(Continued from the “Vulcans” thread) Shaun: I completely respect your point of view, and I’ve no intention of fighting about it. But my blog is the one place in the entire planet where I can say what I mean and mean what I say. And I have. I apologize if it offended you—that’s not ever the plan.
Sam: I tend to think a lot of the crime vs. safe issues are economic moreso than cultural. I know a LOT of—let’s not say the N word but let’s say People Who Embarrass The Hell Out Of Me—who make $60k and better. PWETHOOM are not, by default, criminals. Additionally, my family is from rural Kentucky. Talk about people who embarrass me. But I’d not call them niggers, I’d call them hicks. And do. They’d make a fabulous Black Green Acres TV show.
Also, I think in the case of the child, they likely learned that from another child. My mother never, ever, used that word in our house. The first time I heard the N word, I was about eleven years old attending a white school on a Jewish neighborhood, and some kid in the boy’s room charged me a quarter to tell me what the word meant. I’m not kidding. I paid him a quarter to tell me what the word “nigger” meant, and he grins and says, “you!” I still didn’t understand. He had to explain it to me. The word wasn’t part of my life. And we were poor. We lived in New York City. We were desperately poor, in fact. But none of my poor, street urchin friends ever, ever used that word—it just wasn’t part of our lexicon. And, looking back, I’m really grateful for that. My friends and I were poor, mostly fatherless, wandering the streets all summer. But we weren’t thieves, we weren’t dirty, we weren’t violent, and we didn’t use the word because the word wasn’t introduced into our environment.
I’d assume unthinking adults introduced the word into your environment, and kids became the carriers of that language. Also, when I was a kid, gangsta rap did not exist. I tend to blame black society for being rather pathologically self-destructive; by allowing this garbage to blast in their homes and around their children. It is, at the end of the day, terribly destructive to our community, and parents, most especially, who blast this stuff around their kids are just ignorant and selfish morons. PWETHOOM.
“There is no difference between a redneck trailer park cracker and the ghettoest of ghetto black people, or the stereotypical Mexican.” This is, largely, what I’m saying, except the N-word has so much power that it tends to sidetrack folks. My Kentucky family are a bunch of black rednecks, but they’re not niggers—no spinner rims and gold teeth. But they used to run moonshine (and, for a summer, I with them; yes, I’ve lived a storied life). I think I can use just about any slur I’d like to describe folks whose behavior I disagree with, but soon as I say the N-word, it takes people out of the conversation because of how offensive the word is.
People who drive huge, expensive RV’s on cross-country trips see the world differently from I do. I think those people are morons and usually bad drivers, guzzling up gas as they lumber across the U.S. But, form their perspective, what they do is perfectly reasonable and sane and normal. Bottom line: everybody’s entitled to their own reality. I don’t want every black family to be Bill Cosby. I’m not holding anybody to any “white” standard. All I’m saying is, *I*, personally, think spinner rims make you look like a moron. I wish I hadn’t used the “N” word because it’s taken us away from the point of my blog post. But, if my Uncle Jeb was hanging out on his porch spitting tobacco, I’d be just as embarrassed. Not because it’s not the “white” thing to do, but because I, personally, find it offensive and am embarrassed by it. And I’m entitled to my point of view about what looks stupid and what doesn’t.
Also, I need to underscore that, if you’re *actually talking on the phone,* I don’t mind the BT headsets. I’m talking about people who wear them just as status symbols or fashion accessories.
Sam, I think the Black people vs. Niggers debate was summed up quite well by Chris Rock: it’s not really about spinner rims or gold teeth or BT headsets. It’s about people who are self-motivated and people who are not. About producers and consumers. About misplaced resentment: resentment that perhaps should go towards whites who misjudge all people of color but is instead turned towards a sub-ethnic group who exhibit certain idiosyncrasies. You can’t imagine how hard I work to make ends meet, so, yeah, I resent the fella—black, white, or orange—whose energy is primarily focused on getting over. That burns me up. Men, particularly, whose circumstances are caused primarily by laziness. Black America, in large measure, resents this get-over sub-group and, perhaps wrongfully, labels them as “niggers,” lumping in all persons of color whose investment is non-existent. Mostly because this sub-demographic tends to be what many whites think of first when they consider African Americans (or, as you pointed out, Mexicans).
