“As an African American, I’m frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been 
deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doing ... but he said it in his book,” Robert Johnson said while campaigning with Clinton in Columbia South Carolina.Exodus Mentality said ...
"So you would encourage them to a life of pimping if it emowered them, despite the potentially debilitating effect it would have on everyone around them. And being the colorblind individual that you are, you would encourage them to emulate any color pimp they can find. Seems like a pretty sound philosophy to me."Denmark Vesey said ...
We really must do something about the public school system in this country.
21 comments:
Since I didn't hear a reply from you in the earlier thread I decided to pursue the subject over here. You said earlier that if your son ever received a racial smear you would tell him a story about the Buffalo Soldiers. Why didn't you choose to burnish his spirits with a tale about Christopher Columbus? Columbus is the paragon of risk taking and personal courage in the face of great uncertainty. But we both know why you didn't choose Columbus or, for that matter, Charles Lindbergh. A young black boy in southern California would have a hard time identifying with the two I mentioned.
You reject race or group identity politics out of hand. Fine. But what is group identity politics if it isn't your favorite rap icon's prosody of daily struggles in the hood? Take your time on answering this one, too.
A person, like Sharpton, can do the right thing for the wrong reason. Going back for a moment to the issue of the anchorwoman, I used Donald Trump as an example of professionalism. For me the it has to do with the appropriateness of certain forms of jest in the workplace. It may be trivial but it is attention to details that makes one worthy of being called a professional. What you say is as, if not more, important than what you do. Just ask Will Smith.
If a man's contradictions make him interesting then you're the most interesting figure in here. To denounce a fairytale with gay characters or policies restricting symbols associated with Christmas would strike many as quite parochial and weak-willed. Pull your kids from the school and establish a religious commune. Mormons do it. Homeschool is another option. But no, you choose to stay and fight. You choose to aggressively assert your religious and sexual identity. This is the American way. Black people just do it better and with style. It appears that Sharpton's egoism and bravado grates on you much like your rap hero's hairstyle and tattoos offends black bourgeoisie sensibilities.
Sharpton's lack of accountability to a measurable constituency is what grates on me. It makes him an old-fashioned broker/pimp for "group" interests he's not authorized to represent.
Consequently, it appears more than likely that the carpetbagging Rev. Al spends more time and accumulates more ducats representing the interests of Rev. Al, than representing the interests of constituents who can measure his performance.
I'm not surprised that you've not questioned who appointed Rev. Al a "leader" - for the same reason you haven't poked very deeply into the paradox of Obama's record vs. Obama's celebrity.
In both cases brah, you seem excessively moved by celebrity and insufficiently critical of underlying deeds, measures, and results - and most importantly - who constructed and maintains the illusion of celebrity in either instance. At least with Obama, despite the distasteful falsity of his "celebrity", it is indisputable that he is an elected U.S. senator from a populous and powerful midwestern state.
As for Bob Johnson, pornographer, scumbag, and pimp extraordinaire.. I'm surprised that he and the ice witch didn't burst into flames perpetrating from inside a church. (musta been one'a them kind'a churches where the prayers don't leave the room)
Bob Johnson entering the fray (along with the CBC and the old guard also siding with the ice witch) makes it clear that class interests among Black folks are very decidedly in play and that the color green trumps the sepia tones of identity with no regard.
First, I have never declared Sharpton a leader. He is a media watchdog much like other special interest groups with a cultural agenda. He looks for racial antagonism while others look for violations of 'family values'.
My problem is that he shouldn't be denounced just for calling attention to a problem. This is what I meant by saying that a person could do the right thing with the wrong motivation in mind. And damn it, if black public figures face special scrutiny then I'm not going to raise a finger to defend white celebrities incite public outcry for their misdeeds.
As for Obama, I have my reasons for supporting him and you have yours. Mine are no less valid. In fact, I feel quite vindicated that Johnson and the old heads stand by Clinton. Even as Obama's celebrity rises it is used against him.
Racialized references to 'shucking and jiving', 'pimp', and 'hustler' are also used to undermine his merit. Yesterday, while listening to the BBC on Sirius, I heard an analyst say in essence that Obama's ability was simply that he was a good talker and able to rally thousands to attend his venues. Qualities like youth, charm, and popularity, which have traditionally been viewed as assets for a politician are looked upon with suspicion when a black man uses them quite effectively.
