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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1150
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 03:12 pm: | 
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Well, now I change my mind after READING the book by Michael Eric Dyson.
This is a SUPERB book and I totally agree with the following comment that THUMPER made on his board.
THUMPER said:
Last night I was watching Primetime Live. The subject of the program was grandmothers raising their grandchildren that were abandon by their parents. At the end, the inserted pieces of a speech Bill Cosby made last year, when he decided to bring to task the "low rent" portion of the black community; the mothers who give their kids the unpronounceable, unspellable names, teenage pregnancy, the dead beat absent fathers and the women who chooses to lay down with them and have even more kids with them, etc. While I agree with many of the points he made, it still rubbed me the wrong way. With images of poor old black women struggling to raise a generation of kids that they should not be raising still in my head, hearing Cosby rant, visions of that $100 million that he gave Spellman danced in my head. How many grandmothers and poor children could that money have helped? And then there's the implication that that contribution made, "For all you black girls this money is to help you in your future...as long as adopt the ways that will make you an instrument to uplift the race. In other words, act and live as white as you can. Because it is important that white folks know that we are as civilized as they are and therefore worthy of their acceptance."
DITTO FOR KOLA
______________________________
From Publishers Weekly:
Last May, iconic comedian Cosby raised a storm with a dyspeptic rant about the self-destructive failures of the black underclass: "knuckleheads" without parents who "put their clothes on backward," speak bad English and go to jail. To pop culture intellectual Dyson—author of books on Marvin Gaye, Tupac Shakur and Martin Luther King Jr.—this was the most blatant manifestation of an attitude shared by the "Afristocracy." With empathy and energy, Dyson takes Cosby at his word and dissects his arguments—as well as the comedian's own conduct—in order to combat Afristocratic dogma. While Dyson is merciless in assessing both, he takes the opportunity to explore a host of hot-button issues in black culture, from illegitimacy to faux African names, citing data and making his own case for black culture as adapted to a dominant white society that systematically puts up barriers to opportunity. The prolific Dyson has already generated controversy with what finally amounts to an evisceration of a major black figure, but that seems to be precisely the point. Despite the specificity and ferocity of Dyson's critique (which draws on allegations that Cosby sexually abused a woman and fathered an illegitimate child, and understates the race politics of The Cosby Show), Cosby ends up more of a straw man than take-down victim, as Dyson celebrates the "persistent freedom of black folk." 12-city author tour; 40-city radio satellite tour. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
KOLA's CO-SIGN:
The acclaimed "hip-hop intellectual" exposes the raw nerve of class and generational warfare in black America with this provocative defense of impoverished African Americans
Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was the fact that his audience laughed and applauded.
Best-selling writer, preacher, and scholar Michael Eric Dyson uses the Cosby brouhaha as a window on a growing cultural divide within the African-American community. According to Dyson, the "Afristocracy" -lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, bankers, civil rights leaders, entertainers, and other professionals-looks with disdain upon the black poor who make up the "Ghettocracy" -single mothers on welfare, the married, single, and working poor, the incarcerated, and a battalion of impoverished children. Dyson explains why the black middle class has joined mainstream America to blame the poor for their troubles, rather than tackling the systemic injustices that shape their lives. He exposes the flawed logic of Cosby's diatribe and offers a principled defense of the wrongly maligned black citizens at the bottom of the social totem pole. Displaying the critical prowess that has made him the nation's preeminent spokesman for the hip-hop generation, Dyson challenges us all-black and white-to confront the social problems that the civil rights movement failed to solve.
SIDE NOTE:
Michael Eric Dyson is one of the black men I love so much that he's included in my chapter "The Light That I Blessed" in my autobiography. He's really fantastic.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3063
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 03:25 pm: |
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Kola,
Did you write the portion under "KOLA CO-SIGN:"? If so, NICE!
After reading part of Dyson's book, I concur with you. It is indeed a informative, provocative treatise of the areas you describe.
And Dyson's articulation is so vastly potent (ala a brotha who's mind has been steriod injected), he can quite literally leave a reader 'breathless'.
Though I don't concur with everything he says or the manner he says it, he's one of the RARE public figures whom I look at and think "I don't care what any of you mofo's say. I am DAYAM proud to be a Black man!"
Thanks Mighty Mike! |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1152
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 03:29 pm: |
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No, I didn't write that ABM. I "co-signed" onto what his publisher wrote.
Yes, I really love Michael a lot, and I actually have his EMAIL, but I'm just too afraid to say hello to him. He probably's heard what a psycho evil Voodoo-bitch I am. Plus, people's wives get angry when I email the men.
