Donald Sterling has been in the news over the past few weeks because of racist remarks recorded by his girlfriend/“archivist”. She lead him into a conversation that saw the 80 year old owner of the Los Angeles Clippers spew hateful rhetoric and then try to justify it by saying it’s just how it is.
This tape was eventually leaked, as they all are, and now we have a media storm surrounding him and what the players, coaches and NBA owners think about what should or should not have been done about what he said!
NBA brass stood up and fined him $2.5 million, banned him from having any affiliation with the NBA for life and stated that they would recommend that he be forced to sale the team! Yeah, victory!
Whelp, not so fast, he says he’s not giving up without a fight, but it’s proving hard to find council because his name is so toxic now! Law firms are afraid of being labeled as sympathetic to a racist so most of the big boys are declining what would be millions of dollars in revenues to steer clear of a sensationalized trial that would probably still lead to the inevitable, him being forced to sale the team.
In steps his wife, she claims that she should not be punished because of what Donald said, and that she should be able to purchase the team instead of someone else. What!
So in her mind, her owning the team, in California, a Community Property state, where all assets acquired while married are considered to be 50/50 for spouses, no matter who owns it, means that he doesn’t own the team! Who are you kidding, if you own it, he still owns it, thats simple.
I know that in a capitalistic society, you shouldn’t be forced to sale your company because you’re a racist, lets face it, half of the Fortune 500 owners would be selling but the NBA isn’t the same as a regular ole capitalist offering. They have rules and bylaws that govern the owners behavior as well as the players, and all levels of management.
The truth is, if the GM, CEO or President of any major corporation or any sports franchise, NFL, NHL, or MLB included made blatantly racist statements, they’d be fired also, and never would be able to associate with that sport again! (see Marge Schott)
So the fact that Sterling and his wife think that they shouldn’t be punished speaks volumes to their mentalities!
There is no way that he could think that what he said didn’t come from the mouth of a racist, as he claims that he likes helping Blacks, and Magic Johnson doesn’t, so how could he be racist!
White privilege has afforded him the life of, if I give to Black charities, but I think they stink and don’t want to rent to them, I’m not a racist!
If I objectify them and then brag about their beautiful Black bodies, like slave masters used to do, I’m not a racist!
If they work for me and they help me make $100’s of millions of dollars, and I articulate that as, “I clothe them, feed them, and buy them cars”, as opposed to, I pay them for performing a task, I’m not a racist!
Only a racist can see the comments that he has made since the incident as not racist!
He has a slave masters mentality and the business that he owns “just happens” to be a business that utilizes the athletic prowess and strength of the Black male to make money. As a Black male, knowing that my “owner” thinks of me in a similar fashion that slave owners thought about their slaves, would make me do exactly what they planned on doing. Refuse to play for the team unless something is done, and sorry Mrs Sterling, your reputation is intertwined with his, so that goes for you too! As if you didn’t know that he was a racist even though you were married to him for all those years. There’s no way on this planet that a man that would say the types of things he’s said to a half Black and Mexican to her face hasn’t spewed his vile racist opinions at the dinner table, in bed, or while watching TV, on numerous occasions. And no, the interview with Anderson Cooper didn’t help, unless he’s trying to play the senile old man card, and it still doesn’t absolve him from being a racist, he’s just a racist with dementia!
Jay Z, Solange and Sensationalist “Journalism”!
When the elevator recording was leaked that showed Solange Knowles attacking Jay Z in an elevator the internet went wild!
All kind of speculations hit the fan, no one knows what occurred to provoke her to use physical violence on Hov but whatever it was, she surely was pissed. Pissed to the point of “Im a kick the shit out of you” on more than one occasion, type of pissed!
She was mad about something and thanks to no audio to accompany the video; radio DJ’s, pundits and bloggers alike took to whatever medium that they use, to spew they’re on personal opinions on what had to occur in order for Solange to go there.