It angers me that I typically need to demonstrate some reasonable erudition before whites relax and accept me as thinking person. Having done that, most whites tend to have no problem with me whatsoever, but they tend to get tense around the Ebonics and spinners crowd. Am I *truly* accepted by these folks? Remains to be seen. But it is that initial tension, that initial anxiety, that angers me. And, perhaps it is wrong fro me to get angry at my moron brother who is acting like an idiot, blaming him or his behavior or his cultural choices rather than placing the blame where it belongs: with racist people, regardless of color. White racists and black racists who perpetuate this nonsense. And, maybe, in resenting my moron brother, I am become one of those very people. It’s an ugly and vicious circle.
13 Comments
I don't see what's so uniquely pathological about the black community. Are you pathological? Or are you some exception?
Gangsta rap btw, is for white kids in the suburbs. Studies show that black kids are getting sick of it:
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/48693/
"We critics, however, were vindicated by a study published earlier this year by the University of Chicago. Data from the 'Black Youth Project' indicated that while 58 percent of blacks between ages 15 and 25 listen to hip-hop daily, most are dissatisfied with it. They find the subject matter is too violent, and women too often portrayed in offensive ways."
scrawled by Blaine | June 21, 2007 10:26 AM
The get-over crowd often uses their resentment of whites to justify their get-over behavior. They're not lazy, they're subverting the Man. And they can buy that identity for the cost of the spinners.
Of course you're not accepted by those folks. You're a writer and a pastor. Talk about setting yourself apart.
scrawled by greg zywicki | June 21, 2007 10:56 AM
Thanks for responding, Chris. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised. I was afraid you'd dismiss what I said, since I'm not even sure if I was on base - mostly I was just articulating what I was seeing and how I felt, venting, really, and I feared people would look at that and say 'This guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.'
Yes, I feel Chris Rock summed it up quite nicely, but I didn't want to name check him because that, to me, would make me sound like the summation of my experiences with Black people came from his stand-up special.
I didn't mean to derail your blog post with my 'oh so necessary' critque of Black America, but what I see bothers me. And don't take this the wrong way, but I feel disappointed in the Black community, at least here in Atlanta. Maybe it's constantly being exposed to the worst examples, people not caring, parents not being there for thier kids, having to chase after 10-13 year old boys who are CARRYING GUNS and sporting Bloods colors, the ignorance, the resentment, the distinct feeling I'm witnessing the squandering of an opportunity. Like I said, I work with the people on the lower end of the economic ladder, people not unlike myself. I'll be lucky to make 22k this year, and I'm working 50-60 hours a week in these scuzzy, run-down apartment complexes with no means of protecting myself, and only the people skills I learned as a corrections officer to save me from getting jumped. To some of these people, like the guy living in a ratty 600 dollar a month apartment, yet he has a Dodge Charger and a Escalade, or the person with spinner hubcaps on thier beat-up 96 Neon (and not even having all the hubcaps), or the dudes hanging out smoking weed in the breezeways of the apartments all day with nothing better to do than urinate on the carpet and roll the bananna flavored cigar wraps over some ditch-weed, I just want to go up to them and scream 'STOP ACTING LIKE A FUCKING CARICATURE! BE A FUCKING PERSON! You call me a bitch and a wanna-be cop, but look at you! You have nothing better to do than smoke weed and make fun of a fucking security guard!"
But what really clinched it for me? What really made me sick to my stomach?
The apartment complex I work in is in Dekalb County. The Dekalb County jail is maybe a mile south of the complex. This jail is monolithic. It's huge. Massive. An imposing edifice. Seriously. It's pretty damn big.
Now, from what I've seen of Georgia, around every county jail, you have scores of bail bondsmen offices, where I guess you hock stuff or finance your loved one's bond.
What did I see? What did I see in an all black area, in Georgia, home of the Martin Luther King Jr. historical collection (I think there's a musuem down here, I've been too busy working to check, and too tired right now)?
'Free At Last Bail Bonds'.
When I saw the sign, I cringed. What, you're going to liken the 'struggle' of some jackass needing to post bond for selling weed with the Civil Rights movement? You're going to co-opt that for some asshole trying to get out of jail? Disgusting!
