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WE ARE THE ENVY OF THE WORLD....BLACK MEN
I'm not exactly sure when I realized that black males are special, that the world sets us apart from normal humanity, that we evoke, in not quite equal measure, inescapable feelings of envy and loathing. It dawned, I'm sure, like most great truths -- in barely perceptible stages, tangled up inextricably in the mundane puzzles and preoccupations of life.
I do recall some of the childhood incidents that awakened me to that truth, incidents that, sometimes in painful ways, spelled out the difference between black and white. One began on a pleasant enough note. I had gone to Marshall Field and Company, a large department store in Chicago, to buy my mother a gift. As I roamed through the impressive emporium, assessing what my few dollars could buy in such an expensive and intimidating place, I realized that I was being followed -- and that my stalker was a member of the store's security force.
From one section of Marshall Field's to another, the guard shadowed me, his surveillance conspicuous and obnoxious. Determined not to be cowed, I continued to browse, trying as best I could to ignore the man who was practically walking in lockstep with me. Finally, unable to contain myself, I whirled to face him. I shouted something -- I no longer remember what -- a yelp of wounded pride and outrage. Instead of responding, the man stood his ground, staring at me with an expression that combined amusement and disdain.
We must have glared at each other for several seconds, as the realization slowly seeped into my brain that I was no more a match for him and his contempt than a mouse was for a cat. I shuffled out, conceding him the victory, my previously sunny mood eclipsed by barely controlled anger.
Decades after that day, I remember my emotions precisely -- the impotent rage, the stinging resentment, the embarrassment, the intense disappointment at myself (for not standing firm in the face of the man's silent bullying, for allowing a bigot to make me feel like a fool, for being unable to crack the guard's smug self-assurance). Yet, as acutely as I recall my feelings, I cannot recollect a single distinctive feature of my tormentor's face. I doubt that it's just the passage of time. On some level, I wanted to forget -- or at least forget the parts of the experience not useful to remember.
I have written about this incident previously, in The Rage of a Privileged Class. I dredge it up again because it was, for me, a defining moment. It was far from the most dramatic encounter of my youth, but it forced me to think deeply, in a way I previously had not, about how easily I could be stripped of my individuality, of my humanity, about how easily racial preconceptions could render irrelevant (at least at first glance) any truth about who I truly was. In the guard's eyes, I evidently was nothing but a thug, and his job was to run me out of the store -- to protect Marshall Field and Company, its clients, and its merchandise from this trash who had wandered in from the streets.
Some years later I experienced a similar humiliation. A maitre d', claiming he recognized me as a troublemaker, refused to seat me, and ordered me out of a San Francisco restaurant. When I declined to leave, he called the cops -- who eventually persuaded me to go. The small financial settlement I got after filing suit against the restaurant did nothing to assuage the anger that raged inside me for months after the incident occurred. At the oddest moments, the smirking face of the blond-haired maitre d' would creep into my mind, and I would fume anew over the fact that it took nothing more than the word of an arrogant white man with an inability to distinguish one black face from another to get the cops to literally kick me to the curb.
To be a black male in America is to recognize such treatment as a routine part of life. For, with minor adjustments of fact, the experiences related above are essentially universal among black urban American males. Some 52 percent of all black men (and 25 percent of black women) believe the police have stopped them unfairly, according to a poll taken by the Washington Post in 2001. And when you add to that the countless number who have been hassled unjustly by store clerks, bouncers, and other undiscerning gatekeepers, you pretty much have the entire black male population of the United States. For those of us who are the target, a steady diet of society's contempt is not shrugged off so easily. We tend to react in one of two ways: We either embrace the role we are told constantly that we are expected to play, or we reject the script and endeavor to create our own. For those unwilling to push themselves into the realm of self-invention, models of behavior abound.
Why are so many pimps black? Because sex is one area where (whether merited or not) we have been granted dominance, one area (and you can add certain sports to this) where countless white men envy us (or at least the myth of us) and fear we may outshine them. Pimping is easier (psychologically, at least) than proving ourselves -- than winning acceptance -- in arenas, such as the classroom, where we have been told we do not belong. We can draw comfort from the cold fact that whatever else they may think of us, whatever they may make us think of ourselves, they can never take away the awesome power of our physical gifts.
