lost in the religious sauce more times than not. And that there is just half the battle with the book. The other half is, it doesn’t seem to have a point outside of its obvious bitterness towards the state of niggers in America. That would be cool if that was clearly the intention from the first page.
However, it’s a provocative book few outside of the 1960s have heard or can even remember, and for that it should be perused. But I’m warning everybody, it’s a hard read, especially if you’re not familiar with the political climate of 1960s America, particularly with Black America in the north and south.
A book like The Nigger Bible could only be independently published today.
