Tag Archives: Culture
Why The Scuttlebutt About Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion is Nothing New aka What is the Most Reliable Path for Black Women to be Noticed
One of the many benefits of teaching at an HBCU is that it forces you to remain abreast of popular culture trends. There is rarely a week that passes that some new “trend” reminds me that I am now a middle-aged man who has almost, I do emphasize almost, seen it all. Although I would love to say that the cultural factors that shaped my childhood are long gone. The truth of the matter is that they remain present. When I see today’s youth culture, I am reminded of rapper Q-Tip of a Tribe Called Quest who offered the following brilliance in the song Excursions.
Back in the days when I was a teenager
Before I had status and before I had a pager
You could find the Abstract listening to hip hop
My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop
I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles
The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin’ like Michael
Prior to the global pandemic’s arrival, there was rarely a day that I was not reminded that my generation, the creators of Hip-Hop Culture, have been pushed from the center stage by younger African-Americans.
Let me be honest about this situation, there is regret and bitterness that afflicts every generation when their time under the spotlight ends. This moment breeds regret regarding things that you wish could have been said, attempted, or accomplished. If one is not careful, you will find yourself steeped in a self-promoting generational warfare battle that you are bound to lose. I have done my absolute best to not participate in intra-racial cultural wars that ultimately paint me as some miser whose present is marred by an envious view of these anonymous historically and culturally illiterate kids who lead Hip-Hop Culture today.
Trust me when I say that the urge to denounce black youth culture is omnipresent, in fact, it often appears that young African-Americans are begging us to do such.
The latest invitation to criticize today’s hip-hop generation arrived via the imagery and video of rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. If it can be stated that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” the referenced photo communicates a host of things that generations of black folk have fought against with all their might. We must never forget that although black men have been socialized within a white patriarchal society that there are many who possess enough wisdom and courage to take definitive action to protect black women who Malcolm X characterized as “the most disrespected person on the planet.”
Considering that I am one of the black men who have dedicated much of their lives to protecting and uplifting black women, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion could present a dilemma that revolves around a question of should that type of black woman be protected by black men. Keep in mind that I said COULD present quite a dilemma. In actuality the dilemma is non-existent.
The historically literate in our midst realize that the imagery and message being promoted by some record company for profit is not much different than previous rap songs and videos such as Luther Campbell’s Scarred, Too Short’s Blowjob Betty, Ying Yang Twins Wait, Ludacris What’s Your Fantasy, Missy and Ludacris One Minute Man, Khia My Neck My Back, 2 Live Crew We Want Some Pussy & Pop that Pussy, and the list goes on and on.
We all should understand that imagery matters. So, regardless of how you consider the marketing campaign surrounding Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, it is impossible to argue against the assertion that this presentation matters. Some blacks are cringing at the imagery because they believe that it verifies bigoted whites’ stereotypes of Black America. I will tell you the truth, I am unconcerned with outsiders’ view and belief systems that never fail to amplify occurrences of ignorance while ignoring more plentiful moments of black excellence.
My concern is focused on the impact that negative hip-hop images and messages have on emerging generations of black boys and girls devoid of effective parental supervision and guidance. Let’s keep in mind that they are both digesting these images. The haunting words of James Baldwin remind us that
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
Equally important is the unfortunate reality that it is Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion who stand at the forefront of debates surrounding black women. They are certainly black women, however, they are far from a fair representation of black womanhood.
Nevertheless, the centerstage status of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion has once again muted the genius and incalculable ingenuity of black girls and women that I know. At a moment where it appears that Presidential hopeful Joe Biden is poised to select a black woman as his running mate, Black America is engrossed in criticism regarding a cultural expression that is far from new.
Such developments leave me with no other reasonable conclusion than the following one. If black women really want to be heard, intelligence is not the most reliable path. A more productive path appears to pattern themselves after black cultural icons such as Lil Kim, Khia, and Foxy Brown; put simply, they should use their physical attributes to get what they want. After all, that is the message that men, regardless of race/ethnicity, have given to black women throughout the annals of time.
So, in the words of UGK,
Let me see it, let me see it
Let me see it, let me see it
Let me see it, let me see it
Let me see it, bend over and let me see it
Let me see it, let me see it
Let me see it, let me see it
Let me see it, let me see it
Bend over and let me see it
If you do that, I guarantee you that you will be ushered to center stage and the world will notice you.