I'm just really depressed today, ABM.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3064
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 03:32 pm: |
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Kola,
You don't ever wanna be happy. Do you?
No matter how hard the world tries. You just don't WANT it. |
Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 06:03 pm: |
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Guess I need to read the book because what's revealed here does not impress me. The garrulous Dyson certainly gets no points for being an original thinker because for years and years, people have been attributing the problems of poverty stricken blacks to The System. Just what is this nebulous, ubiquitous "System" that is to blame for the troubles of the poor supposed to do to bring about reform? How will the commitment to bring about solutions be accomplished without the mass attitude make-over required to convince the "haves" that they have to be responsible for the "have-nots". And in the remedies offered by Dyson, are the villainous black upper classes the only ones who have to change, or are the poor people, themselves, called upon to do a little changing in order to better their conditions? Blaming "The System" sounds good in theory but, in addition to the monumental task of trying to make the "haves" feel guilty about their success, unless America undergoes a compete societal overhaul, replacing Capitalism with a classless Socialist form of government, the wealth will not be spread around. Poor folks gotta do the best they can, and keeping this in mind, it behooves everyone to acknowledge that today's black middleclass was yesterday's black underclass. So the harsh truth is that some make it across the divide, and others fall between the cracks. Should we feel sorry for the plight of the unfortunate ones? Yes! Can we do anymore than house and farm out and adopt the neglected children that they burden themselves with? I doubt it. And I wonder if the affluent Dyson plans to give the proceeds from his book to a program established to help the poor?? |
Slow Poke
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 09:21 pm: |
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Cynique, you took the thoughts right out of my brain.
BTW, I'm one of those former poor people from a dirt poor midwestern family. My parents believed in hard work and education. We got up at the crack of dawn and when we layed down at night, we deserved a rest. We could care less what our shoes looked like or what the new style was. Our parents were good gentle black folks, but they never allowed us to wallow in self pity or be idle. If things were bad, they prayed to God to show them the way, but other than that, we never expressed self pity or blamed the outside community.
I am proud to say that my sisters and I live very comfortable, secure lives today, because of the way our parents reared us and it wasn't easy. My dad has passed away, but my mother doesn't want for anything. She worked her way up to Head Nurse and retired with a good pension, my dad left her considerable money and we kids make enough gravy that we could take care of her if we had to.
I find that some want to advance in life and others stifle themselves blaming others and doing nothing.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1156
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 01:40 am: |
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ABM:
Kola,
You don't ever wanna be happy. Do you?
No matter how hard the world tries. You just don't WANT it.
____________
That's not it, ABM. It's just that I don't want to get hurt.
As we get older, the "hurting" really takes a toll. And I'm not past the OLD hurts yet.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3073
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 03:07 am: |
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‘Poke,
If being Black still means anything you may consider we are all in the same boat. Some are at its stem. Some its stern. Some rowing hard. Others dawdling. But if we don’t find a way to work together, we ALL will capsize...and drown.
Kola,
You never REALLY get “past” “OLD hurts”. You just survive and move forward. It’s kinda like losing a limb or going blind. You never get past such. You just hold on until you develop enough gumption and resources to discover substitutes for what you’ve lost and new joys to supplant the pain.
But I’m sorry if I appear a bit dismissive. I just wish you would eschew hurting yourself the way you often seem to. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1158
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 03:17 am: |
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You know, ABM, you sound like the type of guy (to me) who is usually THE ONE doling out the "hurts", rather THAN being in the vulnerable position of taking "de dick" (no pun intended)
----so that's all EASY for you to say.
And for the record,
I found my life so much freer/happier when I was the "slut" calling the shots and not making any emotional investments.
This is why I espouse that women without "love" have Multiple men and AFFRONT "emotional feeling" in lieu of brave, randy good times and fun.
I truly suffer now that I worship/love a man.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3076
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 03:29 am: |
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Kola,
Believe me, I've been 'screwed over' like EVERYBODY else. Prior to marriage (and even afterwards), I've had mine painfully handed back to me too.
Yeah. I'm in a pretty cool place now. But I've been around long enough to get there.
And you can regress back to the "slut" if you prefer. I wonder, though, would you be the caliber of artist and, more importantly, person that you are now.
And, I don't care how you sell it, most women cannot be as profligate about sex as men. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 348
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 10:05 am: |
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Cynique, you touched on something that I have been thinking about a lot lately: the issue of Black middle class guilt. (Actually...Mostly I have felt guilty lately about NOT feeling guilty.)
