Middle Class: The Niggers of America

“If you define ‘nigger’ as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society is defined by others, the good news is you don’t have to be black to be a nigger in this society. Most of the people in America are niggers.”
— Ron Dellums

Jordans: 21st Century Crack: The Miss Education of a New Negro

Looking back at many of the great African American athletes of the 20th century, the unsuspecting eye would have us believe that Michael Jordan was the best athlete to walk the face of the earth. If we think about it, Michael Jordan is a business machine; where ever he goes, his name spells dollar signs. In his past, he put fans in seats of the NBA. Currently, he still puts customers in shoes. His scoring record is astounding. For 10 years (1987-1997) he lead the NBA in scoring. For three years he scored at the bare minimum, 30 points per game. In his career he has scored nearly 6000 points. Athletically, in the sport of basketball, he was a juggernaut. Business wise, his products make billions. When he signed with Nike in 1984, his shoes were relatively unknown. However, once he started receiving fine upon fine in the NBA for his willful defiance to league rules, (aside from the fact that he was just that damn good) he single handedly thrust Nike, a traditional "mom and pop start-up" sporting goods company, into a national phenomena among urban youth. Jordan represented the quintessential archetype of today's post modern athlete. Not only did he have "the skills to pay the bills," but he was savvy enough to surround himself by marketing mavericks to promote what would eventually be called brand Jordan. But is he really the greatest African American athlete or is Michael Jordan a product of political conservative Reaganomics? If we were to de-construct Michael Jordan in a political schema, I maintain that one can see a well paid prototypical indentured slave on the mythical Nike plantation. We can see a man who has offered his body for sport and capitalism, yet willfully remains mute on any hard political stand, especially in matters where his product, Jordans, have in some cases lead to the loss of life in the urban communities, years too soon. In one of my twitter discussion groups #Blackedu, the facilitator was rather plain in her position of parenting and education in matters of Jordans. In their tweet, they pointedly found fault with the parent who would blindly pay $180.00 for a pair of sneakers, yet fabricate a plethora of excuses to get their child a free library card. That's a provocative commentary. Taking a "Shellyian" like approach, I raised a counter question, do we problematize the parent who elects to purchase the "Js" over the library card, or do we challenge the greater society which extols the twisted myriad of materialistic values a pair Jordans may signify. Are they a fashion statement or are they a signifier for which one will live and die for? In my teaching practice, I have had to silently bite my tongue and grit my teeth when I see a revolving door of students who will have seven pairs of Jordans and not one text book for my college classes. When you think about it, at the estimate, that is $200.00 for seven pairs of shoes totaling $1400.00 which represents a sizable chunk of one's tuition bill or their book money, or in some cases, student rent. However, because of the value that is placed on a sneaker, which only costs $20.00 to make, there is in my humble opinion, a gross "Miss Education of the Post Modern 21st Century Negro." First, I think we have completely forgotten who and what makes a true African American athletic hero. The hero/she-ro can't strictly be "all about the Benjamins." Althea Gibson was the first African American to win Wimbledon. My cousin, the late Arthur Ashe broke barriers not just in the sport of tennis, but also in his quest for equality, in the mid 80s he was arrested for protesting the political ideology of Apartheid at the South African embassy in the United States. In 1992 he also was arrested for protesting the treatment of Haitian refuges. But, if one really wants to discuss the true greats, aside from Jackie Robinson, we must discuss Muhammad Ali. Sure, pop culture knows about his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. Certainly, we know about how he won the title on three separate occasions. Most recently did I learn of his diplomatic skills in securing the release of American hostages before the first Gulf War. But what is scary about that is that my younger brothers and sisters (of all ethnicities) don't know about these acts of heroism, let alone care. Instead, we have some misguided souls of black folk who are willing to live, breathe and die, for an obscenely overpriced $25.00 pair of rubber and leather shackles, as opposed to a book which serves as a key to emancipation from their ignorance. Jordan unequivocally has given his body to the sport which has created family wealth. But in return what has he given to the people who pay for his merchandise. What has he given to the people who make his product in slave sweatshops in Asia and Mexico? To me as I look at the Jordan shoe, it is analogous to crack of this generation and Michael Jordan is "Neno Brown." Second, where is Jordan politically? I am not speaking in the sense of a political party affiliation, but instead, where does he stand on serious issues? It is important to deconstruct Michael Jordan not as a man, as a business entity. As Michael Eric Dyson pointed out back in the late 1990s, when Jordan had an opportunity to use is social capital to stand behind the Sonya Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center at UNC Chapel Hill, he was silent. When Jordan learns of the oppressive sweatshop practices to manufacture his shoe, he is silent. Could it be argued that all Michael Jordan wants urban folk to do is buy his shoes and buy is cars? Don't get me wrong, I love sneakers, I really do, but where is the line between buying a shoe and making a political statement. Where is the line between the African American athletic hero and African American athletic slave? Ali, Ashe, Gibson, Robinson and a host of others have done a hell of a lot more for human rights but in the pop culture sphere, they don't get the credit, let alone the merchandising profits. They don't get the street credit that Kobe, or Lebron walk into. The true African American athletic heros valued things that money can't buy. They valued education and emancipation. They were born from the struggle of what it meant to be human, their own cultural agent and not a corporate lackey for Nike, Coke, or Fruit of the Loom.