Now I know that sign doesn't speak for all of the Black community or an indictment of Black people everywhere, but it just depressed me, the meaning I took from it. Coupled with the people I'm working with every day, which range from young to old, intelligent to blithering idiots, it just really got me thinking about this shit, and I really apologize for spewing my frustrations. Thanks again for responding.
scrawled by Sam | June 22, 2007 4:24 AM
Blaine wrote: “I don't see what's so uniquely pathological about the black community. Are you pathological?”
About many, many things. And I do, in fact, blame the black community for being pathological in the sense of remaining silent while poisoning their own children with negative images and stereotypes. For financing things that undermine us as a community and destroy our children’s future. Every time you pay your cable bill, you finance corporate interests grown rich off of calling us “niggas” and “ho’s” and promoting stereotypes and lifestyles that are destructive, that make a virtue of under-achievement, criminality, misogyny and intellectual cowardice. I consider it pathological that black parents blast this music, with its foul language and negative stereotypes, from their stereos all hours of the day and night while their young children ingest these messages. I consider it pathological when young black mothers abandon their toddlers—toddlers—in front of BET and similar programming where they are fed a steady diet of “gangsta” imagery, where such imagery is accepted as normal and appropriate. It is neither. I consider it pathological when any group of people or, heck, animals or reptiles for that matter, promotes and finances the repression and degradation of its own race.
Most urban culture, black gangsta rap in specific, can indeed, be described as self-destructive. I'd like to think it's just that I've outgrown it. That my disdain for much of the hip-hop culture is borne out of generational differences and the arrival of middle age. But, by any rational objective standard (or any religious model— Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu), the main thrust of the urban black culture is anti-moral and, ultimately, self-loathing. It advocates the ontological rape of black women by black men; a de-humanizing of black women into momentary sexual diversions and stage props. It imposes an anti-intellectual standard on young black men while incongruously defining their existence by an unsustainable standard of material wealth, sexual acuity, controlled substances and binge drinking. Failing to achieve or sustain that lifestyle, especially in the absence of a quality education, leads many young black men into often unrecoverable spirals of low self-esteem, while many black girls binge and purge and starve themselves to look like the hoochies in the videos, hoping to attract the hardened, gangstered “rough necks” who will inevitably abuse and neglect them. The patterns are, by any reasonable and objective standard, pathological; a race subsumed with self-genocide.
Sam wrote: “…the distinct feeling I'm witnessing the squandering of an opportunity.”
Yes. That sums it up quite nicely, doesn’t it.
“'Free At Last Bail Bonds'” Wow. I just… wow.
Sam, it sounds to me like you might need a change of pace. Not trying to armchair analyze, but sounds like you’re working in a war zone and it’s impacting you pretty hard. Not trying to be your mother, but take your temperature about these things and just be aware of where you’re at emotionally and how it is impacting you.
I’d imagine working private security in such areas would be terribly difficult. The Thug Life crowd barely respects police, whom, I imagine, are under similar stress and may vent that stress and frustration on the locals Instead of, say, writing into my blog). . I would imagine the locals would, in turn, tend to take out a lot of their cop frustration on guys like you.
“Now I know that sign doesn't speak for all of the Black community or an indictment of Black people everywhere, but it just depressed me,.”
Yep. But, in a way, stuff like this in fact does speak for all of the black community because no one in the black community is speaking out against it. The sign is terribly offensive on many levels, but mostly, in my eyes, because it desensitizes an entire generation of young black kids to the meaning of Dr. King’s message and the value of his sacrifice.
I don’t hold the entire black community responsible for such poor choices, nor do I advocate the banning of “gangsta” rap as I am an advocate of freedom of expression. What I want is balance. What I want, amidst our freedom of expression, is to hear a chorus of voices and not a solo. Not just my voice or Jay-Z’s. But the negative voices seem to blare from every parapet, while the voices of reason—those voices challenging these negative images—remain silent. It seems to me that middle-class blacks are far too preoccupied with making money and fitting in than they are with bringing some balance to the table, that not enough folk of any culture or ethnicity are standing up for positive things. That black folk could allow a sign like that in their neighborhoods, that we can’t seem to find the wherewithal to even be angry about it, seems disturbingly sad.