These thoughts have probably been sparked by my husband and me just going through the whole school choice decision for next year. (Our kids will remain in the wonderful, magnet public Montessori school instead of transfering to the poorer performing "neighborhood" school.) And also thoughts about my upcoming family reunion. (Everybody together, poorer and better off, at the table of kinship...)
Do you all think there is such a thing as Black middle class guilt, or "survivors' guilt"? Right now I'm not feeling it, even though I still feel very committed to "doing my part." I have written here before about my mixed feelings about Cosby's remarks and Dyson's responses. And I still have those mixed feelings.
I just think that there must be some better motivation for collective action than "guilt" per se (on the middle class folks' end) and "shame" per se (on the "lower class" folks' end).
What that motivation is, I don't know. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3077
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 11:57 am: |
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Vette,
How about failure? Why that, here are few facts for you:
Blacks are +13% of the nation's population, yet own LESS that TWO percent of its wealth (And, interesting enough, Blacks consume about the same proportion of books purchases.).
Black families who earn $60,000 have only 10% the networth of those of Whites who earn the same.
Blacks consume beauty/hair, automobiles, clothing, and other NON-appreciating goods/services in GROSS disproportion to those of non-Blacks. Worse, almost NONE of the producers/distributors of those g/s' are owned/controlled by Blacks.
Spike Lee once lamented that in spite of all the success of Black movie stars like Denzel, Wesley, Halle, Eddie, Morgan, etc. there is not a SINGLE AA who can greenlight a major motion picture. They all must go to Whites for approval.
The stock exchange is perhaps the greatest mechanism for business investment/evaluation. Yet NONE are owned/controlled by Blacks. And very FEW Black majority owned/controlled businesses are traded on the exchanges.
Even Jesse Jackson, Sr. the great Black 'apologist' himself once said upon hearing a Japanese prime minister blaming Blacks (& Hispanics) for America's economic woes the saddest thing about what the minister had said was the world of +1 billion Black foks can't put together a single Toyota.
Hip-hop is far/away the most potent, lucrative musical (and cultural) genre. Yet the VAST MAJORITY of the funds being scored from its manipulation are going to the coffers of non-Blacks, including but not limited to the non-Black owned/controlled Sony, Universal, Viacom, Disney, BMG and their myriad subsidiaries (MTV, CBS, etc.).
Blacks constitute +85% of the NBA, 75% of NFL and 30% of Major League Baseball players. Yet of the [94] teams amongst those league, only ONE is majority-owned by an AA. And Bob Johnson, former owner of BET, just bought the "Bobcats"...LAST YEAR.
BET - Owned/controlled by Whites.
Phat Farm - Owned/controlled by Whites.
Essence - Owned/controlled by Whites.
Def Jam - Owned/controlled by Whites.
Soft Sheen - Owned/controlled by Whites.
So while I witness the Cosby's of the world spout off about how SOME Black foks are goofing off, I wonder whether they've looked fairly/accurately at where THEY stand.
Because if you ask me what trouble Middle/Upper Class Blacks should regret most, it is not our relative success. It's our failure. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 349
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 12:46 pm: |
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Good pt, ABM. ALl depends on who your reference/comparison group(s) is (are). |
Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 02:23 pm: |
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Yvettep, the irony of the situation, is that people like Dyson want for poor blacks what upper class blacks have, yet he constantly criticizes upper class blacks apparently because they committed the sin of achieving. People of Dyson's ilk cast poor people as ebonic-speaking martyrs who are the victims of circumstances beyond their control, and middle-class blacks are demonized for speaking the King's English and living the affluent independent lifestyle that they have worked to acquire. If poor people don't feel guilty about contributing to their own plight, then why are middle-class obligated to be feel bad about not taking up the slack? I guess the answer is that the upper-classes should be condescending and paternalistic toward the less fortunate. |
Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 02:31 pm: |
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Slow Poke, it is very gratifying to me that you are regularly in sync with what I have to say. Which, of course, is why you're my kind of guy.  |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 351
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 07:37 pm: |
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Cynique, what you are saying reminds me of an associate I knew once. This woman, who was White, hung around a bunch of us Blacks in a college setting. After I had known her for some time, I found out that she was really quite wealthy--or at least was from a wealthy family. But she had given up access to her wealth because her family did not approve of her "lifestyle" (which wasn't really a lifestyle, she just didn't subscribe to her parents' racist ways).
