As this story has been unfolding over the past month something is being lost in translation. We’re wearing our hoodies, we’re calling for justice and we’re angry that the system has failed us once again.
Black activist and leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Tavis Smiley, Cornell West, and others have spoken out, and even President Barack Obama waded in on this tragedy that has galvanized the African American populace across the nation. The New Black Panther party has even put an ill advised $10k bounty on George Zimmerman’s head, because if something happens to him the BPP will be blamed for it and will be promptly arrested which will bring tension to it’s highest point since OJ’s trial. And still something has been looked over in the narrative that is unfolding.
Even with Geraldo Rivera’s idiotic, down right hypocritical stance against the hoodie no one has mentioned that George Zimmerman was the aggressor. By his own admission in the 911 call, when he told them that he was following Trayvon, he should have been pegged as the aggressor, arrested and locked up for first degree murder.
The law that police say is keeping them from arresting Zimmerman should be applied to Trayvon Martin with 100% impunity. Continue reading
Too Many Chiefs Not Enough Indians
The quote for Black people should be; Too Many Indians That Think They Are Chiefs and Not Enough Chiefs for all These Damn Indians.
I wholly understand the first quote but over the years I have come to realize that it’s not as accurate as I once thought. The reason for this is that these Indians that are trying to be chiefs are really acting and they have no real understanding of what it takes to be a chief. They posture themselves and try to talk like a chief but they can’t walk the walk, not even a block, let alone a mile in the shoes of a real chief.
They get ahead of themselves when dealing with Black on Black situations, but if you toss them into the room with a white chief they quickly play the subordinate role. (more on the Black on Black situation in a post to come)
On the other side there’s the multitude of Indians and not enough people willing to stand up as chiefs. This is when it has to do with enlightenment and uplifting of the Black community. All of a sudden no one wants to be the chief, no one wants to die for the cause anymore or be the martyr. They all want a chief to step up, whom they will conveniently try to undermine when given the chance. (more on The Crab Syndrome in a coming post)
So let’s refresh the phrase a bit to include the latter 2 so we can really become more enlightened on the way we think.
Not So =
I’ve been hearing a lot of women complain about the fact that men can have one night stands and not be thought of any different, but when women do it they get labeled as loose, or as hoes. It’s always the same criticism, why can’t we do it with no problem, why the double standard, blah, blah, blah?
I’m not going out on a limb here when I say the women who are angry about this double standard have to be loose and feel as if they are hoes by the standard of what people think are hoes.
This one has always been strange to me because it’s basically saying; I want to be able to have sex with anybody, anytime, and with as many people as I want, and I want you to not care about it and treat me like men are treated when doing this same thing. Fair enough, but what you all fail to realize is that just because you think things “should be” a certain way means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
You are trying to convince 100% of men to think the way you want them to think and that’s not going to happen, ever! You may get a small percentage to say it’s cool to have sex with a bunch of dudes and they may treat you the same, but the vast majority are not going to do it.
Why?
You’re a Bitch, my bad, You’re a Bad Bitch
Call a woman a bitch and you might get cut, call her a bad bitch or a boss bitch, you probably can get her number and the panty draws. Yep, all you have to do is add an adjective to the front of it that’s deemed to be a positive to the negative word bitch and bam; you have officially transcended the word bitch. You have been officially cleared to use it whenever you want to use it.
It started with Lil Kim in 1996 when she released her debut album, Hardcore. She had a song on it entitled Queen Bitch from which her nickname was derived, as she was called The Queen B from that time on.
Four years later, in 2000, Trina came out with an album titled Da Baddest Bitch and bitch officially became a part of the African American lexicon as a term of endearment if a woman called another woman a bitch, as in “bitch please” or “I’m partying with my bitches tonight”.
Don’t get me wrong, male rappers have been using the word in lyrics since the 80’s but most women frowned upon it and had something to say negatively about the person using the word. Male rappers were always being ostracized for using it in raps, but when Lil Kim came along and coined herself as the Queen Bitch it began to take on a different form.
Not only do women use it unabashedly, men do it also. It’s become part of people’s everyday vernacular unless it’s being used in a negative way, in a form of malice. Continue reading
When #Winning Isn’t Really Winning
News Flash. Just because a man wants to have sex with you does not mean that he wants you to be his woman or that he will try to make you his woman. This goes doubly for loose women.
Over the past few months I’ve been seeing the topic that the hoes are winning in 2011 being posted on blogs and forum boards across the Internets. It’s usually accompanied by a picture of a NBA or NFL player, rapper or other celebrity in entertainment being up close and personal with what most women will call an industry hoe.
You see all kind of comments and criticism against the couple because he, the baller, shouldn’t be making a hoe his woman. Then maybe a few months later you never see any more pictures of them together.
A classic example was when Hill Harper was spotted out and about with Dolicia Bryan, a video vixen and model. Women across the web were livid that this so called intellectual was dating what they call a booty model. Then a bunch of stories sprang up about how she was an industry jump-off and all around hoe. Most of the women that were complaining were educated Black women, who felt betrayed, for some insane reason, that an educated Black man would date a booty model. As if he had to date an educated Black woman because he went to school. These women were livid, spewing their venom across blogs left and right, all because they felt like he should have been dating educated women such as themselves. They never stopped to think that this woman wasn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination and they really didn’t know the extent of the relationship they had. They just went in on them and made it into a hot topic.
Not long after that, you didn’t see them together anymore. Case closed; chalk one up for Internet antagonist. Well not quite true!
The real question here is what were Hill Harpers intentions in the first place. Take a stab in the dark. If the answer is, he wanted to have sex with her, then you’re right, anything else is dead wrong. Continue reading