Throw Your Guns In The Air and Wave Em Like You Just Don't Care: White Folks and Gun Violence

Chatting in twitter recently, again the issue of gun violence comes to mind. Nearly a month post Sandy Hook, I'm still annoyed at the break neck speed to the now immediate rush to gun control in America. How many countless Black and Brown babies had to die before our politicians got the clue? Do you have to have the right complexion to have the political connection? If I had an opportunity to tell the powers that be what was on my mind I would tell them, gun violence is nothing more than a manifestation of the larger issue we have yet to deal with, race. What this rush to legislative action tells me is that still Black and Brown lives are expendable in matters of violence and vice, especially in matters of the hegemonic hierarchy. In one of my favorite movies, The Godfather, the analogy is vivid... I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment -- we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools -- I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls. If you look at the scene, you see White Italians plotting strategically, how and to whom they will distribute drugs in New York. At the risk of using Malcolm X's words, the chickens have come home to roost. I don't think the mainstream populous like the harvest of these epidemic proportions of violence and death. You see, as long as there was death isolated to the "Boyz in da Hood," the problem was nullified. In this social contract of violence, it is tolerated under the unwritten proviso it stayed in the communities of color. Politically, the solution was to build more jails, increase sentencing, and of course, make it easier for everyone to legally get their hands on a gun to "stand their ground," ergo living out their neo-conservative "Dirty Harry" fantasies. (Do I hear the echoes of Trayvon Martin or Jordan Davis?) On the flip side though, Wally and Beaver, Eddie Haskel, Opie Taylor, Richie Cunningham, along with Ralph and Potsey are throwing lead in Mayberry and not just regular lead; military lead taking down schools and colleges, the very targets which were forbidden by the crime-lords in The Godfather. In the aftermath, there is always some remote control psychologist who will offer some "DSM V" analysis saying the assailant (who is White and male for the most part) was maladjusted, psychologically disturbed, and then we move on to the next case. To be frank about it, to knowingly dispatch a person's life with reckless disregard (even their own), in my opinion, warrants some level of pathological maladjustment. So when "Doughboy" goes on a rampage because his "codes of the street" have been violated, where are his psychologists? Why are we (as intellectuals, politicians, health care providers, sociologists, etc) not Socraticlly analyzing his modus operandi? I take the position that "Doughboy" operates as an unwilling agent in what hooks coins as the white capitalist patriarchal power structure. I take a quote from one of HipHop cinema's most notorious; Tony Montana. He says, You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. In short, "Doughboy" dose society a service by operating as the "bad guy." Yet if we think about it, the bad guy really operates in a well structured embryo that organically reinvents itself to fulfill its own need. Politically, this hydra has taken the guise of gun violence. Other days, it's called entitlement spending. The bottom line reality though is that the hydra is today what it was the day before yesterday: the problem of the color line. Until America begins to have a real serious dialogue on the problem of color, class, and gender, the hydra will grow bigger until it consumes us.