Upon hearing this, my first thought was NOT "Oh, how noble of her to make that sacrifice for us"--It was, "Oh, what a waste. And how condescending. To think of all that good she could really do 'us' by having access to that wealth..."
(Note, I am not saying that she OWED us any $ or anything else. Just that I thought it was patronizing of her to think that we'd be so enamored of her friendship and so grateful that she had given up riches to be our friend.)
I combine this with the point ABM was making to think that this is an even greater paradox than most of us recognize most of the time: The perception is that middle class Black folks are doing so well and not doing "their part" to help poorer Blacks. But in reality, most middle (and even many) upper class Blacks do not have secure and real wealth (NOT "income"). Some of us are only one major illness or one divorce away from the po' house ourselves.
I can't further make any assessments of Dyson's critiques of middle class Blacks cause I haven't read the book. But I have to admit that I am curious. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1162
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 08:27 pm: |
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Me, personally, I don't think MONEY can really help anybody in the black diaspora.
Look at Michael Jackson, Lil Kim and O.J. Simpson.
Our demons are so tied to us not being "human", not being "beautiful", not being "valued", not being "validated by our parents-parents including nations and groups"----that these are the REAL obstacles to our well being and mental and spiritual health. Far more than lack of money----but then again, without MONEY it's impossible to create the Vehicles through which the people could see themselves in a new light.
I have to reiterate that before I knew that "race" existed----when I was living DIRT POOR...naked with no shoes in Omdurman.....but surrounded by wonderful, mystical Black Culture in its PURITY with no thought that others even existed......I was happier than the dead are in heaven.
It felt WONDERFUL just being a free human being, cherished simply for drawing breath.
I personally believe that the MIDDLE CLASS does the very most damage, as Dyson pointed out, by "reinforcing" the message of our inferiority, by setting the example that we can only be saved/affirmed through White Folks Standards and by selling out our blackness while extolling the virtues of the dominant culture.
In other words...the Middle Class forces us to CONFORM, to "surrender".
The continuing damage is really MENTAL.
We are viciously attacked daily by the Middle Class and by the HIP HOP culture. Both, more often than not, express suttle hate for the Black Experience, the Black Identity and the Black Body.
The goal, they say, is to become "Americans"---
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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 353
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 08:50 pm: |
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Kola, I hear what you are saying. But honestly, none of the middle class Blacks personally know look much like what I have heard you describe. If anything, my peers are more aware, rebellious (albeit in our own ways), radical, and "Black"-identified than many of our less moneyed peers.
What "virtues of the dominant culture" are you talking about? I see many of us extolling virtues and values and standards that are not "White" necessarily. I am troubled by the idea that in order to be "Black" we must be opposite of what (we imagine) Whites are. (I'm not saying that you, Kola, are saying this.) This puts us in a bit of a double bind.
We can be like my White friend from long ago and give up our strivings and trappings of success so we can be "down" with our brothers and siisters. But then we have lost whatever resources--including, but not limited to, financial--that may have truly helped "the cause."
I do agree that money alone is not the answer. However, I choose not to put aside financial goals in some effort to prove my Blackness. As James Evans once said (paraphrasing), "Being poor is not something people would choose to be--In fact it's right up there with 'sick' and 'dead' as something most folks DON'T want to be." |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1163
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 09:33 pm: |
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But Yvette, I don't think of you as the MIDDLE CLASS.
I agree with everything you said.
Gosh.
I just realized something.....
I'm basically a housewife (without a man) who stays at home (on a ranch) to raise my 2 kids and is taken care of by their father, a man who owns his own business and makes over $200,000 a year NET income.
I must be the MIDDLE CLASS too!
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1164
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 09:38 pm: |
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Girl, I thought cause I was topless and barefoot that I wasn't Middle class.
But just think about it!
I'm one of the asshole group.
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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 354
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 09:49 pm: |
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Topless, barefoot, a roof, some kids, AND middle class are not mutually exclusive.
(Now, PUBLIC toplessness, on the other hand...LOL!) |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1165
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 10:00 pm: |
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I wouldn't go topless in public in America---
----DESPITE reports of me leading book readings topless and getting off planes topless and actually "flying" in on angel's wings....people get so carried away with their Kola Boof stories.
I only "pray" topless in the river. THATS IT.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3089
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005 - 01:51 am: |
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‘Vette,
I believe there are many Blacks who are self-deluded. They think to have 1 or 2 sheepskins decorating their walls, a home mortgage, a new car and fierce wardrobe mean they’ve ‘arrived’. But the truth is they are probably about a year away from foreclosure because their gig’s about to be outsourced to India.