Sam: do me a solid, though: if we can wind back the language to a PG-13, I’d appreciate it. And it’s never “Chris.” My friends simply call me “Priest.”
scrawled by priest | June 22, 2007 4:59 AM
I... that sign. These places here. These times. I am overcome sometimes by such deep sadness and seething anger. What "our" country has done to the poorer. Who its kept poor... and why.
Down here (central Florida) its like everybody is a stereotype... because its just expected of them. If a black family isn't involved in drugs then through treatment and upbringing they still seem to have the "yessa master" mindset. Poor white (which is most everybody else that doesn't have a hospital job or is a retiree from the North East) live either the gansta drug life or the redneck-drunk life. Anybody not in the above of this paragraph is slowly moving out. Then again I haven't touched on the immigrants. The country's convienent slave labor. A good percentage of which are illegal.
We live in the Bible Belt (Atlanta too), but where is Jesus in our Religion anymore? To think about something like "black culture"... just even the fact that 40 years later we're still "Black vote" "White people" "that was Racist" "Black church" "White church"... I cry. I cry and I pray. Pray for my youngest brother. Pray that he'll endure, in Christ, what will face him... and cry that he'll face it. That in God's majesty and love of beauty he made him a different hue than me and some people can't deal.
All this comes down to is selfishness. The parents Priest speaks of. The politicians. The poor. and us the people too. Those that see it and get angry, but what then? "How selfish am I?" "How much could I change?" We all know the answer to the first 'How'. I for one need to know the second one. I want the question to burn in my bones till its answered. Since it doesn't... while maybe thats why our country is the way it is.
scrawled by Jordan Mayhak | June 22, 2007 11:47 AM
Yeah, sorry about the language. I apologize.
scrawled by Sam | June 22, 2007 12:25 PM
Sam: No worries.
Jordan: Amen. Sadly, amen. So who are all those rich folks on CSI: Miami? I mean, to watch that show, you'd think Miami *has* no impoverished folks. The nly poor folks you see n that show live out in the everglades. everybody else, even the cops, are filthy rich and drive $40K+ cars. The forensics lab is a crystal palace that looks like at least a million in esthetic touches (not including the forensic equipment).
I think th ereason reral cop houses tend to look like hell is because they'd rathe rspend the money no personnell and equipment than prettty up the place. Not to mention they want to make cop houses places we DON'T want to go to...
scrawled by priest | June 22, 2007 2:37 PM
Just to inject a little levity....
PWETHOOM sounds like a 1950s Marvel Monster.
"PWETHOOM! He STRUTS! He BLINGS! HE CONQUERS!"
scrawled by David Van Domelen | June 23, 2007 9:52 AM
I was going to say John Workman sound effect, Dave.
scrawled by Mark Hale | June 23, 2007 11:55 AM
Just wanted you to know that I read this. I just really don't have anything new to add.
scrawled by Shaun G. | July 3, 2007 8:29 PM
Hey Priest. Your response to Blain has created some discussion over on Afro Nerd and over on Hudlin's message board:
http://www.afronerd.blogspot.com/
http://hudlinentertainment.com/smf/index.php?topic=2189.0
scrawled by Tony | July 5, 2007 8:26 AM
I agree with everything Priest said. Except the Mexicans. All the poor uneducated Mexicans I know are actually pretty nice and respectful. (I'm not Mexican, btw) Every culture has its trash. But it seems poor Mexicans for the most part are good people. :)
scrawled by Jorge | July 10, 2007 3:58 PM
Hello,
Mr Priest I hope all is well with you. Someone posted your comments about pathology in the Black community in the Hudlin Forum. The statements have provoked a great deal of debate and I would be interested in your personal take on some of the commentary.
I must say I disagree with your statements as to the correlation you are making between crime, poverty, misogyny and the lack of education in our community as being the result of current Black pop-culture. For example, the vast majority of Rap music is purchased by Whites and if crime, violence, mis-education and the various other forms of pathology are caused by that genre, then why don't we see the same levels of pathology in the White community?
In addition, you seem to be preoccupied by how images on shows such as Flavor Of Love, Charm School or Rap Video X makes us appear to other communities. If someone is myopic enough to consider the aforementioned shows to be indicative of the collective intelligence, artistry and morality of the Black community then why should you be concerned about their opinion anyway?
scrawled by Jefferson Sergeant | July 13, 2007 6:15 PM