What I noticed is that, whatever “type” of writer/person that they portray themselves to be on the internet, whatever agenda they propagate, was the understanding that that they wrote from. Most would readily say, okay, isn’t that how everyone reacts, from their own personal outlooks on life. Don’t we all react to things based off our own personal experiences?
Yes we do!
So what does that say about the tweets, blog post and status updates that we witnessed after the leak?
Well it’s simple, read what they said and attribute it to that persons life story! How many of these people were really objective? Did they use any logic or reasoning to come to their conclusions or were their words emotionally charged!?
People started to speculate on what he probably said to her, or what he did to Beyonce, so many post on these various forms of social media seemed to welcome the turmoil in their relationship! People seemed to be happy because their relationship wasn’t as perfect as “they” (meaning the bloggers) wanted to believe that it was. People tend to think that if a couple that’s in the spotlight doesn’t air their dirty laundry for the world to see, then they must be “perfect” or at least pretending to be, like I really want you to know whats going on behind closed doors!
Others whooped and hollered about how she kicked and punched him, and painted him out to be a wimp ass dude, that brags about being tough on the streets in his music but wasn’t tough enough to handle what 100 lb Solange was dishing out! Jay Z bitch made, is what a lot of women were broadcasting.
So if he would have beat her down or choked her out, what would he be then?!
A woman beater, once a gain, bitch made, etc. There was literally nothing he could have done in that situation better than what he did, nothing! But the fact that women are painting him as a soft punk speaks volumes about who they are and what they think!
People started speculating on their marriage and talking about he beats her, and that they are about to get divorced. As if just because they are famous and in the spotlight that they shouldn’t ever argue with each other. And if they do, it’s divorce time.
Ask yourself this, how many arguments have you had with your significant other, how frequently? Did you have one and call it quits? But every single time Jay or Beyonce are seen in public with a frown on their faces, the blogosphere goes bananas with the marital problems posts and pray for their separation. Im guessing so that they can say “I told you so”, and have more BS to write about!
At the end of the day, families have problems, brothers and sisters have arguments, sometimes things get out of hand, but that happens to everyone! The only difference is that people that idolize people hate when those that they idolize don’t live up to the expectations that they think that they should live up to!
To put it short, those who’ve been beat up in a relationship attributes it to him beating her, those who’ve been cheated on claims it was over cheating, and so on! And if that doesn’t speak to who you are, nothing does!
Propaganda At Its Be$t!
When Michael Sams stood in wait praying that he received that coveted phone call from a team alerting him that he would become a member of the NFL, something struck me as strange.
His scene looked nothing like the scene I had witnessed on hundreds to thousands of occasions before, being someone who would watch or follow a few rounds of the draft yearly. His actual mention at seventh from the bottom, of the seventh round was historical in itself as, no one besides hardcore scouts and NFL higher ups would even think to talk about a guy who on most occasions, and when I say most, I mean 90% of the time, don’t even make an active NFL roster, and would fade off into obscurity quicker than it took to make the pick on the clock.
15 minutes, nope, not for a guy picked in that spot!
But low and behold we sit here and were talking about this guy and the fact that he kissed his boyfriend on TV!
There’s nothing to see here is always indicative of there’s something here that we don’t want you to see and what they don’t want us to see isn’t the infamous kiss, it’s why the Michael Sams even got airtime!
If he hadn’t come out as gay before the draft, most analyst said that they thought he could go as high as the second or third round. After the announcement, a lot of the execs, under anonymity, stated that he would drop down further in the draft due to the fact that he would be a disruptive force in the locker room, amongst their reasoning! What they were effectively saying was that most of the NFL was homophobic and didn’t want to be put in a situation where they had to “openly” deal with a gay player. Plausible deniability comes into play here, what you don’t know you don’t know!
So the question arises, why did he get so much media attention?
If we’re being serious, we all know why!
