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Archive | July, 2010

Book Review of “Losing My Cool: How A Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip Hop Culture” by Thomas Chatterton Williams

Earlier this week, my friend sent me a text and said “I found my new favorite writer. His name is Thomas Chatterton Williams. His book is so well written I want to throw it.” So immediately, upon such a wonderful review, I googled this brother’s name while on my phone driving (yes, I know what Oprah said, but when was the last time Oprah actually drove herself around on a regular basis) just to see who he was. I read his interview on Amazon underneath his premier book, a memoir entitled Losing My Cool: How A Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip Hop Culture.

Thomas Chatterton Williams writes a memoir that is clearly dedicated to the livelihood of his father. He acknowledges his mixed race (his father black and his mother white), however he’s aware that his parents made the conscious decision to raise him and his five years elder brother as indeed black. His father was in possession of a earned Ph.D. and took it upon himself to give evening lessons with Thomas from an early age. It is at this early age, third grade, that we begin the journey with the author until his college graduation. Through a supreme command of the English language, one that I have not read in a long time, Williams navigates the dichotomy of his life at home with “Pappy” (his father) and how he has ingested hip hop as a culture.

Aside from his predilection toward basketball as he described, I was for the most part endeared to his life story through high school because it seemed identifiable. He grew up in a decent neighborhood, but his folks weren’t rich. Check. We’re only three years apart, so high school experiences were more than recognizable. Check. He was enthralled with the aesthetics of hip hop culture: the clothes, the language, the music and even the philosophies associated with it. Check. Granted me and him diverged on a social life, part of which I’m sure was from a lack of a religious influence that I certainly had, but still, his story made enough sense to me.

Then somewhere, when he made the transition from high school to college, the reader would notice a marked shift in the tone of the author. The educational history of Williams had him in all white Catholic elementary school, all black Catholic high school which landed him on the campus of Georgetown for college. It was at this juncture in the reading that it seemed that Williams shifted from racial uplift to some phantasmagoric form of racial self-hate. This self-hate has its genesis in this now seemingly and almost personified character of “hip hop” which I italicize because the hip hop that Williams writes about is not the hip hop I am familiar with.

“Hip Hop” for Williams is the enemy within the gates. Although Williams has walked, talked, dined with, had sex with, bragged about, fought with, and fought for, Williams fails to truly engage hip hop culture in the context of this book. While I certainly welcome an opposing view when it comes to the table of discussion, such an inability to dialogue with hip hop was more than a disappointment. The correlation of “hip hop” to the failures of his various characters in the book, from RaShawn to his ex-girlfriend Stacey or even to Ant was absolutely abysmal. He operated from stereotypes that did nothing but produce more stereotypes.

For Williams hip hop culture was not embodied in the classic black love movies, the premier being “Love Jones” or even “Love and Basketball” or even the more cult classic “Brown Sugar.” No, for Williams “hip hop” existed in the philosophies emoted by Biggie and Jay-Z whom he quoted song lyrics from the most and possibly in the gangsta movies such as “Menace II Society” and “Juice” which played up the drugs and the violence and the utter mistreatment of women. The indomitable irony is that “hip hop” (with the italics) was black life.

For the remainder of the book, he failed to encounter one single, solitary black African American (read: black person who’s descended from slaves in the United States) who was highlighted in a totally positive light. I felt the shift come as he spoke of Georgetown’s campus and I felt that if Williams had his “come to Jesus” moment while on the campus of Georgetown, I was not going to be able to take him seriously. And of course, this is how Williams describes the blacks on Georgetown campus as the following:

The black world at Georgetown was only a microcosm of the wider black world outside of the gates, I discovered, but it was a world all the same, and governed by its own rules and language, its own kings and queens, nobles and serfs. In many ways it was the negative of the surrounding white social order (a white order the likes of which I surely hadn’t seen before): at the top of the obsidian pyramid were the students who remained closest to the street or on whom the scent of show business was most detectable. In roughly descending order this black Brahmin caste comprised of (a) the men’s basketball team (especially those members who came from legitimate ghettos and who put the “athlete” in student-athlete) (b) the alpha females who hung out with, fought over, and fucked the men’s basketball team, (c) the blossoming R&B singer Amerie and some of her friends (once it became clear she had a recording contract), (d) certain members of the football team (you can’t name a single NFL player from Georgetown), (e) one of two members of the track team (track is almost never televised) and (f) the truly thugged out non-athletes for whom affirmative action was either a godsend or a Sisyphean curse.

At the bottom of the heap were those–mostly males–who didn’t rap or sing, who didn’t walk and talk like they slung crack rock, who didn’t have a wicked jump shot. Which is the same as saying, at the bottom of the pile were those of us who most resembled college students.”

It was after I read that, in the middle of a paragraph, I underlined ” college students” and wrote in the margins so college students can only fit a certain mold and for the duration of the second half of the book I became with the most insipid barrage of racial and cultural stereotypes that I had ever read in a long time.

Please understand, I’m not speaking in hyperbole. After the next couple of pages when Williams decided to venture into the Shaw neighborhood where Howard University was, he wrote most ignobly that

“…This was no longer the place Thurgood Marshall studied law; this was the place where Sean Combs became Puff Daddy…I used to get the same feeling going to Howard that I got on trips to Plainfield or Newark as a child: It was bad. You had the vague sense that you were doing something bad when you were there, and that could be exhilirating. I am sure there is still a serious side to Howard, but I did not see it…I saw a giant masquerade ball, a gangsta party where middle class college kids–the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyer from suburban enclaves outside Atlanta and Chicago (north side)–as if just to prove that they were not middle class, mingled and flirted witht he street and everyone got dressed up as thugs and hustlers and hoes. And this vision corresponded neatly with the images I saw on television and in the DC clubs, with the way my friends got down back in Jersey, witht he way the faux-thugs and athletes carried themselves at Georgetown. This was real.” [emphasis added]

Somewhere, in a place I’m sure Williams does not want to touch anytime soon, he’ll have to come to grips with his own warped point of view. Generally I shy away from making such bold declarations because they go against my own postmodern proclivities that I’ve blogged so heavily about in the past. However, in Williams case, I must make an exception.

I find it highly problematic that throughout the book Williams has no qualms about problematizing the entire hip hop culture with one broad brush as if to be totally ignorant of it nuances. I certainly do not make the claim that I am some hip hop expert, nor a stalwart hip hop apologist, but, I do believe that like any other culture, there are levels of immersion in which one is a part of a certain culture. Williams seems to be wholly ignorant, consciously or not, of the fact that all young blacks are not a part of the hip hop culture. Aside from completely dismissing Howard University as an institute of higher learning (and for me, taking a swipe at the institution of HBCUs as a whole and getting facts wrong about Howard students being from the North Side of Chicago when I’d be willing to bet a year’s salary that South Siders by far outnumber North Siders), Williams disdain for hip hop culture came off as a disdain for black American life.

I do not know if that was his intent, but it is certainly the tone his writing began to take once he began his collegiate life. Once he made the decision to be a philosophy major and got introduced to the likes of Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger, he began to rationalize away that which hip hop had deposited into him. Now, as me and The Critical Cleric had discussed, and as I said in my blog a few days prior, there are some definitely anti-intellectual strands of hip hop, however, to forsake the cultural wealth that is hip hop culture by a) looking through the lens of white, homogenous, western philosophy to critique and b) equating ALL of young black culture with all of the negative aspects of hip hop culture is the epitome of myopia that is systemic of unbridled elitism that does more damage to the race you claim is in need of a reclaiming of the “discipline and the spirit we have lost.”

For Williams, as he stated in the epilogue that “more than thirty years the black world has revolved around the inventors of hip hop values, and this has been a decisive step backwards.” But, this reeks of the conservative mindset that rests in the notions of personal agency and personal responsibility but do not at all address systemic issues at play. For the entire book, Williams appears to leave underdeveloped characters as memorials to failures in the black community as a direct result of hip hop. Let me be clear, while well-written, his book flops as a serious cultural critique of young black American life because of his insistence on operating from stereotypes on hip hop culture as a dominant paradigm.

Frankly, as a young black male who is a product of an HBCU, I vacillated between being personally insulted and angered by his aloofness of black culture. I think Williams suffers from an undiagnosed identity crisis. His struggle to maintain friends back home once he went away to college is a battle that many young adults face when going to college irrespective of race–how do you handle your friends back home, especially when you have begun to spend the semesters away at school and only a couple of weeks back home. It seems disingenuous that Williams discounted all of the American blacks at Georgetown for his ethnic African friends and now white friends. Perhaps simple on my part, but it seems to me that Williams had no problem engaging in unwarranted elitism just to prove a personal point about “hip hop”; it became a self-serving self-prophecy.