I don't believe any political figure is perfect. But I know from personal experience how objective criteria can be applied in biased fashion. No prominent black person can avoid this.
He looks for racial antagonism
Yielding a systemic incentive for the Rev. to find shit where it really isn't there, and THAT sir, is a HUGE part of the problem.
My problem is that he shouldn't be denounced just for calling attention to a problem.
Like many folks, I'm pretty hard-pressed to call this one a problem..., again, the Rev. has played himself much like the little boy who cried wolf on this go round. (and I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time he's done that, either)
Even as Obama's celebrity rises it is used against him.
Celebrity should be despised and distrusted wherever it arise, and chiefly in those instances where it is patently unearned, and thus the deliverable work product of forces moving behind the scenes to generate and sustain it.
Tell me Sub, is there a single talking head news reader still on the air (celebrities one and all) who earned that status the old fashioned way through impactful and original journalism? Or are they all now simply Orwellian corporate media creations resulting from thousands of hours of airwave occupancy and passive imprinting on the suggestible collective psyche?
Plainly that type-a-shit is a recipe for cultural and political disaster.
P6 putting yoeman's work into the quisling pimp Bob Johnson.....,
In our attempt to categorize Sharpton as "good" or "bad," we miss out the central point: the he is neither one nor the other. He certainly serves a useful purpose at some points in time, like on his TV show. But he is also too quick to jump up and give a soundbite interview on the most obscure racial skirmishes. In this vein, he reenforces the thinking about blacks that we are dependent on the racial allowances of whites for our own progress.
Submariner said...
"You said earlier that if your son ever received a racial smear you would tell him a story about the Buffalo Soldiers. Why didn't you choose to burnish his spirits with a tale about Christopher Columbus? Columbus is the paragon of risk taking and personal courage in the face of great uncertainty. But we both know why you didn't choose Columbus or, for that matter, Charles Lindbergh. A young black boy in southern California would have a hard time identifying with the two I mentioned."
Actually, quite the contrary my most esteemed friend.
Limiting my sons to that which they can “identify” would stunt their development and create men sadly restricted to some narrow self-defeating racial construct. I won’t say any names Mike and Exodus.
Instead I encourage my sons to identify with any virtue that empowers them, regardless of the race of the person who exemplifies it.
I teach them that no race or culture monopolizes power grace or grandeur.
Therefore their bedtime stories have ranged from Buffalo Soldiers to 9th Century Danish warriors named Uhtred. They are more likely to watch Japanese Samurai flicks like Lone Wolf and Cub than “urban” flick like First Sunday. They hear stories about their maternal great grandfather who left Georgia for Harlem at 14 with $10 in his pocket and went on to become a prestigious attorney. They hear about their paternal great grandfather who ran the numbers game in East Baltimore in the 1950’s, famous for his talent in shoot outs. They listen to Lil Wayne and love Soldier Boy. They can recite both Dunbar and Kipling. They can play a little Fur Elise and speak a little Spanish. Football, basketball, golf, chess, they can more than hold their own.
They know more and understand more about Africa and black history and black people than most GSWS adults.
Now … I don’t recommend people try this at home.
It takes tremendous self-esteem and deep pride in one’s blackness to appreciate other cultures without feeling threat or wrapping ones self in the security blanket of victim mythology and self-righteous entitlement.
Which is one of my problems with Sharpton et al.
I find all the bug eyed race public histrionics around stray words uttered by miscellaneous white people makes black people appear weak vulnerable people incapable of thinking anything but race.
... Creating a self-denying prophesy.
DV
I find all the bug eyed race public histrionics around stray words uttered by miscellaneous white people makes black people appear weak vulnerable people incapable of thinking anything but race.
So let me get this straight. The only events you will raise your voice over are Kool and the Gang vs. Silent Night... Or gay fairytales versus distorted european history. You will never raise a hand or counter anyone who professes to challenge you and your manhood. That you will allow another grown man or woman call you a punk in front of your kids without any response the like. That you will let a white man tell you he will lynch you from the very tree in your front yard while you stand next to your kids without any response from you. Is that what you are telling us about your character? And you are suppose to be the blackest man on the planet??
I commend you for exposing your kids to a variety of worldy topics. However some are more valuable to them than others. Not teaching them the realities of the world outside of Bel Air may be the biggest injustice to them of all. Having book smarts and not street smarts can get one killed.