Like most men, I don't particularly mind being thought of as sexual. There are even circumstances in which I don't mind being thought of as a thug. There are times on the street late at night where such a stereotype provides a measure of protective coloration, so to speak. The problem is that the stereotypes carry a set of connotations -- self-fulfilling prognoses -- not all of which are either flattering or life preserving. And it is those connotations that are likely to get you tossed out of restaurants, refused admittance to stores, and pulled over by the police. It is those associated expectations that foretell a future circumscribed by the limits of someone else's imagination, those self-fulfilling prophecies that will have you hustling for pennies instead of reaching for greatness.
We can reject those expectations or we can succumb to them; we can follow the path of our presumed destiny or somehow find another route. The wonder is that so many of us refuse to give in, that we summon the strength to resist society's expectations and discover how truly wonderful -- and special -- we can be.
Being a black man in America has never been easy. It certainly wasn't for our forefathers. Yet at a time when the entire might of a race-demented society conspired to destroy their dignity, millions managed to hold their heads high. They refused to allow their humanity to be stripped away.
Every generation has its demons. Ours tend not to come clothed in white sheets dangling nooses from their arms. Many of our demons reside deep within us, invisible yet powerful, eating away at our confidence and sense of worth. In the worst case, they drive us to destroy ourselves -- or our brothers. And even when they don't kill us outright, they place us at a greater risk -- of miseducation, imprisonment, and spiritual-emotional devastation -- than any large population in America today.
It's not my intention to minimize the very real and formidable challenges that women face -- particularly women of color, who make up the fastest growing segment of America's prison population, who suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune much more deeply, very often, than do men. But that is a subject for another day.
So, for those who are black men, for those who care about us, I invite you to contemplate where we are headed and where we should be going. And I also invite you to spend some time appreciating our accomplishments, as well as our potential, and acknowledging all that we have become and overcome.
We strut through the world like some dusky colossus, looming larger than life itself: a nightmare, a fantasy, an American original -- feared, emulated, shunned, desired. We are Colin Powell and Willie Horton, Louis Farrakhan and Tiger Woods, Jesse Jackson and O. J. Simpson, the deliverer and the doomed. We are as complicated, as intriguing, as American history, and in many respects, are every bit as confused. Jazz and rap, art forms that we created and in which we excel, define American music, just as basketball and boxing, two activities that we dominate, are the face of American sport. We set the standard for style and make concrete the meaning of cool. White men in boardrooms envy our style and confidence. (Ally McBeal's nerdy law partner isn't the only one carrying around the likes of Barry White in his head.) White kids in the suburbs want to talk like us, want to walk like us, want to dress like us. Some of them, in their pursuit of ghetto chic, are even flashing rapper-wannabe gold teeth. Yet, as much as they want to be like us, they have no desire to be us. (Well, maybe some of them do want to be Tiger -- or Michael.) For as special and gifted as we are, we occupy a tenuous place on this earth. And admired as we may be in the abstract or performing on the court or floodlit stage, when we walk the streets at night, we are more likely to inspire anxiety than affection.
Cradled in America's ambivalence, we embody her contradictions. We swagger as if we own the universe, yet struggle with our own feelings of powerlessness. And we struggle as well with the knowledge (both exhilarating and overwhelming) that we are deemed extraordinarily dangerous -- perhaps the most depraved group anywhere -- judging from the numbers of us (approaching a million) in prison and in jail; some 11 percent of all black American males in their twenties and early thirties are currently behind bars. But we are also -- think Martin Luther King, think Nelson Mandela, or for that matter Bagger Vance of the eponymous legend or John Coffey of The Green Mile -- a shining, global symbol of morality and compassion. Some of us -- think Cornel West (part preacher, part pundit, part philosopher poet) or Harvard colleague Henry Louis "Skip" Gates (scholar, multimedia master, and academic impresario) -- are reinvigorating the nation's most venerated temples of learning. And those of us who are neither uplifting the world nor wreaking havoc on it can revel in yet another fashionable identity, one recognizable from Newark to New Delhi: the ebony prince of hip-hop, sovereign and creator of the most danceable rhythms on Earth.