And if the Black Middle Class as a whole was as rebellious/defiant as you suggest, I think we’d be more into creating/building businesses/schools/foundations than we are gorging ourselves on transitory goods/services/activities.
I agree Blacks should do what’s best for us, whether or not it coincides with what White recommend/do. Because some things just work a certain way regardless of the ethnicity of those involved.
Btw: Maybe you should cut the White ex-heir some slack. Maybe her decision had little to do with some faux fidelity to Blacks. Rather, maybe she’s witness from what has happened with her fellow heirs or herself has witnessed that the cost to her of accessing her familial wealthy EXCEEDS its presumed benefits.
Kola,
I agree with you that if our hearts/spirits are adrift, more money WON'T do most of us much good. In fact, given our current social/cultural character, I wonder whether our receiving reparations for slavery would be the very WORST thing to happen to AA’s. |
Anunaki3600
Regular Poster
Username: Anunaki3600
Post Number: 35
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005 - 09:55 am: |
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I think that there is a big difference between "white culture" and "capitalist culture". AA's have adopted more of the capitalist culture, buy, buy, buy rather than trying to be "white". Many White American I worked with kept their European culture, i.e Dutch American. Their food, belief system, etc was more European than American style capitalist culture. |
Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005 - 12:45 pm: |
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What you say, is right, Anunak, and it just reinforces the truism that there is no such thing as a "white" race. Caucasians retain their ethnic identity and their "white" skin doesn't necessarily bond them with other nationalities. Blacks have establish an identity that is rooted in their American tenure and, that is what makes them "unique". (It also fills them with mixed emotions.) |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3090
Registered: 04-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005 - 03:00 pm: |
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Anunaki,
Respectfully, I believe the problem with Blacks is we've failed to embrace the "capitalist culture". Capitalism is not primary about "buy, buy, buy". Rather, it's really about 'create, sell, manage, and invest'.
If we were at our core 'capitalistic', we'd be MUCH better off. |
Anunaki3600
Regular Poster
Username: Anunaki3600
Post Number: 36
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 03:17 am: |
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You are right Abm. I should have stated more clearly that AA's have adopted the "American Capitalist's CONSUMER culture". Also Cynnique, AA's are the only unique group of people in the USA who are "American". They do not carry any baggage from the old country like the "Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japenese, etc". Even though the new identification as "African American" has been selected, the "African" part is only related to historical ties rather than based on cultural, diet, language, etc which the other American ethnic grouping are tied to in the US. Abm, I agree that AA's should adopt the "capitalist" part more than the "consumer" part. BBC did a story on the Hispanic community in the US yesterday (Monday) and on of the main investor of a new fast growing chicken fastfood outlet which started in California stated that by 2008, the buying power of the Hispanic community in the US will be almost a trillion dollars. Something to think about. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1181
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 04:00 am: |
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Anunaki3600....I've never heard even a 3rd generation Korean or Japanese or Chinese DENY that they were "ASIAN".
And as an African, I would argue that African-Americans (blacks of American birth) have a VERY STRONG "South Negro Culture" that is almost as powerful as an African tribal culture....the difference is that Black Americans do not Cherish, Preserve and Pass Down their RICH culture in America.
Whites are the keepers of Jazz/Blues...Coltrane and the gang.
Whites are the main readers of a rich TRULY BLACK woman writer like Gwendolyn Brooks or even Chester Himes.
Ask any black child if they know who Sonny Liston or Sarah Vaughn or Frederick Douglass or ETHEL WATERS is...
They say names like Assata Shakur and Malcolm X, but they really DO NOT KNOW what these people did or "WHY".
the parents teach their children NOTHING about their rich culture
It's VERY DIFFERENT from Africa---where the people will WHIP A CHILD for not knowing some bit of history as far back as 1,000 years ago!
Your history...your heritage...your ancestors....YOU ARE TO BE LITERALLY POSSESSED BY THEM!
Stevie Wonder can't get his music played on Black Urban Radio.......but whites will play and promote The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan until their noses and dicks are falling off the gut.
Whites WORSHIP ugly white women like Queen Elizabeth...they make films GLORIFYING Queen Victoria and Elizabeth in all their BALD pale ugliness....but Blacks reject and shun black super-talents like Fantasia and India Arie----because of how they "look".
If they don't want (a) to fuck you or (b) to look like you.....then you aint' shit to a black person.