Again, while well written, I take with a grain of salt a black person who uses Martin Hedegger and Shelby Steele as a preeminent lens to critique meta-black culture and in turn the hip hop culture, while admitting that James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines and Edward P. Jones were just a name to him. And this grain of salt is so large that it will immediately give me hypertension. This western philosophy rooted in the rational thought process that promotes cogito ergo sum as the zenith of philosophical understanding at times fails radically when discussing the history of blacks here in this country. Williams offers a glimpse into race head on when his father and brother have a violent run-in with the local suburban cops, but still allows that incident to be one amongst the family and not at all an existence for hundreds if not thousands of other blacks across the country. While he allowed for the history of racism in this country to factor into how he felt about the situations, and even more so how his father’s run-ins with racism 1950s style affected him, he still relegated that experience to his father and no one else.

Williams failure to address institutional racism left the notions raised with regards to hip hop culture in a rhetorical vacuum. When he published his article in a newspaper about why black students decided to self-segregate themselves, thanks to Hedegger, he placed the sheer onus of blacks participating in the chess club or other groups such as the Skeptics Society without giving any nod to even the possibility of how they may have been treated in the past which lead them to create their own groups. Honestly, did he even actively try and recruit any black students to join the club. The premise of that argument was about as absurd as in 2008 whilst riding the Green Line in DC when our team leader, four days into my internship, asked me, the only black in the group and on a train where they were the only whites, as loud as conversationally possible “So can white people enroll up at Howard University?”

Williams projects an intellectual elitism that is hard to wade through. The intellectual elitism is not evident in his command of the English language, nor his ability to be aware of 19th and 20th century philosophers that helped shaped modern western society into the behemoth that it is today, but rather it is evident in his selection of point of view as the only enlightened one.

By all accounts, I cannot support that.

According to his memoirs, aside from his childhood friend Charles, Williams is criticizing from the Ivory Tower, and that’s never helped out the masses. The masses need to know that you’re in the trench with them and understand their struggle. Ivory Tower talk is fine for other residents of the Ivory Tower, because you can use all of your big words and not feel bad, but when one begins disseminating abstract thoughts about existentialism, let alone from “some dead white guy” the battle is already lost.

If you still choose to buy this book, don’t expect some breath of fresh air on behalf of a young black budding intellectual. It comes off as something classical from an era long gone by. If it wasn’t for knowing it was a memoir, it reads similar to Catcher In The Rye evidence of a post-World War II haze. I’m sure this due to his father born in 1937 and a full 53 years older than the author. I push this because this book comes off as refreshing and new for a certain segment of older blacks who choose to read it, and this book is sanitary and clean for white readers of all ages who I’m sure he’ll be endeared to.

Let me push it since I’m out there already.

This type of writing makes hip hop palatable to white readers. It reinforces every stereotype about black inner city youth. I’m sure when his white friends whom he’s encountered at Georgetown will read this, that everything they ever thought about hip hop culture merely gets reinforced–reinforced to the detriment of of hundreds of thousands of blacks across this country, let alone on a college campus. Williams paints a false image that in order to be smart and black in this country one unequivocally must look a certain way and think a certain way–and that way is heavily influenced by western and Eurocentric ideals of ontology and existentialism. To which I promptly and succinctly say, bullshit.

Nevertheless, I refuse to be a hater. This is still a young black man doing the damn thing. I may not at all agree with the thrust of what he said, but he still yet another voice at the table. And if nothing else, this is a young black man who values his father. A father who sacrificed for him and had enough of a vision to see something for his progeny and a testament to a black man who survived despite the odds.

However, I must conclude by noting that the Brobdingnagian irony is that his parents were intent on raising him as black, but with all non-black friends now, I wonder how does the rest of the world see him.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

For further information on the author:

The Chatterton Review

(three photos were taken from The Chatterton Review website that were in full and free display to the public, to give credit where credit is due)

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Categories About The Uppity Negro, Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, Stuff (This) Uppity Negro Likes, The Color Line, UNN Book Reviews

The (Anti-)Intelligence of The Hip Hop Culture

29 Jul

Okay, that’s a loaded title, I’ll admit that upfront. So if you’re inclined to take the following article with a grain of salt, I’m not going to be mad at you. That being said, I think it’s time to admit that as a black culture we can no longer afford to blindly act as though certain aspects of the hip hop culture need to be validated as positive aspects within the black culture.

I can’t begin to fully begin to define what hip hop culture is, but for the casual reader the operating definition for me are all the aspects of a general definition of culture that speak to attitudes and behavior tf a particular social or ethnic group. Performative aspects of hip hop culture exude themselves in the arts: from music to spoken word being poetry or freestyle and a certain linguistic characteristics. It exudes itself in aesthetic signifiers in the clothing to the cars driven by purveyors of hip hop culture. All of those cultural signifiers, for some, all feed into a milieu that ultimately informs the consciousness of the individual. A perfect example of this is when in class I heard some of my friends quote Nas and Tupac the way others in the class quote Paul and his letter to the Ephesians.

I don’t want to paint with a broad brush hip hop culture. I am more than aware of the nuances in which hip hop culture has existed within the larger American culture, and usually the mere mention of “hip hop culture” puts folk on edge and most persons already have opinions drawn when the subject is breached. Aside from the generational gap in opinion that often exists when this subject is talked about, this subject often times falls in stark terms of black and white and rarely in the gray areas. That is to say, it’s treated like a flashpoint issue such as abortion or gay rights–either you’re for or you’re against.

However, to not acknowledge the shades of gray that many blacks operate in the context of hip hop culture I think is bad scholarship and a result of a tragically myopic worldview.

Let me be clear, I have a problem with individuals who disregard hip hop culture simply because of what they see on BET, or what they may see passing on 79th street on the South Side of Chicago, or based on what they may hear when they turn on the local hip hop and R&B station. This is the commodification of hip hop in its purest form; this is the result of anti-intelligence of hip hop culture. No longer are popular lyrics empowering the listener of a better day to come, of encouraging black love (not lust) or even of merely speaking a particular prophetic word of any kind to the listener. No, lyrics these days are vapid at best, and merely speak to the nihilism of a subculture at worst. The commodification of hip hop and its many anti-intelligent strands are what caused conservative critic John McWhorter to entitle his book All About The Beat: Why Hip Hop Can’t Save Black America.

And who can blame him for such a premise?

Yes, we have our hip hop apologists such as Michael Eric Dyson, Bakari Kitwana and even Cornel West to some extent, who I believe do a better job of resurrecting the higher elements within the musical productions of hip hop culture, but neither of these three men have at all excused the fact that the lyrics as we know it have diminished overall (despite a Drake or Kanye West) and above all the wanton misogyny in the lyrics and in the videos; the glorification of violence and drug use are all aspects that do more to hold us back as a people rather than propel us forward. Now while these authors discuss those anti-intelligent aspects of hip hop, they don’t just leave it as such, but rather all of them take the time to discus the why and the how of these aspects of hip hop.

Most of them allow their argument to be situated as a result of both structural and institutional racism that allowed for a system of violence, drug use and misogyny to fester combined with a lack being able to take personal agency in a situation. Personally, I think that’s a fair assessment. To address one issue without the other is the myopic worldview and bad scholarship that I was talking about. The conservative argument rests almost solely on the idea that it is up to the individual to change without giving any nod toward institutional differences that fall along racial lines.

So the issue at hand is how do those of us who were born after 1968, (despite our nomenclature of Generation X, Generation Y, Millenials, Hip Hop Generation, post-Hip Hop Generation or what have you) we’re forced to have this rocky relationship with this hip hop culture. If by aligning with hip hop culture are we tacitly okaying the misogyny? Are we saying that the lyrics about gun violence is okay? Do we automatically become Chris Brown supporters because we support hip hop? Are we saying its okay the programming that’s on BET? Do the 22-inch rims and bright lime green Cutlasses appeal to us “whippin” through the ‘hood? Do we think it’s okay to get pregnant at 18, unmarried with no job and no prospects? Do we think it’s okay to sling out on the corner rather than find gainful employment? Do we have a problem with “acting white” or do we always strive to “keep it real”?