So why, given our status as cultural icons and the inarguable reality of our intellectual accomplishments, are so many of us filled with self-loathing? Why are we still debating whether our great democracy is truly capable of appreciating the true range of our talents and the fullness of our potential? For one thing, we are haunted by stereotypes, rooted in history, that give America's admiration a double edge. The very things she admires about us are, in somewhat different form, what she abhors -- and always has. John Coffey, the noble, selfless, gentle giant in The Green Mile, is merely the most benign manifestation of a superstitious, sentimental, dim-witted creature not quite on the same intellectual plane as normal human beings. The giant's superior morality is not won through conscious and conscientious inner struggle, but granted at birth, like the untainted but also untutored innocence of a child -- a man-child who, in this case at least, dotes on his morally deficient superiors. Similarly, our physical prowess and aggressiveness, so admired in sport, becomes something altogether different in noncelebrity mortals, who are less likely to be received with the blissful anticipation accorded a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods (who are seen either as "superblacks" or as heroes who have transcended blackness altogether) than with the dread and suspicion that greeted Rodney King -- whom the police, in defending their violently aggressive tactics, portrayed as some kind of quasimythical beast, imbued with herculean strength and subhuman self-awareness. Even when we are perceived with our morality intact and our brains fully functional, as we drive Miss Daisy or impart mythic wisdom, à la Bagger Vance, we are implicitly advised that our purpose is not to achieve anything for ourselves, but to serve the interests of others, usually white. Such presumptions, although somewhat flattering, endow us with characteristics, positive and negative alike, that have less to do with us than with the idea of us, with the dream or nightmare we have come to represent. And those are the flattering characterizations. When we are portrayed as less idealized creatures, we can be anything from mack-daddy, jive-talking pimps to soulless, street-smart killers. And unfortunately, being human, many of us take those fanciful, often destructive images to heart and try to fashion an identity out of them. But given such powerful societal preconceptions, how much power do we really have to determine who we are? In today's America that question presents itself from a thousand different directions, but let me begin by briefly revisiting the issue of prison.
To put it bluntly, we are watching the largest group of black males in history stumbling through life with a ball and chain wrapped around their legs. The statistics would be shocking were they not so familiar. Some 792,000 black males -- a record number -- were in U.S. prisons and jails as of June 2000 (more people than live in San Francisco, the twelfth largest city in the United States), a grand metropolis of wasted black potential. And there is every sign that things are getting worse. Unless we somehow change our present course, one out of four black boys living in America today will spend at least part of his life locked down.
How have we reached this sorry point? I'll have much more to say about this later, but allow me to make a few points in passing. Over the last several years, researchers have generated reams of statistics that demonstrate, among other things, that racial prejudice plays a substantial role in who gets arrested, in who gets convicted, in who is written off and hung out to dry. But this vast social tragedy can't all be attributed to a conspiracy of the system. Much of the responsibility lies closer to home. There is something very wrong with the way many of us are defining our place in the world, and that something is landing a lot of us in jail.
Much of it has to do with an attitude all too common in the streets, an attitude that encourages young people, especially young black men, to sabotage their future. It "helps us embrace negativity, embrace sickness....We're proud of having been in juvenile [detention], in the penitentiary....[People] celebrate at funerals...with a fifty dollar bag of marijuana....'Your boy' got killed. You go all out." The observations come from Zachary Donald, a young man who is part of a remarkable group of "street soldiers" who belong to the Omega Boys Club (more on that later) in San Francisco. And the sickness Donald alludes to is not confined to any one urban area.
In Los Angeles, a man in his early twenties a few months out of prison tried to explain to me why he had ended up involved in armed assault, drug dealing, and a long list of other crimes. His mother and father, he explained, were serious, church-going people who cared deeply for him and had tried to instruct him in proper values -- as they had tried to instruct his five brothers and three sisters. But despite the love and religious values at home, every boy in his family had gotten in trouble with the law. All had been sent to prison. And so had one of the girls. The call of the streets, particularly for the boys, had been too strong, and the parents' influence had been way too weak. "I started hanging around gangs when I was ten years old. I saw the older guys, and I wanted to be like them," he told me. The story told by his mother was much the same. The closest she could come to explaining why seven of her children had ended up in prison was to attribute it to the neighborhood in which they had been raised, a neighborhood where cops assumed any black boy was a thug, where gang leaders were the most respected males around, where it was a lot easier to "affiliate with the wrong people" than to reject them and the suicidal values they represented. And whereas girls had the option of staying at home with Mom, and thereby avoiding situations likely to end with sirens, guns, and handcuffs, boys had no such option -- not if they expected to be treated as men.
