Hating 50 Cent (and the war with blacks)

Well…I finally got around to watching The Great Debaters which turned out to be an excellent film. Set in the early 1930s in the Jim Crow South, a small group of small-town black kids (from Wiley College) compete with white kids at prestigious schools such as Harvard in a debate team that has you spellbound for the entire duration of the film. All actors of course gave a stellar performance, most notably (in my opinion) Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Jurnee Smollett.

It got me thinking about our ‘blackness’ though. Our race, our accomplishments and failures as black people. The film bought to life an era when our respectable and even highly educated fathers were reduced to “boy” by racist whites. When young people generations ago lived with the horror of lynchings, racial injustice, exclusion from regular society…abuse. In one of the scenes with the team’s first debate with a white school, Smollett argued the affirmative for integrated colleges. Her opponent had stated that there may come a day when blacks and whites can walk on the same campus and sit in the same classroom but ’sadly that day is not today’. In her moving and emotionally rousing argument Smollet declares that the time for equality, the time for justice, the time for freedom is always, always right now.

We’re talking over seventy years ago. Most of our grandparents lived in this era, they lived during this appalling part of history. But look at us now, respected scholars and academics, CEOs and executives, senates and presidential candidates. We have an equal shot at receiving an education at the most prestigious universities. Blacks have stood their ground and have done good. If the black children in the early thirties – those children who watched their strong fathers submit and their brothers lynched – if they could see us now. If those black leaders who fought so fiercely to make this world right, who worked so hard to educate themselves could see us now. They would be so proud, so amazed.

But would they entirely?

Excerpt from Birdman’s song ‘I Run This’

And ima keep runnin

Ima keep runnin one neva runnin outta money

Ima dog ima stunt

If I don’t do nothin

And my car so pretty all these hoes wan f**k it

I got pussy wet paint

Big boy shoes

Soft ass seats and my trunk go boom

I gotta black ass gun

And a bad yello bitch

And it looks like ima die like this

 

Do you understand what he’s saying here? Me neither. Sounds to me like ignorant foolishness. I’m guilty of enjoying a few hip hop tunes myself but my god, it is so embarassing to hear the lyrics sometimes. Is this supposed to be accepted as part of the black ‘culture’ now? Idiotic songs about running around with guns and ‘yello’ bitches? All the horror and abuse and hopeful dreams of our greats and this is what now defines black culture? I have a friend who attended a business event and he just happened to be the only black person at the dinner table. The jovial topic of conversation (directed at him) had everything to do with hip hop. What does this mean or that mean? Do you like this or that? (lots of laughing and chuckling over drinks). Of course he knew about as much about hip hop as they did but he took it all in good humor. I went to visit white friends who lived in the suburbs once. When we were driving they flicked stations (flicked past all the rock and alternative music I like) and awkwardly left it on some rap station with 50 Cent blaring his god-awful tunes. Were they trying to be good hosts sitting stiffly and smiling politely at me because they thought I liked that crap? Ugh! I hate that blacks are expected to be immersed in that kind of culture. I hate stereotypes period. These rap artists ruin it for the rest of us who don’t particulary love that genre of music or the lifestyle for that matter.

(Dr. King Jr, Birdman right)

I say blacks have come a long way but we still have a long way to go. In America 11% of black males aged 20-34 are behind bars according to the Economist. Overall black men are seven times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. In 2005 the black murder rate was seven times higher than for the whites and Latinos combined. Those are American stats. In Bermuda similar thing. I think the black/white ratio here is 60/40. The majority of inmates are black. The majority of the hooligans committing Americanized crimes here (yes I said that) are black. Recently we had a case of a group of young Portuguese Bermudians who were arrested on charges of drug and weapon possession. It almost seemed surreal that they weren’t black!

There are those who are really afro-centric and feel blacks need to ‘get back to their roots’. But I am pissed off by what is happening with Zimbabwe’s political scene. Why the hell do blacks keep warring against each other? If it isn’t on the streets with gangs and thugs it is some kind of political rebellion or war in Africa itself. This is the country we originated from as we are constantly reminded of (including black Americans feeling the need to hyphenate themselves as ‘African-American’. That is something I never really loved but that is a whole other controversial topic).

So we have this dictator president (Robert Mugabe) who has been ruling Zimbabwe for about 28 years. Alas, alas after years of driving his country into a ditch they finally have an election where opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai arguably wins over 50% of the votes. Somehow these results are muddled and now there must be a runoff.  Great! (Mugabe’s government says that he won 47.9% of the vote but since no one got 50%, under Zimbabwe law, there must now be a runoff). Tsvangirai gets to decide whether or not to take part in the runoff which I believe he said he would contest. What has me reeling though is that Mugabe has resorted to intimidation and organized violence in order to remain in power. According to the NY Times a member of ZANU-PF’s Politburo anonymously said in an interview that the party had no intention of giving up power through the ballot box. Quoted in NY Times;

“We’re giving the people of Zimbabwe another opportunity to mend their ways, to vote properly,” The Politburo member said. “This is their last chance.”

The ruling party, military, youth militias have ‘for weeks been threatening, arresting and beating those they see as threats…including people who had simply voted for the opposition’. The violence is escalating and becoming more brutal including against women, children and the elderly. The UN says it can reach crisis levels.

 

(President Mugabe, Opposition leader Tsvangirai right)

Friedman hit it spot-on when he said this;

(referring to South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki whom he calls Mugabe’s chief enabler and protector)

“If South Africa’s Mbeki had withdrawn his economic and political support for Mugabe’s government, Mugabe would have had to have resigned a long time ago. But Mbeki feels no loyalty to suffering Zimbabweans. His only loyalty is to his fellow anti-colonial crony, Mugabe. What was that anti-colonial movement for? So an African leader could enslave his people instead of a European one?”

The whole world is watching Zimbabwe in horror.

While Africa always seems to be in political turmoil, and blacks seem to make up a huge percent of inmates and are immersed in a damaging, regressive and – to put it frankly – stupid thug culture one has to ask, what is the point? “Let dem niggas kill themselves off” some old KKK guy must say to himself when he reads headlines of drive-by shootings. Why do our young people even bother expressing any anger when they think of the senseless and violent deaths of their ancestors by white men? They’re doing the same damn thing to each other. Tell me please, what is the difference between a negro hanging from a tree and a thug putting a bullet through another thug’s head? It runs parallel except that before it was the disgrace of the whites, now we are doing it to ourselves.

 

So I’m saying again, look at us now. We are convicts, on welfare, drug pushers in ghettos, inmates and menaces to society. We are respected scholars and academics, CEOs and executives, senates and presidential candidates. We have a long way to go but we are climbing you know. We are still climbling. Despite it all I believe we still remain undefeated. We are still pressing on.