Been listening to/watching a lot of Chris Rock lately. In one of his performances he was talking about how "niggas love to not know". How African American men love to not know the answer to your question. It's funny, but true. It's part of what we call "keeping it real". As in, we think it's cool to not know, as in, if we did know we'd be fake. Fake as in intelligent instead of ignorant. So ignorance gets equated with being Black. This mindset is like a disease in our community, a sickness, the illness:
The Illness
Brothers better invest in books
instead of bootleg dvds
and the blueprint 3
we still maneuver through poverty
like it defines our culture
still jealous of the next man
playing Cain to one another
would probably slay Seth
instead of being role models
a whole generation fell to crack
left us broken like bourbon bottles
governmental serpents offered apples
so we ate
but that wasn’t american pie
that they put upon our plate
recorded undercover tapes
fed panthers poisonous grapes
word to the Hottentot Venus
Beyonce is getting raped
but we’re so scarred on the boulevard
we fall blind to the times
playing servant at nine to fives
playing lives of the rich and famous
while only gaining dimes
playing Barnum and Bailey
or better yet, playing the circus
cause how many niggas you gon’ fit in that suburban
looking like a clown car
should’ve got a joint at half the price
and invested the other half
brothers love counting money
but never do the math
so the poverty doubles back
and you end up on the ave
betrayed by all those brothers
who never chipped in on gas
instead of ballin’ out
should’ve been up in classshould’ve been off in some literature
but little Black children
are only trained to be funny
trained to be musical
by the teenage years we know how to scuffle
to overcome that most choose to hustle
we buy and sell on the block
but never buy and sell stock
never flipped america’s lies
never realized how white parents
buy their kids mutual funds
and teach them about wall street
years before they can drive a car
behind, we find out ten years later
what they learn at age 18
we learn at 28
so the wealth comes to us
at a much slower rate
we pass down bad spending habits
credit card debt, and penny jars
still maneuvering through poverty
like it defines our culture
never discussing multinational corporations
and global economics with each other
the average bottom boy will never see the Eiffel tower
will never know why James Baldwin traveled abroad
and how Black soldiers felt when they came back from Vietnam
the average bottom boy won’t make it through school
we say education ain’t cool
reading books ain’t cool
knowledge ain’t cool
our society praises fools
and looks down on the college graduate
the Black graduate student
the Black professor
we call them sellouts
tell em they talk proper
tell them they’re trying to be white
but Malcolm was educated
Malcolm read books
and Malcolm wasn’t no Uncle Tom
Malcolm defined Blackness
but what defines Blackness today?
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6 comments:
"word to the Hottentot Venus
Beyonce is getting raped"
Those lines are an entirely new poem to explore. How Beyonce negotiates power by making money off of the black woman's physical ASSets. Hummm....
Can't wait to read more, kudos on the new blog.
Yeah Tracey. I can't deny that Beyonce is truly talented and deserves her status. It just bothers me that at this level she STILL uses her body to sell records. Some artists have to do that but she's not one of those artists. Her talent and her work ethic are enough to bring her continued success. Yet, if you look at the Put A Ring On It video, she looks like some new r & b artist who's tryna get on. People talk about how women are dressed in hip hop videos then turn around and praise Beyonce for wearing the same thing in her videos.
when her ASSets, as tracey put it, became her staple and trademark with songs like "bootylicious" and that so-called beyonce dance she popularized on the Crazy In Love video, she confined herself to that image. if she tried to clothe herself now...her label would put a stop to it. they were probably the invisible hand behind those songs and their video content as well. and i'm sure beyonce isn't burdened by her half-nakedness. i'm sure she loves "embracing her sexuality" and womanly curves and all that other stuff. celebrating her voluptuous body...blah blah.
and as far as what defines blackness today? i think it's the same thing we've allowed, largely, to define us for years:
the white dominated media and public...and political, economic, and social constructs of america. we have never, by and large, had a wide-spanning SELF-DEFINITION. even those of us who whine about being upright and educated and being called sell-outs many times take the hecklers who shout these names' problem out of context. because even those blacks often look to our so-called white counterparts as a beacon of light on how to dress, talk, walk, act. the so-called "ignorant nigga" who dubs the "uppity negro" a sell-out just succumbs to all the negative, dehumanizing perceptions tattooed to blackness in this country.
you don't want to be black, and they won't let you be white.
vs.
you let them tell you what black is, and act it out.
neither of these knows what it means to be black. because nobody would ever have called malcolm a sell out. or an uppity negro. or said he spoke white.
my question, in addition to the one chris poses at the end of The Illness is this:
when, if ever, does the educated, degree toting, "1st black ______", engage in self-analysis to discover the degree of truth in the many criticisms of the masses of our people?
or, are they too arrogant in their education and status amongst their black and white intellectual counterparts to even listen to the brothers and sisters who criticize them?
this is truly an illness too.
-B.Ware
Word to Brandon on the invisible hand behind the scenes. I've watched documentaries and have read interviews where artists have complained about the amount of control that comes with having a deal. I read that Alicia Keys constantly fights with her stylists about her outfits being too revealing but we rarely hear these interviews. But that goes back to the first lines of the poem "brothers need to invest in books instead of bootleg DVD's". We don't take the time to learn about things that have a major affect on us. So in part, we are responsible when we don't give use our dollars to counter that invisible hand because the artist whoever he or she may be will follow consumer demand. I think the deeper question that needs to be addressed when it comes to Beyonce' and other artists is why are we having a discussion about the way she dresses and acts and the answer is that her influence is global and when someone has that much power and is not using it to call people to a better way of living especially the little black girls that want to imitate her, we have literally hit the reset button on ghetto life and all the negative things that come with it. I could go on but this poem is so full that it's more like 10 poems packed into one. Great work Mr. Brown
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