These are all thoughts, and then some, that many of us blacks born after 1968 who choose to use both sides of our brain have to deal with. No doubt some of those questions don’t even enter the minds of some, but I know I’m not alone when I raise the irksome conundrum that is being young and black, living in these yet to be United States.

There are some young blacks who choose to equate black life and black culture as a whole with the affirmation of all of those questions. As if to say that true blackness is the epitome of aligning oneself with a “yes” answer to those aformentioned questions. The disavowal of those questions pushes past blackness into the marvelous light of “whiteness.” I use quotes because the direct correlation of whiteness with intelligence is a tenuous one in the minds of some; but that intelligence however is anti-thetical to what it means to be authentically black.

Blacks will always have an identity problem in this country because of our shared communal history with this country. It’s nothing we can avoid. Yes, it goes back to slavery to be quite honest. Zionist Jews are allowed to collectively suffer and throw around the phrase ”anti-Semitism” but the moment certain progressives begin to tell of the collective suffering of blacks in this country we’re told essentially to get over it.

For the record, I’ll get over slavery when Jews get over the Holocaust.

What we, as blacks, need to understand is that just because I may wear an Ed Hardy tee-shirt, listen to Jay-Z, always have a new pair of gym shoes, rock fitted caps, may even have two or three girls I’m juggling, doesn’t mean that I can’t have a 3.8 GPA in college or that I’m unable to maintain a professional job after I graduate from said college. We act as if black people a) are unable to walk and chew gum at the same time and b) aren’t even allowed to walk and chew gum at the same time. We hear this line of thinking trotted out when we hear blacks engage in the HBCU versus traditionally white schools as though the standard is that which is not black. As if to say black isn’t good enough.

Furthermore, I think it allows for a delusional experience as though blacks have a monopoly on misogyny against women, as though we’re the only ones who have teen pregnancies, as though we’re the only drug dealers–it’s sets up a dichotomy of inferiority where we relegate ourselves to the underclass! We feel that we need to push past the “blackness” in order to succeed. When I see my fellow black brothers and sisters so easily discount part of black culture for the sake of “success” in a world still dominated by white, heterosexual males, I just wanna walk up and slap and say “WAKE THE HELL UP!”

I’m not here to be a waterboy on the sidelines of Hip Hop versus dominant culture merely fulfilling hip-hop’s very thirst for full affirmation, there are plenty of others who are more qualified for the job. At best, I’m an observer in the stands wishing that hip hop wasn’t having to defend itself against dominant culture because of course, when hip hop is on the defensive so are our black youth. We’ve too easily made the jump that black youth and young adults = supporters of all things hip hop. This becomes problematic because a certain section of us have already learned how to operate in the gray areas, yet older black adults and churchy folk, along with broader culture have no problem painting us with a wide brush.

Without a doubt, some parts of hip hop culture are bad, with no redeeming value race aside. We must address the deep-seated levels on nihilism that many of our young black men who are a part of the street culture encounter on a minute to minute and hour to hour basis. We sit here in our ivory towers of scholarship and hide behind our computer screens unable to comprehend the life of some black males who can’t even see from morning to evening–a life’s future not determined on years and decades, but rather hours and minutes. What are we really doing to inform their consciousness that there’s another way to live life? What are we doing to address policies that are hell-bent on keeping these young black men as a permanent underclass without any hope of retribution.

It is our job, our task and our duty to humanity and to black culture to not engage in the typical us vs. them dialogue. Essentially that’s what many of us are doing. It’s easy to talk about “them” or to allow those of us to be “other” as though we have no moral or human ties to their existence either.

We will sacrifice our “them” for the sake of success as determined by dominant culture.

Perhaps the true nihilism is on the part of the “haves” who are ready to cut loose the “have nots” for the warped sense of moral authority and the ephemeral “greater good.” Those of us who weren’t raised on food stamps, and didn’t have to dodge bullets to go to school, or who seized the opportunity to go to college act as if there’s nothing we can do about the situation of “the least of these.” Maybe if we actually gave a damn, so would they.

Hmmm….now I see why some are so quick to call us sellouts. Can you blame them?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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Categories Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, The Color Line

The ‘Inception’ of Reality into your Dream

28 Jul

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

I wouldn’t consider myself a movie buff, but certainly I appreciate movies that are thoughtful that include a well written script, directed with some expertise and actors that don’t come off as placed there merely for their namesake or their well chiseled face and abs or voluptuous chest and sensual lips. I’m even more endeared to the movie that even remotely attempts to critique metaculture. And Inception certainly falls in that category.

Inception has become one of those defining moment movies–for me at least. Why? Because it brought to the fore some of the foundational Freudian notions we have about our psyche like a sewer bubbling up with raw excess from the last storm. Perhaps, however, this movie just happened for me at a critical juncture of having overheard a documentary my mother was watching about how Freudian knowledge so handily dominated the socio-economic and political thought process of the 20th century. That is to say it is second nature engage in thoughts about the unconscious mind and to talk about repression. And certainly this untamed nature of the Id versus the super-ego with the ego in the middle acting as a buffer between the two.

Certainly, in the levels required in the movie of which the need to perform inception drew upon the nature of the subconscious mind and the Id at play. The warning being that the deeper you go (“a dream within a dream within a dream”) the more unpredictable it becomes and that one risks getting caught in a state of limbo because of the sheer time elapsed while there (eg. Three minutes while sleep could effectively translate into a 50 year time span depending on how deep one had been in the subconscious of the mind). We saw Cobb’s wife Mal as the supreme example of repression and the unique ability to keep memories stored on top of one another with the deepest ones stored in the basement of our minds.

As far as the conscious versus subconscious (or unconscious if you will) mind, I felt that the movie took the opportunity to address the idea of placing ideas in ones mind and the level of embeddedness needed to do so. Perhaps its a stretch to see it as such, but I definitely feel that it is something that we see everyday. We know for a fact that propaganda works. Due to the infamous Joseph Goebbels from Nazi Germany the word “propaganda” is almost a dirty word. Nonetheless the blitz campaign style of getting out information is a type of propaganda that embeds itself in the subconscious and ultimately makes one think that a certain idea is there own. Cobb’s main goal in the movie was to go deep enough in the mind of Robert Fischer so that he in turn would think that dissolving his father’s company was his idea and not a implanted one.

However, the most intriguing part of the movie to me was this notion of the “totem.” The “totem” acted as an object, apparently a hand held one that allowed the owner to tell whether they were in a dream or reality. Seriously, watching the movie that blew my mind. Had we really gotten to a part in our life where one could no longer distinguish the difference between dream, or fantasy and reality? Particularly given the last frame of the movie right before the credits, I think this was certainly a major drive of the movie.

This division between that which is real and that which is unreal was pushed when in the scene with the introduction of the chemist. The assembling team went downstairs where there were several people were heavily sedated all having uninterrupted dreams. To which Eames said “Who would do this to themselves?” or something to that effect, questioning the rationale behind someone purposely inducing the dream state and questioning what he perceived to be their reality. To which the older and sage black man replied “Who are you to say what reality is?” That’s nothing more than the age old statement “Perception is reality.”

This movie isn’t the first that brings up the idea of a real world versus an alternate one, but certainly in the technological age this concept of virtual reality hits closer and closer to home. Preeminent among these movies is still The Matrix trilogy, however the Matrix goes through great lengths to show how starkly different the real world is from some virtual reality. But, I think Inception does a good job of displaying just how easily it is to vacillate between what is real and what is not. Or rather, how easy it has become to replace the real with the fantasy.

Is it technology?

Flat out, the answer for me is yes.

Prior to everyone having an internet connection, in order to obtain research information one had to schlep down to a library or a university, obtain privilege to access the books and actually thumb through the stacks and read information, copy it down in bibliographic form and then submit it. The printed word meant that someone had verified the information enough to publish it! Now, any yahoo with an internet connection and a notion can publish God-knows-what about any subject, any time, any place about any person without general recourse.

It’s easy to replace the real with fantasy.

Pornography went through the roof with internet porn sites. Back in the day you had to go down to an adult book store and actually buy something to fulfill your fantasy. And the actual physical requirement of getting up and going down to the adult bookstore was enough of a deterrent to many persons to not do it. But with the untold number of sex sites and even the free site of Xtube, you can have free porn at your finger tips. Seeing pornography for the first time was almost a rites of passage for pre-teens even as late as the 90s because you could count on your hand the number of times that you had seen someone’s Playboy or Penthouse magazine. But even for me, by the time I got to 8th grade, our schools had computers and sometime in high school we got an internet connection and I lost count. And it was a substitution of real for some virtual encounter that at the end of the day didn’t exist. In fact it never existed.

