The_King_of_Everything
Yeah.
In light of the recent decision by a professional basketball team, comprised of mostly black players, to respond to their boss basically saying “I hate ******s” by turning their shirts inside out the next day at work, I have come to the decision that I agree wholeheartedly with the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, and I too do not want black people invited to my events.
It’s not for the same reasons that the Clippers’ owner doesn’t want black people invited to his events. To be honest I don’t really know what his reasons are. Perhaps he recently tuned in to an FM “hip hop” station and after hearing song after drug, sex, and violence-laden song decided that it might be a good idea to keep some distance. Perhaps his media conditioning spans beyond music, encompassing the gamut of stereotype-enforcing media, (media championed and praised by blacks, where the most rich and famous c00ns are praised and idolized as examples of black “success”). Maybe he’s been hanging out with George Zimmerman, and they’ve been watching Love & Hip Hop, andBasketball Wives, and the Tyler Perry collection, and Katt Williams and Kevin Hart performances (anybody catch that Kevin Hart movie with the ex-rapper who used to have a song standing up against police brutality playing a police officer? Where Hart delivers the line that Zimmerman had no doubt heard a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, shifting his psyche to the point where he could be authentically terrified of someone just because they were black . . . “you’re white. You don’t fight.”)
No, I’m lucky enough to spend enough time with black people to recognize that we’re not the base form of human life that we continue to support ourselves being portrayed as (though admittedly, it definitely rubs off on us. A lot. So much so that it’s very puzzling to comprehend how we could blame anyone who doesn’t get to spend much time with us for fostering a wildly skewed perception. What can people know but what they see?). No, I don’t want black people to stay away from my events because I believe them to be uncivilized, or ignorant, or anything like that.
I don’t want black people at my events anymore, because black people are cowards.
In all the history I’ve ever studied, in all the fiction I’ve ever read, I am hard pressed to find an example of cowardice to rival the modern day black American, and nobody wants to be surrounded by cowards right?
What if lions break out of the zoo and start trying to eat everyone? What if aliens attack? What if the police department decides that they want to grab their batons and blow off some steam? Are cowards really the type of people that you want to be surrounded by?
Not me.
beating as bad as the one Rodney King caught, but I never see a post that says, “Share this if you’ll go on strike from work until these police officers are fired.” “Share this if you’ll strike until this woman is released.” “Share this if you won’t spend a single dollar until Troy Davis is released from death row and granted a new trial.” Can you imagine the impact that that would have? Everybody is always trying to act there’s no solutions. There are plenty of solutions. We're just too cowardly to implement them. Worried about this discomfort or that discomfort, great or small, that might take place as a result. Having to find a new place to party. Or a new show to watch. Isn’t the discomfort of oppression enough? There’s plenty of solutions, just no easy ones, but if we can shift to courage instead of cowardice, there’s more than enough solutions to guarantee our success. Guarantee. Next time you’re complaining about how this country was built on us, take a second to think about the fact that it still is. If we want to, we can shut this whole place down.
So make a decision between cowardice and courage, and if you choose courage, step it up. Step it up in any of the myriad of ways that are available to us. I’ve named a few. Name a few more. Leave a few suggestions in the comments section. Call up your friends. Tweet. Facebook.
Then start doing them. If you can’t convince anyone to do them with you, do them on your own. Start right away because we’re running out of time. I hear some states are fining people for sagging their pants. I’d never sag my pants, but if we begin to allow people to be penalized simply for attributes that we’ve allowed to be associated with being black, we’re going to find the water getting even hotter very soon.
We’ve been cowards for a very long time. We have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s start right now.
For those of you who don’t want to step it up, do me a favor and at least unfriend me.
Homeboy Sandman is a recording artist on Stones Throw Records. He previously wrote for Gawker on the topic of police brutality.
only be explained by the rage of hundreds of years of being bullied by everybody else. In New York City, where infiltration and displacement are referenced using the the thinly veiled insult “gentrification” (look up the root word. “Gent.” If we accept and use a term the very definition of which suggests that communities are becoming more noble and graceful, what does that say about the people being pushed out?) natives know better than to display any aggression towards white newcomers, but are as quick as ever to stare down an unfamiliar black face who isn’t from the neighborhood.
What do you call people who walk quietly to slavery? Who allow themselves to be insulted without standing up for themselves beyond wardrobe adjustments that in reality are nothing but a public show of shame? What do you call people that pretend that these ridiculous gestures actually hold some weight rather than face the fact that we are the laughing stock of the entire planet, and as long there’s the chance that someday maybe we’ll be rich there’s nothing that we’re going to do about it?
I call us cowards.
It’s almost as if people have forgotten that struggle includes struggling. You might have to lose your job. You might have to lose your life. That’s what it takes for change to happen. There’s no easy way to do this. If you’re scared to stand up for yourself, for whatever reason, all I ask is that you stop pretending. Stop with the Facebook posts. Stop with the meaningless conversations. Just stop. Be honest. About how you behave. About your part in all this madness. About what you are. A coward. Just a coward. No need to put on an act for the rest of us. We can all see right through each other.
One last thing . . .
For those of you who have made it this far without stopping for how furious at me your shame has made you, I want you to know something. I don’t really think black people are cowards. I think humans are cowards. Most of us. I think that regardless of where one’s phenotype places them within the imaginary concept of race, that the majority of us are content to live on our knees rather than die on our feet.
The problem is, we, us, black people, can’t afford to be like everyone else anymore. Not if we want to survive. I don’t know how we got here, but everywhere you look we’re at the bottom of the global totem pole. We need to make history. We can’t be cowards like every one else, not any more. In fact, we need to set a new standard for heroism. For bravery. For courage. Maybe a standard never before seen in the history of humankind. Extreme situations call for extreme measures, and in modern times our inferiority is ingrained in every single aspect of our lives, from our media, to our religion, to our science, to our public education, to our higher education, to Africa appearing to be the same size as Greenland on all of the maps despite the fact that in reality Africa is 14 times larger. It’s harder to see our enemies than it’s ever been. Our enemy isn't white people. It's people who value greed more than human life. Racial division is one of their oldest weapons, and media is their latest. We mustn’t forget how young this weapon is. I didn’t grow up using the Internet. The television itself isn’t even 100 years old. The idea of global celebrity, and global transference of ideas and perceptions of culture, has never existed the way it does today. Just as Howard Beale prophesized in Network in 1976, we’re up against “the most awesome God damned propaganda force in the whole Godless world.”
We’re going to have to step it up.
Black People Are Cowards
The bait is working breh.