It’s because he is gay and pro gay activist we’re going to, and did, shove (no pun intended) Michael Sams down our throats, period! His entire campaign has been orchestrated by the pro gay activist groups to push their agenda, and for ESPN to sell ads!
Now, before you go into a tirade and go up in arms about how I used the words “pro gay agenda”, what you need to know is that that statement is not meant to be negative in any way. The only people that would view it as such have an agenda of their own!
There are pro women, Black, Jewish, Arab, Hispanic agendas also, and the only people that think that these agendas are negative are the people that are fighting against them!
To me, there are no such thing as gay, Black, Hispanic or women’s rights, there are only rights, to infringe upon them in any capacity is wrong, not constitutionally wrong, wrong period!
The reason why I say that it’s all propaganda is that in all the draft picks I’ve seen not even 5% (but I’ll just say 5%) have ever been pictured on draft day, kissing their significant others, and those were the ones that were drafted in the first round.
The other 95% that are shown are usually hugging or kissing their mothers or fathers. They are usually in wait with their families and friends, if they’re not going first round, and we never, ever see them get the coverage that Sams did!
Now, the first “openly” gay football player, who went in the 7th round has created a media buzz for months and now has the number two best selling jersey in football, and a reality show!
So you tell me, what do you think the agenda was?!
I’m Just Trying to Survive
Chapter from Philosophical Street Chronic (I’m Just Trying to Survive!)
The number one driving force behind a man’s actions is survival. When faced with situations that can lead to life or death we will fight to the death to stay alive no matter what is trying to kill us. Happiness comes in second and love/acceptance is third. The reason for this ordering is because you don’t really understand what acceptance/love is as a child because your parents are the only people that you really know, and they love/accept you unconditionally, notwithstanding those that are abusive, but you know what feeling happy is, so you search for that throughout your life. Then later in life you realize that being happy is tied to being loved and accepted by others.
So in the inner city survival within your environment is learned at a very early age in life and it stems from the activities that happen on your block and then later what happens on the blocks surrounding yours. This is one of the major reasons Black youth join gangs, which will be discussed further in a later chapter.
One of the other reasons that this thought pattern is adopted by Black boys living in the ghetto early in life is because of an ominous warning by some adult, on TV, or the radio, erroneously stating that the life expectancy of a young Black male is 21 – 25. Add to that, the fact that most Black boys attended church on the regular as children, and one of the major things preached about in church is getting right with God, because tomorrow isn’t promised to you. So we tend to develop a subconscious thought pattern that says we need to get rich early in life so that we can be happy and experience the finer things in life before we die.
So at an early age you learn what it takes to survive in the environment that you live in, and if the things that you see are gang banging, drug dealing, and killing, you start to believe that this is how to survive. If you grow up in an affluent neighborhood and you see none of this, then you formulate survival in a different manner. Continue reading
Objective All True-ISM (Altruism)
Back in the days white Americas vitriol and hate was reserved for Blacks strictly because we were seen to be less than 100% man, as it was stated that we were 3/5th’s of a man. This racist mentality was the basis of laws like the Black Codes that made up Jim Crow America during the late 19th to the middle 20th century. Civil Rights initiatives beat down most of those laws and gave us better ground to stand on and since then we have been building upon a better foundation to reach our lofty goals.
But while we were building and fighting for every inch of ground that we got, a new animus was being nurtured by the “elitist” of our society. These people were the white people who were so blinded by their privilege that they lived in an impregnable bubble. This bubble would continue to grow and grow as more and more white Americans became wealthy enough to partake in the “finer things” in life and separate themselves from the other 99% percent of society in which we live in.
This 1% of society follows Ayn Rand and practices the Randian philosophy that she developed from Existentialism; a philosophy developed during the late 19th and early 20th century, that she called Objectivism! This philosophy emerged around the world after the Civil War, when Black men and women in America were finally afforded the same rights as white people.
Objectivism is, as stated here, “Objectivism’s central tenets are that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (or rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans’ metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form”. Continue reading