It’s easy to replace the real with fantasy.

To my bloggers and readers of blogs, we both know that at times comment sections can get entirely out of hand, but its easy to say, or rather type, stuff while sitting behind the relative comfort of a computer screen. Often times we say things that we would never say in person. This issue has gotten so out of hand with teens on various networking sites that it’s known as cyberbullying now and we see PSA about it on TV now. But, this is where the one’s sitting behind computer screens saying mean and nasty comments on people’s FB walls, or Twitter timelines or nasty comments in the comment sections of blogs have allowed themselves to construct a reality where only they can live in and exist.

This was what Cobb understood in the movie, but his wife did not.

What a sad day it is for humanity if we can no longer tell the difference between a dream and fantasy world that we created just for us and no longer can determine what reality is. Personally, I think that humans have an innate sense of what reality is. We don’t need a “totem” to help us tell the difference between a dream state and the real living world. Reality is continuous; it does not have the herky-jerky moments that dreams do. Dreams are disjointed and they have a fuzzy beginning, a surer middle and they definitely have an end when you decide to wake up.

Dreams differ from reality because you decide to wake up from the dream. Yes, the dream/fantasy state is probably the result of repressed issues that you have yet to fully deal with mixed with some unrestricted emotions (the Id) that all swirl together in the midnight hour like ships caught in a maelstrom at sea, but it’s all not real. No matter how real it feels, that said reality is only a reality in which you, the dreamer can exist.

It is the task of the dreamer to make their dream a reality. Fie upon those who decide to draw others into their fantasy world however. I personally think it is the despicable person who has no qualms about encouraging others in their delusions. Ultimately, reality will still set in and the moral right will prevail. Or so we hope. It’s a hard task of humanity determine this course. Being one who is generally against metanarratives dominating the conventional wisdom of the day (just think Tea Baggers and this neo-Conservative movement), I don’t want to squash those who dare to dream of a brighter and better future for humanity. It is from these deep-seated motivations that one can shift and make the dream a reality–if only we decide to wake up. And sometimes we need a kick from an outside source just to do that not unless the sedative in which we have ingested is so strong that it overpowers our innate ability to keep from falling.

The last scene before the credits requires us to ask the true existential question about us. Is this really real or is it just a dream. As far as the movie is concerned, I do believe that it is reality, but still we’re left pondering that question in the audiences mind: is it all dream?

But then again, perception is indeed reality.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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Categories Cultural Critique, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

A Character Case Study of The Boondocks: Conclusion

21 Jul

I actually completed a full series for the first time in my blogging career. I was supposed to do it consecutively, but I just didn’t have it in me, but I completed it nonetheless. I took it upon myself to discuss each of the Boondocks cartoon characters and highlight various episodes that I felt best highlighted their character traits. I pitted some against the other given the script to show how I felt they truly were created to be.

Here is the list of characters that I analyzed and if you click on the hyperlink it should take you directly to the blog article:

I refused, or at least tried my best to not fall into the trap of making each of the characters one-dimensional and viewing them as stereotypical characters. Case in point, I tried not to paint Riley and Huey as the yin and yang of black urban maleness, but rather attempted to go a bit deeper in the discussion. I did this because rarely is the surface truly who the person is. Generally what we manifest on the surface is a result of deeper issues and past experiences coming to a head. About the only person I intentionally portrayed one-dimensionally was Uncle Ruckus.

I hope you enjoyed this series. Make sure to go back and leave comments as you see fit.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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Categories Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, Stuff (This) Uppity Negro Likes

A Character Case Study of “The Boondocks”: Uncle Ruckus

16 Jul

I saved this character for last for a certain reason, but for a very important one. That reason is that Uncle Ruckus is the most one-dimensional character that exists on The Boondocks.

To true Boondocks enthusiasts the addition of Uncle Ruckus was certainly a shock. Uncle Ruckus was a character that was not in the comic strip, but made a major showing in the cartoon. Uncle Ruckus shows up in every episode and has three major episodes with him as the central focus: “The Passion of Uncle Ruckus,” “The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show” (that was banned in the US) and “The Story of Jimmy Rebel.” Uncle Ruckus is the epitome of the self-hating, self-deprecating black man. Seriously, words do not explain this character and the one liners that come out of his mouth. The following quote gives a mere glimpse into his psyche.

No I don’t think we should use the word, and I’ll tell ya why. Because niggas have gotten used to it. That’s why. Hell, they like it now. It’s like when you growin’ crops and you strip the soil of its nutrients and goodness and then you can’t grow nothin’. You gotta rotate your racist slurs. Now I know it’s hard ’cause ‘nigga’ just rolls off the tongue the way sweat rolls off a nigga’s forehead. But we can not let that be a crutch. Especially when there are so many fine substitutes: spade, porch monkey, jiggaboo. I say the next time you gonna call a darkie a nigga you call that coon a jungle bunny instead.”

Uncle Ruckus has been given no background story. No one really knows how he arrived at such a nadir with regards to his own black skin and outlook on black culture. Frankly, the picture painted of Uncle Ruckus is so flatly portrayed as self-hating that I don’t know of any person, living or dead, who fits the picture. Even Justice Clarence Thomas’ disavowing of his own degree from Yale law school and his often times conservative opinion on the bench still does not provide enough to understand Uncle Ruckus’ motivation. While Justice Thomas still sits on the bench, the character of Uncle Ruckus wouldn’t even accept a position even if he was warranted it by merit.

Uncle Ruckus’ ultimate disavowal of blackness from both an existential and ontological point of view always startles me once I push past the caustic one-liners. Why? Because Uncle Ruckus’ character is the most unbelievable for me. While yes I have issues with most of the other characters because I don’t “know” any of the characters in their 100% form, there are all familiar portions of each character that make sense to me. Uncle Ruckus on the other hand takes the believability to the next level.

But, at the same time Uncle Ruckus’ character existence is the supreme genius of Aaron McGruder.

Go with me here, I’m going somewhere.

I view Uncle Ruckus’ existence in The Boondocks as the specter of self-hate that has creeped into our lives that we learn to live with and rarely challenge on the basis that it is fundamentally something that we will always have to live with.

Despite Uncle Ruckus always trashing the mere existence of everything that is blackness or even related to it–and simultaneously exalting EVERYTHING that white people stand for, believe in, speak and do–his closest friend is Robert Freeman. Robert rarely does anything to correct the actions of Uncle Ruckus, and in fact assumes a level of comfortability with Ruckus when he launches into one of his tirades–which are often and long. Ruckus’ comes off not just as a mean person, but generally unhappy–all based on the fact that he’s black.

What a statement it is to be depressed simply because you’re black.

Somehow Ruckus’ character allows this apparent depression to present itself in the most severe form of self-hate. But, clearly his character in the show is used in an archetypical manner to embellish the stereotypical ways in which blacks in our culture manifest certain forms of self-hate. For example the whole light-skinned dark-skinned issue and the natural hair versus the processed hair act as two of the hot-button topics that exist in our society today. Ruckus’ character allows the pathology that has been passed down through the years.

While we may laugh at Uncle Ruckus’ character, particularly because the musical scoring always announces his entrance by the comedic solo of a tuba (an instrument often associated with something big, and buffoonish entering the scene) many of us have a mini-Uncle Ruckus deep down on the inside that is constantly warring within us. Psychologist Na’im Akbar from Florida State refers to these wars, based on his entitled book as “chains of psychological slavery.”

When we don’t want to talk about some of the deep-seated proclivities that we have assimilated into here in American society, then we’ve yet to free ourselves from the mental-brainwashing. The moment we begin to find ways to philosophize our way out of dealing with slavery and its long term effects, the ideals put forth in the Willie Lynch letter have indeed succeeded. No one ever engages Uncle Ruckus; they merely deal with him or ignore him. No one on the show has gone through the process of trying to show him the error of his thinking and how he treats others. Astonishingly, Robert Freeman lets Ruckus’ talk any old kind of way to both Riley and Huey–why would any self-respecting black man let Uncle Ruckus around his kids or grandchildren?!

Frankly, as I see it, there is no redeeming values in Uncle Ruckus. Nothing that has ever come out of his mouth has been used to uplift anybody but the white race. And even in the context of Woodcrest, many whites still look at him as weird, much like Dave Chappelle’s character of Clayton Bigsby, the blind black man who is a member of the KKK. (Seriously, the irony of him being blind, unable to see his own skin color, making him colorblind, but yet engaging in the white supremacy rhetoric is genius.)

