Hi blog readers! I am still in Brooklyn, and I really never want to leave! Unfortunately, I will be returning the Urrrea tommorrow AM. I’ll share more about my trip, and the inevitable craziness, then. For now, I’m taking a break from the jokes and posting something I wrote a couple days ago when I was pissed. I didn’t post it sooner because I didn’t like it. But, oh well. If you want to read something funny, skip this one and read “Worst Date Ever”. Peace!
Hello brothers and sisters! This is your conscience speaking, manifested in the physical form of one ‘Sister Toldja’.
Yes, this is your actual collective conscience talking to you. What? Didn’t know you had one? Well, a lot of people seem to disregard my existance. Black, white and otherwise. But I am here, indeed.
I’m not gonna lie to you- I’m not in the best of shape these days. The righteous indignation of slavery kept me strong for quite awhile. And Jim Crow laws, segregated schools, sufferage issues, etc. kept me clear for even longer.
But now I’m slowly dying. I am literally being crushed to death beneath the weight of your broken spirits, broken promises and broken homes. Your support of the homophobia, misogyny, violence, anti-intellectualism of the Hip-Hop culture is choking me. I am there, beneath the ruins, as you silently acknowledge your guilt.
As a result, my voice can sometimes be no louder than a whisper. So I have chosen one of my daughters to speak your truth to you.
So, gon ‘head, Sister Toldja. Tell ‘em why I’m mad.
My people, my people. What the hell are we going to do?
Two things I wanna rap to you about: the BET Hip-Hop Awards and the Michael Richards incident. Now, I was gonna leave both of ‘em alone, as it seems that everybody and they momma has jumped to weigh in. But, alas, I have been callen to drop what my littlle sister Autumn Ashante would call “the straight-up truth”.
Now, it was never my intent to watch the BET Awards, or anything else on the network for that matter. But I was at a friend’s house and not in control of the remote. I’m not gonna waste time with the details of how low-budget and poorly planned the ceremony was, ’cause that was the least of what I observed to be wrong.
I watched these people get up and parade around with ridiculous looking outfits, Howard tuition-priced gold and diamond dental work and women used as props. I watched them nod their heads to some of the worst produced beats since the Vanilla Ice Ninja Turtles song. I saw people get awards for the type of music that real musicans wipe their ass with and for the type of behavior parents are supposed to teach you to avoid.
Something clicked for me: there Negroes believe their own hype. Jay-Z really thinks that the release of his new record matters to the world. Nelly thinks he is an artist. Melissa Ford thinks she is an actress. A lot of people think Snap music is a valid art form. Flavor Flav thinks that beautiful women want to fight over him. This is madness!
Why don’t we understand the colation between celebrating the “nigga” lifestyle and getting treated like “niggers”? You want to be respected? You want to get the job you deserve? You want the police to leave you alone when you did nothing wrong? Then stop supporting/acting out/celebrating these psuedo-Gangsta/ghetto fantasies. Stop spending so much damn money on your car. Start spending time with your kid.
Is it our fault Michael Richards flipped out and called Black hecklers “niggers” and told them that in the past he’d have been able to physically hurt them easily? Hell, no. That was some straight pent-up hatred. Otherwise, he may have just called them assholes or losers. Why is it “okay” for Black comedians to use words like ‘honky’ and ‘cracker’? Well, for one, White folks are the leaders of a White-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. That’s not to say that they are all bad, but that most of them do benefit from societal privilige. And before someone reminds me about the poor ones, note that I said this is a CAPITALIST society. The poor will always suffer. And I doubt a poor White city would have faced a Katrina situation.
But imagine that you were White and you knew very little about our people, aside from what you saw on televison. What would you think? “Wow, these people on TV are foolish. But, as I realize that they are simply showing us the effects of White oppression. How sad! I’m gonna cut a check to the NAACP to help them.” Uh….no. I still think it’s incredibly ignorant to really think that BET shows an acurate representation of us, but I’m not surprised that people do. That said, 25 years of Hip-Hop culture the N-word and N-word behavior in to the limelight does not bode well for our desire to keep it out of the white man’s mouth.
Kramer’s flip out is the least of our problems, but let it serve as a reminder: there are a lot of white people who feel the same way. Some are entertainers, others are our bosses, teachers, police officers….this is what we are up against. What are we doing to defend ourselves?
They think we are niggers. What are we doing to prove them wrong? What are we doing to prove them RIGHT?
Just think.
Sister Toldja
UPDATE: In case you didn’t believe me, check this article from this month’s Esquire magazine: “The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger”. Yes, they did.
“Why is it “okay” for Black comedians to use words like ‘honky’ and ‘cracker’? Well, for one, White folks are the leaders of a White-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. That’s not to say that they are all bad, but that most of them do benefit from societal privilige [sic].”
Given the sacrifices that some whites have made in the interests of black Americans, such as those who died in the 1964 Freedom Summer Project, you don’t offer them much encouragement.
I think you misunderstood the quotation marks surrounding “okay”. I was simply explaining why it has been “okay” to use those terms. I didn’t say I thought it was okay, but that I am observing that it has been considered quote-unquote “okay”. Okay?
I would imagine that any white person who is truly committed to helping out black folks would understand why ‘honky’ and ‘cracker’ have been used and deemed “okay” and that they wouldn’t take it so personally. Yes, those are words that could be mean. But you have to look at the lack of power behind them and the lack of power behind those who use them. When I hear a black person say ‘crackers’, I imagine they mean ‘these motherfuckers who did us wrong’. When a white person says ‘niggers’, I hear “these people I hate for no good reason”. All that to say, it’s not right for us to use these words, but it’s “okay”.
And thanks for pointing out the spelling error. I thought I was the only one snide enough to do that type of thing, LOL.
Sorry that I misunderstood.
Sorry, too, for being “snide”, hee hee!
Something clicked for me: there Negroes believe their own hype. Jay-Z really thinks that the release of his new record matters to the world. Nelly thinks he is an artist. Melissa Ford thinks she is an actress. A lot of people think Snap music is a valid art form. Flavor Flav thinks that beautiful women want to fight over him. This is madness!
I agree with you 200%! I for one no longer watch BET, despite being under new management; it hasn’t changed in any positive manner at all!
As for glorifying the wrong lifestyle choices, I saw 4 year old kid with a grill the other day;sad.
I think it is sad that black people in America take pride in the wrong things.What is even more sad is that the media that perpetrates these stereotypes is what is promoted time after time after time!That is one reason I hardly buy any new cds or watch some tv channels.
Anonymouys- It’s ‘okay’, LOL.
Acolyte-Yo, it is situation critical right now! These kids are so lost! And I agree with you on BET, no change at all. Ironically, the new head of programming is Reginald Hudlin, a close associate and frequent collaborator with Aaron McGruder, who has always been a highly outspoken critic of BET in his comic. I read somewhere were he said to be patient, and that a change would come. But it’s been a year…..
So, it's been a few years now since BET changed hands… What are your impressions now?
Any thoughts on BETJ?
What would you do if you had the opportunity to run BET?