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Hip-Hop Wired’s D.L. Chandler previously posted this piece on his personal Medium blog, which has seemingly sparked a varying amount of chatter across differing groups. D.L. wants to thank everyone for their comments, positive and negative, and has a message for all the readers

D.L. says that anyone who thinks that he is defending the practice of misogyny, homophobia, sexism or the division between people of color under the guise of pro-blackness needs some reading comprehension classes and a cup of warm chamomile tea. He also says he still loves you all. And with that, the blog can be read in full by clicking on the snippet below.

The Egyptian word Hotep (ḥtp) translates to roughly “to be satisfied, at peace”. It is regularly found in the names of ancient Egyptian figures such as Hotepsekhemwy (ḥr ḥtp-sḫm.wj “the two powers are at peace”), the first ruler of Egypt’s Second Dynasty — From Wikipedia

The first time I heard the word “hotep” was when I was a middle school student at the alternative learning community Ideal Whole School in Washington, D.C. The people who ran the school taught the students Pan-African concepts, fed us two vegan meals per day and we held classes in unconventional spaces while being housed on the campus of Howard University.

I’d always remark at how sincere the greeting of hotep/hetep was among the staff of the school and the students. It was always said with love, and it became a ritual I looked forward to in my brief time there. This was the mid-Eighties, and the impending arrival of Afrocentric Hip-Hop would soon define a great portion of my youth.

There was another woman I befriended many years later when I was an adult who greeted others in a similar fashion. Her name was Karen and she kept a collection of African and African-American literature in her home. The walls of her small Takoma Park apartment were adorned with art from around the world, and it always smelled like some kind of warm stew at her place.

What struck me about Karen was that she didn’t reserve her greeting for Black people. Everyone was greeted like family. She welcomed strangers, Black, white and otherwise, into her place for meals. She made friends with people riding the Red Line Metro train home, which is how I met her. Karen lit up the room with her big smile, long dreadlocks, and flowing dresses.

Karen died a few years ago after I lost contact with her. I regretted knowing that I didn’t cultivate that relationship with her. I would have loved to know her thoughts on the current social media and blogosphere trend to use the word “hotep” in describing a certain segment of misguided so-called Afrocentric people. In the past few months, the usage of the term under offensive means seemingly has tripled. While some friends and associates of mine state that the term is meant to be ironic, the word deserves better than that.

I suppose if one of the people who find it necessary to use the term in the fashion they do would have met Karen, they would have possibly written her off as a so-called “Hotep.”

Karen would clasp her hands and say “hotep” firmly and bow then greet you with a hug. She always smelled of some exotic oil. She didn’t eat meat and there was the books and art situation I wrote about earlier. Yet, she never pushed her way of thought onto anyone. She would attend the church services of her friends, she supported events no matter if it jived with her sensibilities or not and she believed with all her heart that the code she lived by was one of spreading peace with each person at a time.

https://static.medium.com/embed.jsThe Word Hotep Deserves Better Than This

Photo: Twitter