Perhaps Uncle Ruckus’ one dimensional personality and out look on life can be seen in his near grotesque imagery and evidenced by his eyes: one glass, and one real providing half the vision of most others in the world. His glass eye bulging so grossly from the socket that Ruckus’ can’t even avoid the appearance of having lopsided vision. One thing that vision from only one eye cause is a lack of depth perception. Everything is one-dimensional. Simply picking up a pebble on the ground becomes a difficult task because of the inability to have perspective on the object at hand. Ruckus can only see objects based on how he sees it resulting in a surface perspective; unable to discuss all dimensions of them, merely what is presented in flat one dimensional form.

The walk away for me with Uncle Ruckus’ character is that to be so obtuse toward the lived reality of so many persons in the United States results in an individual being one-dimensional and living on the fringes of society. But let’s be clear, Uncle Ruckus dose not live and iconoclastic lifestyle, but rather uplifts and supports many of the retrospective beliefs on which this country was founded upon. Particularly in light of the Tea Party movement, it would have been grand to see an episode that would have had Ruckus’ marching with with them.

I always felt the knee-jerk reaction of “self-hate” always required more unpacking than what we normally give it. For example, if someone always makes a comment about straightening their hair, or that they like “light-skinned” people only, or for those that still wear colored contacts that they were automatically suffering from self-hate. I really don’t think that’s the case. I’m much more of the belief that such mindsets are a result of conditioning (read: brainwashing) that has come through assimilation of being a part of western culture that does promote a particular standard of beauty and what a physical self-image looks like (and those two are mutually exclusive for me in this context). However, Uncle Ruckus going so far as to claim his revitaligo status (the opposite of what Michael Jackson has) to attempt to disavow anything about black culture, including his skin does result in a particular kind of self-hatred–he indeed hates who he is.

I pray that of all the characters on “The Boondocks” this is the one whom you least identify with.

*************************************

On a slight tangent, I always think episodes dealing with religion in a black cultural context always intrigue me. Not just on “The Boondocks” but any media portrayal. Honestly, its plagued me for a while just how much of a caricature the black preacher is made out to be and that essentially every black church service looks like the church scene out of “The Blues Brothers.” So, to watch Uncle Ruckus weave his racial inferiority complex coupled with his “Praise White Jesus” theology together in the “The Passion of Uncle Ruckus” episode was interesting to say the least.

Ronald Reagan as the keeper of white heaven notwithstanding.

What boggled my mind was the commentary about the supreme hegemony that we practice here in the United States. While we can clearly lambaste liberation theology and all of its umbrellaed branches, we essentially have no problem with buying lock, stock and barrel into a religion and a theology that essentially does what Uncle Ruckus’ theology purports. The hyperbolic satire of the nature of the show merely allowed what is said by tacit reference in many churches and pulpits, both black and white, to be said in plain English in the character form of Uncle Ruckus.

But then, when one thinks of Pat Robertson’s remarks concerning the Haitian earthquake this past January and the comments made by pastors about Barack Obama, you can’t help but wonder was this based in true reality.

I think Uncle Ruckus, well, Rev. Ruckus has a real life counterpart: remember James David Manning?

I’m done. **logs off**

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 11 Comments
Categories Church and Society, Cultural Critique, Politics, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, The Color Line

It’s An Issue of Brand Loyalty (and some other stuff): Why Lebron James Went to Miami

9 Jul

Let the record show that this is my first EVAR sports blog piece. I’m actually creating a new category for it.

Now on to business.

I usually always scoffed at the comparisons that many cultural critics drew with regards to the NBA players being compared to slaves on the plantation and that the whole deal of the NBA Draft and trades amounted to nothing more than the black men, the Bucks, going to the highest bidder. Usually I mocked this idea because of the free agency status that players get when their contracts are up and they can shop around to the team that offers them the best contract.

However, in recent memory, since the Cleveland Cavaliers dropped out in the playoffs this past May rumorings about where Lebron James was finally going to end up because his 7 year contract with the team was over with–and he still hadn’t won a championship. To make a long story short, the intensity of where Lebron was going to go intensified over the last week. It was everywhere and it had certainly reached a feverish pitch when it was announced that Lebron was going to do it as an ESPN special in an hour long broadcast.

Like for real?!?!

All to announce the Miami Heat.

Not to say that some individuals weren’t shocked, but this was one of those moments where everybody had an opinion, whether in favor, against or even clear about their ambivalence on the issue. But, clearly, we all see how the Cavs owner Dan Gilbert felt:

Dear Cleveland, All Of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers Supporters Wherever You May Be Tonight;

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his “decision” unlike anything ever “witnessed” in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

Clearly, this is bitterly disappointing to all of us.

The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor NEVER will betray you.

There is so much more to tell you about the events of the recent past and our more than exciting future. Over the next several days and weeks, we will be communicating much of that to you.

You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

You have given so much and deserve so much more.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”

You can take it to the bank.

If you thought we were motivated before tonight to bring the hardware to Cleveland, I can tell you that this shameful display of selfishness and betrayal by one of our very own has shifted our “motivation” to previously unknown and previously never experienced levels.

Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that’s simply not how it works.

This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown “chosen one” sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And “who” we would want them to grow-up to become.

But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called “curse” on Cleveland, Ohio.

The self-declared former “King” will be taking the “curse” with him down south. And until he does “right” by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.

Just watch.

Sleep well, Cleveland.

Tomorrow is a new and much brighter day….

I PROMISE you that our energy, focus, capital, knowledge and experience will be directed at one thing and one thing only:

DELIVERING YOU the championship you have long deserved and is long overdue….

[signed Dan]

While I understand the frustration of losing a superstar the caliber of Lebron, this was just a bit overboard even for my tastes. He sounds like a slaveowner claiming “The South will rise again” after he watched his prize slave walk away from the plantation after he got word of the end of the Civil War.

Just my opinion though.

But, I think what’s leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth is the lack of brand loyalty that Lebron displayed, the perceived ego-trip that he indulged himself on just because he could, and something about going to “Miami” versus one of the northern and colder cities like Chicago or New York just doesn’t sit well in someone’s mouth. He could have said he was going to Las Vegas (yeah, I know they don’t have a team, I’m just using an example) and the same perception would have been had.

However, there’s just something to be said about brand loyalty.

Remember how mama and daddy, and certainly grandmama and n’em used to keep those kitchen appliances for 20 and 30 years. And when they bought a new appliance, they bought the same brand. Same with cars, how your uncle would always buy a Ford or a Chevrolet. It was just something about sticking with the same brand. It created a relationship with the people at the car dealership, and you’d even get benefits for being a “loyal customer” and what not.

So in that regard, I can understand why Cleveland fans are hurt, and hurt to the core. Trust me, after living through the Dark Ages with the Bulls in the post-Jordan era, I can understand. But as Lebron said last night, for him it was about a championship and he felt he wasn’t going to get one in Cleveland.

Well….they got Byron Scott now and he was a former NBA player and had at least taken the Nets to the Finals a few years back. And as I said on my Facebook status message, Lebron quit his team after seven years–it took seven years before Michael Jordan got a championship ring with the Bulls.

Lebron is only a month younger than me, and I just can’t help but wonder what was going through his mind with this. I can only imagine how I could would have handled all of the publicity and the hype. The guy always comes off as calm, cool and collected off of the court. He’s well dressed, made the cover of GQ and Esquire magazines, and he’s certainly no Latrell Sprewell (which is about all the Heat can afford right now, but I’ll leave that to the other sports bloggers.) But, this decision came off as a contrived media frenzy that not just he, but Dwayne Wade and no doubt Chris Bosh (his new teammates who were up for free agency status as well) had put together.

Is Pat Riley and Micky Arison are smart men.

Although, I know I will be laughing if Cleveland were to win a championship–hell, just make it to the NBA Finals before the Miami Heat does.

But, three all-stars and and a team with a less than stellar performance over the last couple of years do NOT make a championship team. Even I know that.

However, let’s be honest, for Lebron it wasn’t about his legacy as the “King” that stands a chance of being tarnished and it clearly didn’t make a difference that he was leaving his hometown fans, nor what he had done for the city of Cleveland (the place where rivers catch fire), he was about the championship.