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/925/Black_man_dragged_to_death_in_Jasper_TX
Three white men with suspected ties to the Ku Klux Klan chained James Byrd Jr. (a Black hitchhiker) to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him to his death. His head, neck, and right arm were found about a mile from his mangled torso. A wrench with the name of one of the suspects on it was found near the body. Byrd had been dragged about two miles on a narrow, winding asphalt road.
Lawrence Russell Brewer, 31, Shawn Allen Berry and John William King, both 23, were charged with murder and jailed without bail. Byrd, 49, had been walking home from a niece's bridal shower on a Saturday night and apparently accepted a ride from the defendants. He was last seen riding in the back of the truck, police said. When he was found, he was so badly disfigured that investigators had to use fingerprints to identify him. King and Brewer were covered with tattoos indicating white supremacist beliefs, and all three had spent time in prison, where they apparently had ties to the KKK and the Aryan Nation.
Denmark, you didn't mention any Danish warrior in the earlier thread but I'll accept that even though I think your first response was closer to the truth.
You didn't respond to my observation on professionalism and my other question:
But what is group identity politics if it isn't your favorite rap icon's prosody of daily struggles in the hood?
"You reject race or group identity politics out of hand. Fine. But what is group identity politics if it isn't your favorite rap icon's prosody of daily struggles in the hood? Take your time on answering this one, too." Submariner
Group Identity politics is participating in the charade that your experience in life is for the most part a function of what "group" you happen to belong and not a function of how you behave as an individual.
Assignment of these group distinctions is arbitrary and subjective.
The tough successful educated black man from the hood, 'Spook who sat by the door', engaged in a noble struggle against "Global White Supremacy" and the Gay effeminite meterosexual groupie engaged in the struggle against "patriarchy" can be the same person.
(As we have seen here today).
My favorite rap icons don't rap about "struggle" in the hood. They rap about individual achievement and self aggrandizement. They traffic in personally empowering myth. They reject crippling group identity theories.
It's not white supremacy or black supremacy. It's supremacy of the supreme.
Money is just how they keep score.
As the world gets more Orwellian celebration of the individual is a revolutionary act.
Sharpton is a Hip Hop act.
He's a political Cool Moe D. Aint had a hit in years. His lyrics are wack and he aint got no flow.
If he dropped an album, it would go aluminum.
Fiddy's "I Get Money" is exponentially more politically potent than is Sharpton's "Nooses. Nooses. All in da newz. Noooses"
Denmark,
It's not really group identity politics you dislike; it's self-defeating and servile group identity politics you dislike.
DV...
"They know more and understand more about Africa and black history and black people than most GSWS adults."
Like the origin of the name Denmark in Denmark Vesey?
In all seriousness, there is no such thing as "black" history. All history is our history and nothing going on anywhere among black folks or any other can be understood without understanding >all history.
That is why it is just as important to understand Dostoevsky and "Crime and Punishment", Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights", The Ring of the Nibelungen, as it is to understand the Kemetian "Book of the Dead", Lao Tzu, or Aristotle.
Above all it's important to understand math, because it teaches you to think logically.
Prof. Clarke (PBUH) taught us to study all of history if we want to even think about understanding our own.
Maybe one day someone will teach you that all history is our own history.
See I was going to stay out of this nonsense until you put my name in yo mouth. I just can't seem to shake this feeling of wanting to know just what craziness you have come up with each ensuing day.
"Instead I encourage my sons to identify with any virtue that empowers them, regardless of the race of the person who exemplifies it."
So you would encourage them to a life of pimping if it emowered them, despite the potentially debilitating effect it would have on everyone around them. And being the colorblind individual that you are, you would encourage them to emulate any color pimp they can find. Seems like a pretty sound philosophy to me.
"I teach them that no race or culture monopolizes power grace or grandeur."
Bravo, we agree on something after all. That is exactly what we teach our children, in the context of understanding the R/WS dynamic that they will have to face and overcome as they go about the business of making their lives and their world better.
We don't teach our children that they are victims. We do teach them that in the real world there are people who have a vested interest in keeping them down, so they know who these people are and are prepared for them.