Blacks DERIDE and are ASHAMED of their ancestor's cuisine---while Africans arriving fresh in the U.S. are falling in love with these "African-like" Southern Cookings....chitlins, greens, yams, cornbread, black eye peas, Okra, fried fish and watermelon, and the classic African dish---Red Beans and Rice.
MY POINT IS:
Black Americans...have the RICHEST, most SOULFULLY pleasing "culture" in the World and yet they treat it the same way they treat the image of their black mother. LIKE DIRT--because they don't want to be associated with anything that came out of slavery or links them back to WEST AFRICA. Just 25 years ago you ALL were "ghetto"----but now it's suddenly the most shameful thing you can be.
You DO have a Cultural Diet, you just let WHITES steal it and take credit for it.
Now the WHITE MAN is the GOD of HIP HOP....Eminem and Justin Timberlake....and Mariah Carey and 10 other Medicore White female vocalists are the "SOUL SISTAS".
You don't honor yourselves and then got the nerve to think I'm UPPITY and CRAZY and need to go back to AFRICA.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1183
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 04:06 am: |
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Let me tell you something....these white people AINT SHIT!!
They ain't shit!
You come from 10 times better than their stock.
They're nothing but trash that couldn't cut it in England and every other cobblestone sewer they ran from.
These Goddamned White Motherfuckers AINT SHIT!!!
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1184
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 04:53 am: |
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GLORIFIED:
DENIED:
GLORIFIED:
DENIED:
GLORIFIED:
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Anunaki3600
Regular Poster
Username: Anunaki3600
Post Number: 39
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 07:32 am: |
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Kola: Boy are you up early. I guess the early bird gets the worm. I agree with you in that African Americans are the only group with a "American" culture devoid of old country baggage like other ethnic groupings from Europe, Asia or the Americas. Instead of being proud of the cultural foundation that they have built in the U.S. of A, they are caught up in a tangent created by White Supremecy and destablized and taken off-track. The strongest and smartest sons and daughters of Africa where brought here and they built the most powerfull state ever known in modern history.
To change the subject a little, I saw a movie on Sky TV with you and Michael Caine. Its about you two being doctors working for WHO and are in West Africa when slavers abduct you while taking a bath in the river and make you walk across the Sahel desert and you end up being bought by Omar sharif. I really liked the young vodoo kid who makes a vodoo doll out of a bone and kills the slavers main whip bu tying a noose around the dolls neck. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1187
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 12:34 pm: |
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LOL
Anunaki3600 that actress is Beverly Johnson. Not me. But thanks for mistaking Beverly for ME.
You're a slick one, because now of course--I'm baking coconut cookies for you. What a SWEET THING to say to me!
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1188
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 12:48 pm: |
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Beverly Johnson:
KOLA BOOF:
The film with Michael Caine and Beverly Johnson was called "Ashanti" (1979).
That was the year that I came to America---adopted by the Johnson family. I was either 8, 9, 10, possibly 12 years old.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1189
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 12:52 pm: |
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Last NOTE Anunaki
----people often think that's ME in "Ashanti" (I think it's because her character acts like me and the "river" scenes)....they also think that IMAN is me in the film "OUT OF AFRICA" and the one with Kevin Costner "Nowhere to Hide" (I may have the title wrong).
If I was the weight that I was in the 1990's (which was 134 pounds, 6 ft. 3) then I would REALLY look similar to them again. I'm voluptuous now and was even over weight recently (to me, when I was on tour last summer--I was over weight).
I think when people see my video next month they will begin to SEE how I "really" look.
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Mahoganyanais
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 513
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 02:00 pm: |
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From the New York Times...
A Short History of Class Antagonism in the Black Community
By BRENT STAPLES
Bill Cosby spawned a cottage industry among opinion writers when he ascended a podium in Washington last year and harangued inner-city parents for doing too little to educate their children. He threw salt in the wound by saying those parents were spending too much on expensive sneakers and not enough on books.
Those brief remarks have continued to reverberate through the court of public opinion. Conservatives are hailing Mr. Cosby as the tough love truth teller of the moment. Liberals have come close to describing him as a race traitor, as Prof. Michael Eric Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania recently pointed out in his incendiary book, "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?"
Professor Dyson, who is known for rhetorical pyrotechnics, is fiercely critical of Mr. Cosby for what he sees as unfairly attacking the poor. But Mr. Dyson doesn't stop there. He also reaches into the past, attacking earlier members of the black elite for doing the same thing.