Lebron is 25, which means at his caliber, he easily has another 10-12 years left in the league (unless he wants to be the next Big Arthritis like Shaq) and we still haven’t seen Lebron post peak numbers yet for a season–even personal bests–and I just have one question to ask someone in Lebron shoes:

After you win the championship, what’s next?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, Sports

A Character Case Study of “The Boondocks”: The DuBois Family

8 Jul

The DuBois family of Tom, his wife Sara and their daughter Jazmine is an interracial family, with Tom being black, Sara being white and Jazmine being the interracially mixed child of this union. The family lives along with the Freeman clan in the suburb of Woodcrest and the family appears to be friends with the Freeman clan. Tom makes many more appearances in the course of the show than his daughter, and the wife Sara even less than those two.

Interestingly, given the lily whiteness of the suburb, it’s no shock that the DuBois family chooses to live out there. McGruder has yet to really give an indepth picture of the family life of the DuBois household which I think is interesting since we are given an image of who Sara is. I say this because every other character, and even a minor character such as Stinkmeaner or Thugnificent have whole episodes that allow for a character picture to be drawn. The closest the viewer understood some of the family dynamics of the DuBois family was when we get a glimpse of Sara, and finally have some motivation for Jazmine’s character being the product not just of her father, but her mother as well.

I will dissect each character of this family and highlight various episodes in which I think their true motivations lie.

Tom DuBois

The character of Tom DuBois, particularly after watching his character in action automatically makes many black viewers wonder about the personhood of black intellectual and scholar W.E.B. DuBois and the notion of “Uncle Tom.” Which further pushes the irony of his name with DuBois’ idea of “double consciousness” that is present in Tom’s character. Tom comes off with an aloofness and naiveté that’s somewhat off-putting. Namely this comes off in racial issues. His sheer daftness comes through early in the show with “The R. Kelly Trial” where he’s unable to prosecute R. Kelly for being unable to maneuver the cultural milieu surrounding the dynamics of the trial. And even again, Tom’s character progresses to hating black people after listening to Uncle Ruckus in “The Passion of Uncle Ruckus.”

However, this inability to deal with the more unpleasant aspects of reality, even if race isn’t involved, is troubling to me. This happens in the “Attack of the Killer Kung-Fu Wolf Bitch” where he had received an urgent email from Huey about Luna, Tom ultimately becomes kidnapped by Luna because of his inability to face reality. The whole concept of his phobia of being anally raped finally playing itself out in “A Date with the Booty Warrior” seems absolutely ludicrous, yet takes a much more critical eye. It seems to be the intent of McGruder to tacitly link Tom’s naiveté to his inability to ontologically identify himself as “black.”

Tom comes off as a cartoon version of Carlton Banks from NBC’s early nineties : always shocked when his skin color and not his bank account becomes a determining factor in how they are treated and viewed by larger society. It’s as if Tom has created an alternate reality of political correctness in which on he lives in–even his wife doesn’t live in that bubble with him. However, I’m wondering what is McGruder really saying by trying to draw a correlation between a skewed worldview and reality with one’s true blackness. Whatever the commentary that McGruder is hinting at still proves problematic for me because to say that the more “black” someone is the more truer their worldview is. Tom has historically had run-ins with the militant and revolutionary responses of Huey and generally whatever Huey says goes completely over the head of Tom who feels safe in his politically correct microcosm where he was able to marry a white woman, have an interracial child, be a member of the NAACP and support Barack Obama’s presidency.

But, what I think McGruder also does is masterfully interject is issues of masculinity into the conversation.

Tom’s masculinity is often times called into question in tacit (except for Riley’s predilection of calling everything “gay” that he doesn’t understand) yet direct ways. The whole notion of him fearing being anally raped is such a wildly preposterous phobia (that it is still taking some time for me to wrap my mind around it) but goes directly to notions of masculinity and black maledom. The “taking of manhood” happens through castration or male rape. Tom also faces issues of masculinity by feeling emasculated by his wife who has a thing for Usher and for Barack Obama–and Tom is aware that it’s an issue of blackness as to why his wife is attracted to Usher and to Obama.

So, Tom DuBois exists in an alternate reality, but still faced with grappling with his masculinity in the context of a questioned ontological blackness.

Damn. Sucks to be black sometimes don’t it?

Jazmine DuBois

I have mixed race relatives, therefore some white cousins who have married into my family and I can’t help but remember one instance when one of them a few years back was just totally enthralled at my hair because I had 360-waves in it and they couldn’t get their hair to do the same thing. And I remember that they had some off-the-wall questions about being black and living in Chicago. Nothing super direct, but probably more a result of them just having their older cousin around and wanting to show me everything and tell me everything and play video games with them.

But, they weren’t confused about who they were, so that’s why the character of Jazmine somewhat seems off to me.

Going to a mixed high school, with at least a 20% representation of blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos present and having to wade through the melting pot that drew delineations between the nationalities of Koreans, Chinese students (and those that spoke Mandarin and those that spoke Cantonese) and a few Japanese students; the vast population of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and other Latin nationalities; and those that had German backgrounds, or their families were from France, those from Poland or even those that claimed that they were Jewish migrated from certain eastern European countries.

And there was us.

“Oooooh, my gran’mama from Mississippi.”

Seriously, our ancestral home was a 12 hour car ride away.

I said all of that to say that there were a fair number of mixed race students at the high school I went to, and while they certainly had a different worldview than I did and perhaps could come off as ignorant, perhaps naive in certain instances when it came to mainstream black culture, none of them were confused about their identity in much the same way that Jazmine is portrayed. We see this evidenced as Jazmine so easily mixes the images of Jesus and Santa Claus.

I feel sorry for her because McGruder rarely provides her with safe ground, not even by her parents. Mixed children already have it tough enough because society thrives on clear cut categories and boundaries and anything that creates shades of gray is considered “other” and we shy away from dealing with it.

Huey completely dimisses her and looks at her with almost the same level of disgust as Uncle Ruckus would. Perhaps its more an indictment on the black community that identifies with the personhood of Huey rather than the notion of her mixed race heritage being a negative. How is she supposed to address her identity if Huey never takes the time to actual talk to her and with her rather than always talking at her.

And perhaps it’s a parenting issue as well.

If her mother is always sexually attracted to black men who are not her father, and her father has a warped sense of reality, then it’s no wonder she’s able to fully meld the image of Santa Claus and Jesus Christ as she so wonderfully did after mounting a pulpit.

Sara DuBois

Honestly, Tom’s wife is almost a joke. There isn’t much to say about her past McGruder painting her as the white woman secretly wanting some black dick.

Sorry for being so vulgar, but that’s really what it amounts to–we’re all adults here right?

There’s always been this sexual dance between black men and white women that have birthed all types of pathologies and perceived psychologies on both sides of the aisle. Whereas historically Eurocentric racist and hegemonic thinking has painted black men as always pursuing white women as another level to justify hatred of blacks. This rhetoric has provided for black males to be shown as basic and sexual creatures–predators even. We’ve seen this in art forms such as “Birth of A Nation”; in Harper Lee’s classic To Kill A Mockingbird and in the sordid , disturbing and tragic history surrounding the massacre in Rosewood, Florida in 1923 and even the dynamic surrounding Emmett Till’s death in Mississippi in 1955.

But, even from the classic “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” it was a white woman coming to grips with her black lover. And this dynamic was flipped where the white woman was the pursuer in the comedic movies of “Life” where the warden’s daughter had an affair with one of the inmates (Bokeem Woodbine’s character) and in the premier example of coonery, Tom Arnold’s wife, Missi Pyle in the buffoon movie “Soul Plane” where she was totally lusting after a black man.

In a reversal of Kanye West’s famous quote, I think it’s safe to say that Aaron McGruder doesn’t like white people.

************************************

In comparison to the Freeman familial unit, I think the DuBois familial unit is an interesting amalgamation of character traits and personalities that find themselves under one roof, and one that McGruder never capitalizes on. I think it would do wonders to have a show that really showed some of the character motivations and how they interacted amongst themselves. For right now we have no real true understanding of the interaction of Jazmine with either of her parents.

That’s an interesting way to image an interracial family. But that’s just my opinion.

To my readers, what say ye?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, The Color Line

It’s Easy To Hate, So Don’t

7 Jul

NSFW

Notwithstanding the great urban prophetic voice of comedian Katt Williams, I think black folk “hate” on each other a bit too much for my comfort.

There’s a thin line between legitimate criticism levied against an individual versus just hatin’ on another just because you can. As I see it, too many of us suffer from the “I’m -the-only-enlightened-one” disease that somehow allows an individual to think that just because they said it that it’s right, and moreover that it’s some brilliant insight that has never been recognized before. As a budding intellectual, I think criticism is what ultimately progressed humanity into the next era and the next realm of thinking, but hatin’ does nothing but tear down one another. It’s mean and it’s nasty, and above all, its unnecessary.