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.
THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DUBOIS
Ethnic Notions
How A Bigoted TikTok Video Provides White Americans an Opportunity to Differentiate Themselves from the Bigots that Surround Them
I am sure that by this time you have seen the TikTok video of two high school students from Georgia making a “Nigger.” This dimwitted duo taped themselves in front of a bathroom mirror mixing a potion that included derisive stereotypes such as:
- Doesn’t have a Dad.
- Robs White people.
- Goes to jail.
These were the crucial ingredients involved in the making of a “Nigger.” Apparently, this is what passes for cute and entertaining during this moment of self-quarantine.
If only I had a penny for each moment that someone oversimplified the voluminous problems occurring within Black America to cultural dysfunction, the lack of a moral compass and dearth of impulse control, I would be a rich man.
The alluded to derisive commentary is offered with such authority that it leads one to believe that White America is devoid of cultural dysfunction or myriad inter-locking illiteracies (historical, cultural, political, etc.) that render many of its members to the scarp-heap of intellectual feebleness.
For decades I have watched many Whites from their thrones of privilege pass judgment on Black America due to the actions of a idiotic roguish few in our community. As a person who has always asked for consistency out of others in their actions and thought, I must apply the same rules to myself and state that I am left with no choice but to follow Whites lead of jumping to conclusions and using a broad paint brush to denigrate an entire Race due to the actions of an idiotic few; in this case two yet to be identified teenagers. The idiotic pseudo-scientists have been expelled from the highly-diverse majority minority Carrollton High School, located 50 miles west of Atlanta. In many ways, the expulsion of this duo is in-direct punishment for the entire nation as it ensures that they will continue to wallow in their pervasive ignorance.
In all seriousness, I find it impossible to allow this dynamic-duo of idiocy to serve as the representatives of a highly-diverse White America. I understand that they are neither representative of White America nor indicative of the progressivism of many of my White colleagues. I will tell you that I find much hope in the fact that prominent members of that community immediately stepped-forward to not only rebuke the deplorable message but also to take decisive action against this public expression of racial bigotry.
Mark Albertus, the superintendent of the Carrollton School District immediately launched an investigation after terming the footage “unacceptable…and not representative of the district’s respect for all people.” Mr. Albertus displayed what I can only term an uncommon bold leadership by countering these two nitwits actions by publicly stating,
We are very proud of our diversity and so is our entire community. We don’t need to lose sight of this important attribute because of the actions of a few.
Albertus’ position was bolstered by David Brooks, the principal of Carrollton High School, who related that these actions, whenever they were conducted, went against the standard of behavior he expects his students to uphold. According to Brooks,
It is our priority to keep our schools safe, and there is no doubt this incident has caused significant tension at Carrollton High School, across the district, state and nation – even the world.
Although rarely discussed in front of “mixed company” (a gentile way of saying ‘White folk’), there is consensual agreement that although all Whites may not fall into the category of racial bigots, we must remain cautious when in their presence; at least until they prove that they are different from their peers.
Make no mistake about it, the historical record indicates that for Blacks dealing with Whites, the stakes can be as high as life or death. Hence, there is a desperate need for Blacks, regardless of age, to be sure of who they are dealing with. Unfortunately for Whites, Blacks do not possess a supernatural insight that allows them to differentiate between good Whites and bad Whites through physical appearance. For well-meaning Whites not afflicted by full-blown racial bigotry, the onus is on them to publicly demonstrate on a consistent basis that they are cut from a much-different cloth than their bigoted brethren.
Much like the way that bigoted Whites seize MLK’s words regarding “the content of our character” to denigrate Blacks, as mentioned above, I demand consistency from all around me. Hence, it should be easy to understand that I use these same words in my evaluation of Whites. Few meet my standard of definitively denouncing racial bigotry in a crisis such as the recent one at Carrollton High School. If I had one wish in this matter, it would be that more Whites follow the lead of Superintendent Albertus and Principal Brooks and jump into the fray with an uncommon eagerness that leaves no room regarding where they stand on such matters. Failure to mimic those actions leaves Black America with no other choice than to leave them in a murky swamp filled with their less civilized countrymen.
Just as you are watching Black America and making judgments regarding what you see, we are watching you and making similar judgments.
TikTok!
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture 2020.
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