Professor Dyson is at least aware that class conflict in the black community goes back to the very beginning. The most striking thing about the discussion that has followed the Cosby comments is the extent to which even well-educated Americans have been surprised to learn that class antagonism exists in the black community at all. This entrenched ignorance about black life was a long time in the making, and is only now being dislodged.
Americans no longer bat an eye when a black actor portrays a surgeon, a chief executive or even a president of the United States. It was not so long ago, however, that black actors who could find work at all were largely limited to playing criminals, servants and simpletons, roles that confirmed the doctrine of black inferiority. Sidney Poitier was the exception, in movies like the one that cast him as a learned psychiatrist treating white patients.
These movies were seen as groundbreaking, even in the North, because they offered black characters who were superior intellectually and in class terms to the whites they encountered on screen. But these glimpses of the black elite on film were not sufficient to counteract the race message that emanated from the American cultural apparatus through most of the 20th century.
That message portrayed black Americans almost exclusively as ill-educated and poor, and argued by omission that the black elites and intelligentsia did not exist. Thus misinformed, the nonblack world came to think of the black community as a socially homogenous zone where class antagonisms did not exist.
It should surprise no one that black elites pressed into close contact with the poor were often more class-obsessed and more condescending toward the commoners than their white counterparts. White elites, after all, could escape the poor by packing up and moving.
The black elite would make its getaway when the walls of segregation came down. But for the first half of the 20th century, black doctors, dentists, lawyers and teachers often had to carve out enclaves in the areas set aside for blacks in cities like Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore.
Class was trickier in the black world, and not just because of physical proximity. The early black elite started and led the civil rights movement, which involved making common cause with the lower classes. But, as might be expected, the black upper classes took elaborate measures to insulate themselves from too much contact with "the wrong kind of people."
This meant attending the right churches and joining the right clubs, some of which judged potential members through a complex set of criteria that often included class, education and skin tone.
Black-against-black class barriers were particularly byzantine in Washington, which was the seat of a hypereducated black elite that was known as "the colored 400." As the historian Constance McLaughlin Green wrote in "The Secret City," her famous history of class-obsessed black Washington: "Whites [who were] prone to think Negro social distinctions absurd lost sight of the obvious truth that the cultivated Negro had no more in common with the lower-class black than the white society leader with the white ditchdigger."
The elites enrolled their children in tony schools, where possible, and in childhood social organizations like Jack and Jill, where they learned public service and encountered their peers. The elites summered in black enclaves in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard and Highland Beach, Md., where the poor could not easily follow. To avoid segregated hotels and second-class treatment, they lodged in one another's homes when they visited other cities.
This version of black life was shut out of the white press, which had little interest in black faces until they landed in a perp walk. The black community, however, kept tabs on the goings-on among those in the upper crust by voraciously reading the magazines and newspapers that made up the Negro press. The Pittsburgh Courier, The Baltimore Afro-American and The Chicago Defender offered black political news from Washington and abroad. But the Negro press specialized in society news that covered high-toned banquets and literary teas.
In these ways, the black elites served the same basic functions as their white counterparts. They produced the literary class, led social movements and provided life examples for the upwardly aspiring poor. But they were often ferociously intemperate toward the poor. Comments like Mr. Cosby's would not have been at all out of place in the salons of the black elite in the 1940's or 50's or even more recently. That some of these people also adopted frankly bigoted views of the poor may be distasteful, but it is indisputably true. That the truth is finally out represents an important signpost along the way to a realistic discussion of race.
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Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 04:15 pm: |
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I have certainly always been aware of the class conscousness among black folks. But what hasn't been given much attention is that the origins of the black elite differs from region to region. Because northern urban centers didn't have black colleges and universities around which to develop a community of black professionals, the black middle-class in Chicago, for instance, was the outgrowth of upwardly mobile working-class people; pullman porters, civil service workers, public utility workers, policemen, bus drivers, beauticians, factory laborers. These hard-working people sacrificed and struggled to give their kids everything they didn't have, sent them to good schools and universities and laid the ground work for them to comprise a new generation of middle class blacks. And because they worked so hard to earn their status and affluence, these blacks could never empathize with the last wave of rural southern migrants who came north and squatted in the slums, a substantial number of them remaining there to comprise the core of a welfare culture. But I digress. What I question is why the black bourgeoise is expected to be such a paragon of virture? Why is the burden put on them to be any different than the aristocracy of any other ethnic group. Why are they cast as the bad guys? The collective consciousness of Americans of all colors is one that encompasses a work ethic. So, success-driven people that they are, American wage earners don't bother to process the socio-economic factors that contribute to some people not being able to earn a livable wage. All they care is that "I got mine, now you try and get yours." And the poor people don't help their cause because in many ways they contribute to their own inertia. Dyson can lecture and reprimand all he wants, but he's dealing with the flux and variables of the human condition and the more things change, the more they become the same. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1196
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 05:23 pm: |
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From the article:
That message portrayed black Americans almost exclusively as ill-educated and poor, and argued by omission that the black elites and intelligentsia did not exist. Thus misinformed, the nonblack world came to think of the black community as a socially homogenous zone where class antagonisms did not exist.