I’ve often thought about changing the name of this blog simply because I’ve noticed that I’ve always tried to give an opposing opinion on an issue. I’ve thought about calling it “The Dissenting Opinion,” “The Small Still Voice,” “The Devil’s Negro Advocate” or “Let Me Be Clear” or anything that provides for an opposite viewing of an opinion. Let me be clear, I utterly detest groupthink with a positive passion! By in large our society is structured on the ideals of majority rules and what’s good for most people. One need only recall this country’s history of slavery to see what a majority rules modus operandi can produce. I’ve been told by some close friends, point blank, “Who thinks like that?” after hearing a response to a particular conversation topic, but I realised that when we fail to even engage opposing thought how intelligent are we really? The ability to engage an opposing thought and still arrive at the same conclusion garners my respect rather than someone who fails to listen and critically digest their own opinions. You don’t have to buy into my argument, but you damn sure better listen to it!

Over the course of the last few years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve met some cyber personalities, some good, some bad; some I respected, some I don’t and even some I utterly don’t like at all–with no redeeming cyber qualities. And usually it is for the reasons I’ve outlined above: based on my logic (which may or may not be faulty, I can admit that) many of these people fall into the trap of groupthink where no opposing opinion is heard. And because of the majority rules mindset, they just regarded me as some pariah, and therefore made it easy to dismiss anything I had to say.

What is an interesting phenomena is that somehow we engage this idea of ontological blackness as a rubric of how much we decide to “hate” on a person: depending on how “black” a person is how much we’ll hate on them. An easy case is Condoleeza Rice or Clarence Thomas. Because most blacks have decided in our collective consciousness that these two are not black then it’s easy to just hate on them with no deep critical thought into why we dislike them. This is coupled with other phenomenon is that when an individual does things or says things that do align with our collective psyche, we justify our hatin’ on them because we somehow find a way to label them a “sellout” or the famous phrasing “Uncle Tom.”

That being said, here are some major personalities within the black community that I feel bear another looksie:

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey — We love to hate on Oprah. We call Oprah every other name in the book and refer to her as one of the biggest sellouts there is. Generally we say its because she caters to a largely white audience. I always thought that it was an interesting analysis of her because Oprah has been so intentional about promoting black womanhood and doing things for black people.

She came under major criticism even here in Chicago when she decided to build the school for young girls and young women in South Africa and didn’t build one here stateside. Okay, fair enough question, but honestly, would American girls have appreciated a school built just for them in quite the same way as overseas? Moreover, I’m sure the bureaucracy that Oprah would have endured to build a school, even a private one in a major city would have been massive and one would have asked was it even worth the headache. Ultimately, it makes the haters look as if they’re looking for a handout and not hand up.

By in large, the people that hate on Oprah automatically don’t watch her show, which to me means that you’re speaking from a limited viewpoint which means you’re attempting to offer a critique on severely limited facts, therefore, you’re just hatin’ because it’s en vogue to hate on Oprah.

Tyler Perry — Because of his character Madea and the comedy associated with the character, it makes it much easier to take the “coonin’” and “shuckin’ and jiving” route to criticize Tyler Perry’s gospel plays and his subsequent movies. But for me this argument falls magnanimously bankrupt against a demographic that watched the coonery that watched “Martin” to “The Wayan’s Brothers” and most certainly the bamboozlement that was “The PJs” and we suddenly get self-righteous watching a Tyler Perry movie.

The unadulterated hatin’ that’s heaped upon Perry is always interesting to me because I can’t help but wonder the why behind it. I mean Perry actually made it. He arrived. By all accounts he’s successful and he’s done what we encourage our young black men and women to do with their lives. No longer is he restricted to the realm of just writing and directing and having to finance out of private funding to produce like so many others like Robert Townsend and Jon Singleton, but he has his own production company with their own backlot. Spike Lee’s comments toward Tyler Perry come off as professional jealousy and snobbery.

I’ll be the first to say that some of his movies didn’t quite work for me and his two sitcoms do absolutely nothing for me, but I’ve yet to hear a convincing reason why Tyler Perry is such a detriment to black culture. Granted the rumors about his sexuality and the sexuality of some of his cast members provides salacious news, going the “gay” route just to talk about him is a sucker punch move and comes off as homophobic in the year 2010. Let the guy be successful.

Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton — I wrote whole blogs in defense of these two. First off, being about five blocks east of Operation PUSH, I remember my parents dragging me on Saturday mornings to go to the weekly services. And over the last year or so, I’ve went on my own volition. And I’ve occasionally caught a couple of services on a live-streaming feed. With that in mind, I sort of follow Jesse Jackson–beyond the soundbytes. And I can say with a fair degree of certainty that Jesse Jackson stays on message without any equivocations. Sure he may have made the highly inappropriate comment about castrating our current president during the campaign season, and no doubt Jesse is about the money, but when he speaks, he’s on message and he’s saying the right thing. So to those who don’t like Jesse, when was the last time you heard him speak? Have you just been listening to soundbytes? Have you heard full interviews of him on the evening news shows? If you just dismiss him using “I just don’t like him” as your reasoning, you’re entitled to that feeling, but hatin’ card is revoked, get a better reason!

I levy the same push back to those who don’t like Al Sharpton: when was the last time you listened to his daily talk show? Granted Al may go a bit religious every once in a while and he loses my witness everytime he has the fool of a “prophet” E. Bernard Jordan come on, but as far as the regular discourse of his show Al Sharpton is always on message as well, and he’s quick to put some of his callers in check when they start going off on misinformation. Are you hatin’ on him because of his perm? That’s probably more a personal issue with you than it is about him and his “blackness.” Why do we choose to “hate” and unfairly criticize individuals who are saying what we need to hear and walking to the walk (in some respects) of fighting civil rights causes.

Currently, right now, there’s only three black men in this country that can call a press conference and have national press agents be there–and one of them is the President of the United States. Don’t hate, congratulate

Tavis Smiley, Michael Eric Dyson (and sometimes Cornel West) — Let’s be honest: we don’t like Tavis because he supported Hillary.

There I said it.

Ever since early 2008, it’s been a wrap for Tavis. The only decent criticism that has been charged against Tavis was that he had all of these corporate sponsors when he was still hosting the State of the Black Union. Which I thought was a valid point, but nonetheless made a specious argument by the same blacks who run to Wal-Mart everyday, just because, or the same black folks that do business with Wells Fargo. I mean, if you don’t like Tavis,I better not find Wal-Mart receipts lying around your house. I always felt that for many of those that went with the tide when it suddenly became en vogue to not like Tavis, that it was really just them being jealous that Tavis hadn’t invited them to sit on the panel at a State of the Black Union.

By the same token, people hate on Dyson calling him an intellectual masturbator just making himself feel good because he uses big words and talks fast. I want to know since when do we hate on someone for being smart? Oh, right! Doh! It must have happened when being smart was equated with being white. HA! I want to know what’s preventing these people from picking up a dictionary and increasing their vocabulary.

And for any of those that have attempted to criticize those two, what books by those authors have you read? I had a friend tell me she didn’t Dyson for those reasons and when I asked her what books of Dyson’s had she read, she lied and said she had, but when I asked specific questions she started stuttering: liar!

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Out of the select few personalities I highlighted, the major charge that persons had against those people, in addition to foundational questions about their “blackness” or whether they had “sold out” or not, were criticisms about them “talking too much” and “not doing anything.”

Two points, and then I’m done.

1) What have you done? Apparently, all you’re doing is listening. Has not their message spurned you to get off of your lazy assets and go out into your community and do something. The true grassroots movers and shakers in this country, be they liberals or conservatives understand that “all politics are local.” The people I mentioned all have national platforms. That’s why Al Sharpton’s National Action Network has branch offices across the country. And even when callers have called in from states like Utah and Hawai’i with civil rights grievances, he tells the callers “I don’t think we got an office out there, but stay on the line and let someone get some contact information from you” because he’s only one person. What are you doing.

2) Who says talking isn’t doing something? I think we forget that that which we listen to informs our consciousness. From the sermons we hear on Sunday morning, to the music we listen to in the car to the sage wisdom we may get from a grandparent all influences our consciousness and affects the logic processes that we go through on a day to day basis dictating our every thought and action.