Cerebral Suicide: Death By Reality TV

Business is business... This is as simple as supply and demand. If there is no demand, there will be no supply. The sociological question asks why do we as a culture like watching "train wrecks, murders, assassinations, etc?" Our culture, our media culture specifically has become what Paddy Chayefsky alluded to in Network. I don't think it's just a "Black thing," it's also a profits thing. Reality TV operates as a cheap revenue stream, which 9 times out of 10 is staged reality. Television news is more entertainment and pushing product today in comparison as it was back in the 70s and 80s. TV news then was more investigative, ferreting out corruption and keeping the public in the know about politics, civic engagement, and in general forcing society to be better by acting as a "watch dog." Now, what makes the news is Kanye and Kim's baby announcement, or which politician got caught with their pants down. Personally, I would love to watch a reality TV program where corrupt politicians, local and national are busted because there is transparency. But why is it that we see this overwhelming of reality tv programs where the socioeconomic marginalized are the unwitting partners in their own social capital devaluation? "Honey Boo Boo," is just embarrassing and exploitative on so many levels, but there is an audience. Basketball Wives is rife with negative stereotypes about women, African American women in particular, yet there is still an audience. As an audience, our media IQ is negative 5 and folks with products to sell know this. What brings in the revenue, is going to be on commercial television. If we really do protest this cycle of post modern Blackface on television, then I agree with the writer, we have to stop being complicit in this cerebral suicide called reality tv. Less tv; more human interaction.

Marketing Slavery in a Post Modern Era

Good New Year to you all!!! From what I understand, 2013 is the celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, 150 years of African Americans being freed from the bonds of slavery or as bell hooks would say, American Apartheid. That said, from the climate of American popular culture, I wonder if the argument could be made that we, African Americans, conjointly with whiteness in America are co-conspiriators, dually complicit in an antebellum throwback movement. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino released a Christmas surprise with D'Jango Unchained. Prior to that, Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg released his historical epic Lincoln. What is important to note is that with both films, slavery operated as a backdrop to contextualize both piece's narratives; not to operate as the focal point of the features. As I liked D'Jango for what it was, an escapist revisionist interpretation of the Black exploitation western films, I have to say that I am disappointed, though not surprised at the product merchandising of the film. The action figures of slaves from the film are now for sale. That said, in a world where we have two African Americans singing the praises of being "Niggas in Paris," or where we have sneakers being designed to bare slave shackles, maybe I shouldn't be too alarmed. But as I attempt to call a company to task over the marketing and manufacturing of a slave/action figure, I have to check myself because, as African Americans, regardless if we choose to admit it or not, we too endorse a slave trade of sorts when we purchase a pair of expensive sneakers where the labor force is shackled by globalization and horrid labor practices. I love sneakers for their creativity in design and hip hop culture as folks sport them. To me, sneakers represent power in a masculine and feminine sense as they are, imaginatively, supposed to give someone power to excel athletically or even in a fashion sense. But never do we as the consumer consider the slave practices employed to creating the street gear which symbolically gives this fantasy we sheepishly buy into (no disrespect to sheep). On the same line, Tupac Shakur (who to me is the Marvin Gaye of hip hop) I don't think would ever allow himself to be sold out as an artist to market driven consumption, in short I don't think he would call himself a "Nigga in Paris" and would risk jail time for any white person who dared to use the term Nigger in his presence. In fact on one of his lyrics, Pac said, "Aiyyo, I remember Marvin Gaye, used to sing ta me He had me feelin' like black was tha thing to be" So I guess my question, as foreboding as it is asks, how did this happen? How did it become fashionable, trendy even to market Black suffrage? From a critical gaze, I have to ask is this hurting us (African Americans) as a people or is there some hidden logic that has yet to manifest itself? In another case of possible mockery, was the parody of Venus Williams by a White woman as she attempted to poke fun at her body type. Looking at this I felt bad for Williams because, from my perspective at least, she was being taunted or as we would say in more common vernacular, "clowned" for being who she is, which to me is an athletic voluptuous woman. The politics of representation to me suggest that if you can't beat em, clown em. Maybe I'm reading too deep into the semiotic relationship here. I don't think Williams is in the same class as Sara Bartman, but is she a willing stand in? In essence for me, I think we have come to a point where we have to own up to our own role in this cycle of self-hate and be willing to look at this issue of slavery through a globalized lens. Before we, as Black folk begin to challenge white folk on the manufacturing of a slavery doll, I think it is imperative that we also check ourselves on how we do endorse slavery on a plethora of other levels.. There, I said it, and I ain't taking it back.. :-)