To his credit, my young friend was trying to re-create himself. He had become part of a group of ex-cons who leaned on each other for support. And he was working with younger boys, some not yet in their teens, trying to get them to envision a better life. He recalled a kid of twelve he had met recently who was convinced he would go to jail. "By talking to him, I tried to get him to see that it doesn't have to be like that."
Yet I was far from persuaded, sincere as he was, that he truly believed what he was saying. The insightful words that tripped off his tongue so easily seemed not unlike a prayer offered to a god who he was not quite convinced existed. Given his particular experiences -- as a low-level drug dealer, gang-banger, and police-certified demon -- it would have taken a truly indomitable spirit for him to totally turn his back on the assumptions of his past. Holding faith in beautiful, life-affirming possibilities is always a challenge in neighborhoods whose very existence reflects society's judgment that certain communities (and the people who live within them) are not worth much investment. It's easier to accept the message that life is meant to be short and that the only glory we are likely to get is the glory won by following a code of the streets that elevates us by devaluing our kind.
In a world with values so perverted, it's perhaps to be expected that even suicide -- which we once, with some justification, thought of as a white thing -- is increasingly becoming a black thing, and more specifically, a young black male thing. From 1980 to 1996 the suicide rate more than doubled among black males from fifteen to nineteen years of age. Obviously, no one explanation could make sense of thousands of unnatural and unnecessary deaths (and here I'm talking not only about those who killed themselves intentionally, but those who died from sticking needles in their veins or from ending up on the unforgiving end of a rival's gun) but allow me a few speculations.
Many of us are lost in this America of the twenty-first century. We are less sure of our place in the world than our predecessors, in part because our options, our potential choices, are so much grander than theirs. So we are trapped in a paradox. We know, whether we admit it openly or not, that in many respects things are better than they have ever been for us. This is a time, after all, when an African American can be secretary of state and, possibly, even president. The old barriers that blocked us at every pass have finally fallen away -- or at least they have opened enough to allow a few of us to get through. But although it is fully within our power, collectively and individually, to achieve a level of success that would have been all but unimaginable for most of our forefathers, many of us are doomed to fail.
The deck is stacked against us in childhood, when we are least equipped to know what we are up against, when -- in the absence of strong and wise guidance -- we often compound the problem of our racial stigmatization by making unfortunate choices about life. Opportunities for deliverance, bountiful though they may be, are not so easy to spot, and by the time many of us learn of their existence, our optimal moment has passed. So we stay stranded on the road to nowhere.
Some of us, of course, get lucky. We somehow get plucked off the road to failure -- a path carved by centuries of racism, a road designed especially for us -- and placed on a different path. Yet, even those who make it to the privileged class have found that success in this not-yet-quite-integrated America comes with burdens of its own.
"Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" James Baldwin famously wondered. If, in fact, the house is not exactly burning, the friction within it periodically generates plenty of heat. For acceptance in that house is frequently provisional, and won at the price of sublimating one's true self, of denying pains others have no reason to share, of ignoring slights others are determined not to see.
There is also the matter of a weakening sense of black community. The gap separating those who make it from those who don't has grown wider. And in that wide space, resentments have grown. Worse, in that huge space, that wasteland between untapped potential and unlimited possibility, a sense of futility has grown as well. There is "no place to be comfortable at," as one youth who had tried suicide on several different occasions put it.
In The Fire Next Time, written nearly forty years ago, Baldwin observed that white people were "trapped in a history which they cannot understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men." What has become clear, in retrospect, is that the white man is not the only one trapped in that history. We are trapped right there with him. So many of us approach the world feeling that we don't really belong, that we really are the brutish figures the world once perceived us to be.
"You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger," wrote Baldwin. Today rap stars build multimillion-dollar fortunes by embracing the identity imposed from without, by relishing being "niggers," with all that that implies. We wallow in stereotypes and call the practice "keeping it real." And we do so totally without irony, without realizing that much of the so-called reality we cling to (that black men are sex-obsessed, strutting sticks of macho dynamite, brimming with street sense, devoid of intellect, driven only by desire) is nothing but a tragic myth rooted in a time when white Americans, in order to feel good about themselves, needed to believe we were something vile, something disgusting, something inhumanly strange. For how could such a righteous and religious country justify enslaving people unless they were less than real human beings? In our anger and confusion, some of us have emulated -- have become -- the thing whites feared so much, without bothering to figure out that that thing was never really our authentic selves.
That, I suppose, is only natural. At some fundamental level, people tend to believe that they are what their society tells them they are. Our challenge, as black men, as human beings, is to see beyond the assumptions that limit our existence.