So, lets take the high road and not hate, that’s the easy way out. I challenge you to not switch on the autopilot function, but to engage the controls and begin to think for yourself. As kids we’re told to “dare to be different” well, I ask, how different are you really if you think like everyone else?

Who else do you think black folks love to hate on, just because? Who do you hate on and why do you feel justified in that feeling?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

NSFW

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Categories Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, Random Thoughts from an Uppity Negro, The Color Line

A Character Case Study of The Boondocks: Robert “Granddad” Freeman

7 Jul

No one really knows how old Robert “Granddad” Freeman is. What we know is that he is the grandfather of both Huey and Riley Freeman who has taken on the parental responsibility of raising his grandkids. The entire show, he never mentions Huey and Riley’s parents or begin to deal at all with them. Robert lives out in the Chicago suburbs where his neighbors are the DuBois family and his good friend Uncle Ruckus. He drives and old school car and frequently talks about getting him a woman, often times referring to them as “bitches.”

Frankly, I have a problem with Robert Freeman.

The problem I have with Robert Freeman isn’t the same issues that I have with the Huey and Riley, automatically one assumes various complexities and dynamics with both Huey and Riley and their various interactions, but Robert’s character, while not one-dimensional still comes off as dramatically straightfoward. Uncomfortably, Robert comes off as painfully old-school in his mentality toward life and guiding principles that affect his everyday life and irritatingly misogynistic toward black women. Throughout the seasons and episodes, Robert allows the word “bitches” flow from his mouth too freely for me–particularly in the presence of an eight and ten year old that he was raising. Ultimately, my main contention with Robert’s character is his generally passive demeanor in the face of the egregious social ills that Huey is so apt at perceiving.

For a character study, I would like to pick the scene from the recent episode “Pause” and a reach back to season one’s “The Passion of Reverend Ruckus” and “The Story of Thugnificent.”

Robert being told to deny Ice Cube while submitting to Winston Jerome in the "Pause" episode

In the “Pause” episode, Robert’s character goes so far as to engage in homosexual acts just to get some women–whom he does refer to ultimately as bitches. He seems, at times to serial date women as was expressed in the “Attack of the Killer Kung Fu Wolf Bitch” with the internet dates, and in season one’s “Guess Hoe’s Coming To Dinner” where Robert went all out for a woman who was a hoe, “owned” by A Pimp Named Slickback. What it showed to me was that Robert had no problem objectifying women, and specifically women who fit a particular image of beauty in his mind–he wasn’t interested in women that weren’t considered attractive by society standards. As in “Pause” he was caught looking at a woman’s breasts and he asked Winston Jerome for the “Beyonces and the Alicia Keyeses.”

Robert’s interesting passiveness was more uniquely displayed in “The Passion of Reverend Ruckus” after he watched his self-loathing checkers buddy Uncle Ruckus undergo the process of promoting a message of self-hate by blacks: in order to go to heaven, one must renounce the sin of black skin and ultimately “Praise white Jesus” unashamedly. The second story line was about a black man who was falsely accused of being a cop killer, despite the satirized evidence saying he was empirically not the killer, he was sitting on death row and facing the electric chair. Huey had promised to break him out of jail that night, but needed a ride–a ride that his grandfather denied him in order to save his friend Uncle Ruckus.

What resulted was Huey praying for a miracle, and a lightening bolt striking Uncle Ruckus who had essentially declared that if he wasn’t preaching the right gospel that a lightening bolt come and strike him–which it did. But this lightening bolt knocked out the power and ultimately saved the guy on death row and allowed for the stay of execution.

Meanwhile Robert just stood in the crowd.

The whole time, Robert did nothing. Although he knew what Uncle Ruckus was doing was wrong, he did nothing to stop him but merely stood from a distance and allowed events to take their course. This bothers me about Robert. He’s quick to complain about a situation that really means something, but does nothing meaningful to change said situation. He can be aware of the moral and ethical problems of a situation, but assumes no moral agency to do something about the situation past complaining about it. The situations that he does affect change are those that on macrocosmic scale, as my mother says, don’t amount to “a pimple on the ass of time.” That is evidenced in the episode “The Story of Thugnificent” where Robert files a complaint with the police against the gangster rapper and his rap crew Lethal Injection move across the street. It is also where Robert’s old school mentality rears its ugly head.

Granted Thugnificent is all kinds of wrong that would warrant a blog post unto itself, but I’m discussing Robert’s reactions here. His reaction toward Thugnificent is indicative of many of the older generations reactions toward the hip hop culture and most certainly the post-hip hop generation. He even doesn’t invite the rapper to have dinner with him because he prejudges his actions feeling that he would be disrespectful in his house, and ultimately never gives him a chance or himself a chance to get to know his new neighbor.

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I will admit it took me a while to get past the voicing of of Robert by John Witherspoon because for me he’s always played a character that took the coonin’ aspects just a bit too far for my tastes. From his roles in the “Friday” movies to him as Pops on “The Wayan’s Brothers” to other bit parts he’s played over the years in movies and sit-coms, it’s always the same typical character–being loud, obnoxious and more or less doing something wildly inappropriate = coonin’. Once I got past that aural disconncect of John Witherspoon versus Robert Freeman not being a stereotypical coonin’ character, I realised that I still didn’t like his character, for the reasons I outlined above.

While Robert Freeman’s character is clearly a good-hearted and well-intentioned individual, I always cringe at some of his actions because I can’t help but wonder what role-modeling does this do for either of his grandsons. Neither Huey nor Riley in any real way turn to their grandfather for true advice. If anything they are bailing him out of a situation (such as in “Pause”), Huey gives the best advice toward his grandfather as to how to handle a situation (e.g. it was Huey’s idea to have Robert and Thugnificent meet before the diss song was released or that Granddad meeting Lula in “AOTKKFWB” was a bad idea because he knew nothing about her) and off of the top of my head I can’t remember an episode where either Huey or Riley specifically went to their grandfather with a problem.

In fact, it’s almost a borderline disrespect, or perhaps lack thereof, that they have for their grandfather.

Huey always has a book in his hand and often times dismisses whatever avuncular advice their grandfather dispenses–and I can’t blame him, it’s usually terrible advice. And Riley’s character at times engages the bad advice that their grandfather gives out, and somehow garners the wrong lessons about life, such as in the “Guess Hoe’s Coming to Dinner” where Riley freely refers to Cristal as a “hoe” and surmises some interesting conclusions about male and female relationship based on his grandfather’s interaction with Cristal and what Riley now understands a “hoe” to be. This results in Huey just acknowledging that their grandfather is merely a means provider: food, clothing and shelter and exists as a non-entity in most other aspects.

Its unsettling, for me personally, that this is the image of the elders. Granted elders can be very much out of touch with contemporary reality, and I’m okay with that imaging, but, personally, I must ask when does the reflection of the stereotype begin to be reworked into creating an archetype? Throughout the entire cast on The Boondocks, none of the elders (albeit only two of them Uncle Ruckus and Robert Freeman) exist as some pinnacle of sagacity. Even Stinkmeaner, who was an elderly man, was a bat out of hell–literally! And so was his crew who came back in season three and they were imaged as the 1970s sitcom characters Sanford, Aunt Esther and JJ (although their characters in this episode were completely unrelated to their likeness) were imaged as old persons, who clearly were in no position to be venerated.

Is this where we have arrived in the black community?

I think so. But I think its a dual problem. Old mentalities and old school approaches to new school problems sufficiently painted our elders in a corner–and this was their own doing. Historically of course that generation gap has always existed, but particularly in the Information Age, that gap has widened at an even quicker pace. The fear of “the other” whether the other is another race of people, or simply knowing about Twitter should not stand in the way of progress. We must overcome our internal fears and our communal fears in order to move forward. Our failure to do so will be one of the many cogs in the machine intent on our destruction.

What is your take on Robert Freeman’s character on The Boondocks? Do you think my analysis was on point or a bit skewed?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Cultural Critique, Pop Culture, The Color Line

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Uppity Negro Network™

Book Review of “Losing My Cool: How A Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip Hop Culture” by Thomas Chatterton Williams

The (Anti-)Intelligence of The Hip Hop Culture

The ‘Inception’ of Reality into your Dream

A Character Case Study of The Boondocks: Conclusion

A Character Case Study of “The Boondocks”: Uncle Ruckus

It’s An Issue of Brand Loyalty (and some other stuff): Why Lebron James Went to Miami

A Character Case Study of “The Boondocks”: The DuBois Family

It’s Easy To Hate, So Don’t

A Character Case Study of The Boondocks: Robert “Granddad” Freeman

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