KOLA:
Am I the only "middle class black" who would rather identify with and be represented by the working class black?
Mainly because they're more authentic as blacks to me----and isn't it Classist to even suggest that it's some horrible embarrassment to be represented by the black poor? In the 1950's, 60's and 70's---the black poor TRULY exemplified the very best in Human Spirit, Human Dignity and were to me....the moral center of the universe.
All my favorite writers are from the black poor---NONE of these following people come from those Black Social Clubs, Churches, Blue Vein Societies. All these are from dirt poor folks:
...Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Chester Himes,
the list is ENDLESS.
MOTOWN and STAX RECORDS were the "Black poor".
Everything that was REALLY GOOD came from the Black Poor people.
Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks came from POOR people.
______________________________
The Black Middle class produced:
Shelby Steele, John Edgar Wideman
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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 367
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 05:33 pm: |
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Is that EVERYBODY the Black middle class produced? Come on, now, Kola!
(Gurl, just go ahead and turn in your ghetto pass, you boho bougie! LOL) |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1197
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 05:47 pm: |
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Well who else came from the Black Middle Class?
FIRST...let's identify the Black Middle Class:
__________
These were the Jack and Jill Set. The BOULES.
They had Wood's Whole at Martha's Vineyard and Sag Harbor. I know because I lost my virginity to a high yellow Upper Class "tutor".
These were the BLUE VEINS or in Louisiana--the Creoles.
__________
WHO did they produce?
well more recently they produced Whitney Houston, whom I love.
I'd love to help her kick a few people's ass.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1198
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 05:58 pm: |
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Whitney's daddy was from the BOULE set.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1199
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 05:58 pm: |
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LOL
Yvette, this is true:
(Gurl, just go ahead and turn in your ghetto pass, you boho bougie! LOL)
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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 371
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 06:12 pm: |
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What about MLK? Plessey (spl?) was Creole. And what about Duke Ellington? And Spike Lee? W.E.B.?
How would you classify these folks, class-wise?
Plus, "middle class" in the Black community has historically been a tricky thing. Yes, there is the Black set you mention (the "BOULE set"), but there are others that wouldn't be middle class by White standards but still would have been considered that in the Black community.
My mother's people in Louisiana and Houston, TX for example--Always in the society pages of the Black newspapers, kids valedictorians of the segregated high school, family full of school teachers... YET, my grandmother and her mother still cleaned White people's houses (that is, were "domestics") to make ends meet. |
Kola
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 07:09 pm: |
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But we're going by the N.Y. Times Article, which is basically complaining that the "Black Experience" was portrayed through the eyes of the black poor.
And that the Wealthy, Elite Blacks (who supposedly led the Civil Rights movement) were never shown.
W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White are the only "Middle Class"/"Upper Class" Blacks I can think of who LED civil rights.
The NEW Middle Class:
Spike Lee, Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston I'll give you.
But it was still...overwhelming the POOR folks who did the most and who humanized and brought dignity to the "Black Image".
I'd even take the Hip Hop Ghetto People over the O.J.--Diana Ross--Johnson/BET--Johnson/Ebony---Harry Belafonte rich set. I despise those people.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1200
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 07:14 pm: |
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It's the SAME back in Africa.
Those Africans who come here and LOOK DOWN on the Black Americans----those aren't the "REAL" Africans, those are the bougie upper class EDUCATED bastards.
The real true Africans are poor.....the Sell Outs who Espouse European ideals are "Middle Class" and "rich".
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Cynnique
Unregistered guest
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - 08:36 pm: |
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There is a difference between being middle-income people and people with middle-class values. Nowadays, middle class is synonomous with the status symbols of money and possession. But middle-class values originally were ones that emphasized honest labor and respectibility and integrity and responsibility. The thing I have against today's bougies is that they generally tend to be intellectually shallow. They never discuss ideas; they'd rather discuss things and they are hopelessly materialistic. |
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