No race or culture holds a monopoly, but one race and culture has historically and conclusiively demonstrated that it certainly would like to; and has been trying with a certain amount of success for centuries to accomplish that mission. I'm not saying anything negative about your children, but if they don't know there is an enemy, it will be that much harder for them to recognize it when it comes after them.
Now where in my philosophy do you see a victim mentality? If you weren't blind you would see an Exodus Mentality. We are on a journey to freedom. You are still just spinning your wheels, confused into believing that you are moving on up.
Supremacy of the supreme? And supreme is whatever you want it to be. So if you decide to claim that you are supreme even while you are sitting in a gutter, I guess you would be supreme, at least in your own mind. That's about as far as your supremacy extends. It certainly doesn't extend to the exercise of any form of power over anyone or anything else. You continue to feel comfortable in your delusion, and as long as you can continue to stomach an increasingly diminished definition of your supremacy you will never feel any pain.
Let me drop some science for all your fine readers. The DV, Cnu shuffle works just fine for a rampant individualist who thinks that everyone is in this world on their own and for themselves. That was one of the best tricks the power system ever pulled on the powerless. Convince them that their best interest is never to associate, affiliate, and ally themselves with anyone. Go it alone and make your own way in the world. Of course that is contrary to how the powerful actually achieve and maintain power. We use words like cabal, and secret society, to describe the shadowy figures of power on this planet. Does cabal and society sound like rampant individualism to you? Well maybe in DV world it does.
You claim to learn the lessons of those who are "supreme" but you completely miss the point that they are not trying to teach you the lessons, in fact they are trying to keep you from learning. So the obvious lessons you learn from them are nothing more than misdirection, designed to keep you from achieving what they already have, that power you so crave. The real lessons are there for you to learn as well, but you can't see the forest for the trees.
The DV, Cnu shuffle works just fine for a rampant individualist who thinks that everyone is in this world on their own and for themselves. That was one of the best tricks the power system ever pulled on the powerless. Convince them that their best interest is never to associate, affiliate, and ally themselves with anyone.
Dwight, I got no beef with you.
But Telemique - the friendly angel of white supremacy - has taken you down an evolutionary blind alley.
You'll be ready to kick yourself when you realize the totality of his parasitic uselessness. You'd be better served to ally yourself with a tapeworm....,
nulan...
"You'd be better served to ally yourself with a tapeworm....,"
LOL
Aside from that, me thinks, Exodus Mentality was Exodus Mentality long before he heard of either one of us, Nulan.
"tapeworm"
That's a good one.
"But Telemique - the friendly angel of white supremacy - has taken you down an evolutionary blind alley"
I just met Michael last year. I am 40, and have been studying this R/WS for 20 years. What I know I learned at the feet of some of the most respected and learned people ever to have lived. Michael just happens to agree with some of what they taught me and what I have learned for myself in all those years. I got one of those high IQ certificates too. That and a dollar will get me a cup of coffee anywhere but Starbucks, but please believe nobody is leading my down any road that I don't logically and rationally choose to be on.
I don't have beef with anyone, especially in this virtual world of near anonymity and blustering bravado. I won't be shamed or humiliated away from my understanding of R/WS or anything else. I can be convinced that there is a better course, given the proper application of logic and reasoned thinking. Please feel free to continue to use whatever logic you have at your disposal. I am not averse to learning and growing, but so far you haven't given me any reason to learn anything from you or grow in the direction you seem to think is best.
but so far you haven't given me any reason to learn anything from you or grow in the direction you seem to think is best.
Nor will I attempt to Dwight.
You wrote "CNu". I wrote back.
That's all there is.
"That is exactly what we teach our children, in the context of understanding the R/WS dynamic that they will have to face and overcome as they go about the business of making their lives and their world better." Exodus Mentality.
Believe me, we do not teach our children "exactly" the same thing.
Pro'ly not brah. But lest we digress into an unfalsifiable state, let's just say at least we both are teaching them. And quit crackin on my typin. I done told you I can't be shamed into anything. and I ain't got time for spell check. You know exactly what I mean each and every time I pontificate.
Cnu, as evidenced above, I was mistaken earlier when I said I hadn't learned anything from you. See, whether or not you are trying (and I daresay you have made at least one conscious attempt to enlighten me), you are putting out information, and for some it may help bring clarity or understanding. I'm not saying you are setting yourself up as mine or anyone else's teacher. But you surely spend enough time explaining shit if you are not attempting for someone to learn something from it.
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