The same year (1963) that Baldwin published The Fire Next Time Martin Luther King penned his famous Letter From the Birmingham Jail.
That letter was King's defiant response to a group of white clergymen who had counseled him to be patient, to keep his protesters and agitators off the street. But justice, King pointed out, was not prepared to wait. And neither was he. "I am in Birmingham because injustice is here," he proclaimed.
To see Birmingham today is to see a very different city than the one where King occupied a place of dubious honor in the local jail. During a visit there, I found myself at a dinner table with the city's mayor, a black man. He and the white constituents with whom he was dining were eager to put the old Birmingham behind them and to celebrate what the new Birmingham had become. No longer a place of oppression, Birmingham is a barometer of progress, a would-be symbol of how things have changed, for whites, for blacks, male and female alike.
The very week -- September 2000 -- that found me in Birmingham also saw James Perkins, a black man, elected to the mayoralty in Selma -- the first black man ever elected to the post. And to make things even more symbolically poignant, he was replacing Joe Smitherman, a symbol of the old South, a man so mired in the old way of thinking that he had argued during his campaign that Selma needed a white mayor to keep industry and white residents from fleeing.
That such a blatant appeal to racism did not pay off says something hopeful about the America we are now constructing -- though, given that most of the voters were black, Perkin's victory doesn't exactly prove that Alabama has become paradise. Still, how do we square the very obvious progress with the fact that so many of us feel thoroughly incapable of reaping any of its fruits? How do we square the lifting of barriers with the fact that black men are literally falling in droves, destroyed by everything from bullets to depression to AIDS?
We begin by recognizing a simple fact: Though this may be the best time ever to be a black man in America (and here comes the all-important fine print), you only prosper if you make it through the gauntlet. And that gauntlet is ringed with bullies armed with ugly half-truths with which they will try their damnedest to beat you to death. So what you must remember is this: Your best chance at life lies in rejecting what they -- what much of America -- tells you that you are, perhaps rejecting, in the process, ideas you have harbored for most of your existence of what it means to be black and male.
Being a black man in the twenty-first century is a very complicated thing. It requires us to be open to unprecedented possibilities. It also compels us to acknowledge that all the success some of us enjoy is not enough when so many -- by some standards, the majority of black men -- are denied the opportunity to share it. It requires us to rethink who and what we are and, as we have done so many times in the past, to invent ourselves anew. This book, this extended letter, is not meant as the final word on what that process will entail. The aim is a great deal more modest. It is more in the nature of an invitation to contemplate the possibilities of the journey yet before us, and a review of some of the strategies required to arrive at the end of that journey intact. It is also an acknowledgment of the strength, beauty, pain, and confusion of those of us negotiating our continued survival in a country that still can't decide whether it most wants to love us or lock us down.
I do recall some of the childhood incidents that awakened me to that truth, incidents that, sometimes in painful ways, spelled out the difference between black and white. One began on a pleasant enough note. I had gone to Marshall Field and Company, a large department store in Chicago, to buy my mother a gift. As I roamed through the impressive emporium, assessing what my few dollars could buy in such an expensive and intimidating place, I realized that I was being followed -- and that my stalker was a member of the store's security force.
From one section of Marshall Field's to another, the guard shadowed me, his surveillance conspicuous and obnoxious. Determined not to be cowed, I continued to browse, trying as best I could to ignore the man who was practically walking in lockstep with me. Finally, unable to contain myself, I whirled to face him. I shouted something -- I no longer remember what -- a yelp of wounded pride and outrage. Instead of responding, the man stood his ground, staring at me with an expression that combined amusement and disdain.
We must have glared at each other for several seconds, as the realization slowly seeped into my brain that I was no more a match for him and his contempt than a mouse was for a cat. I shuffled out, conceding him the victory, my previously sunny mood eclipsed by barely controlled anger.
Decades after that day, I remember my emotions precisely -- the impotent rage, the stinging resentment, the embarrassment, the intense disappointment at myself (for not standing firm in the face of the man's silent bullying, for allowing a bigot to make me feel like a fool, for being unable to crack the guard's smug self-assurance). Yet, as acutely as I recall my feelings, I cannot recollect a single distinctive feature of my tormentor's face. I doubt that it's just the passage of time. On some level, I wanted to forget -- or at least forget the parts of the experience not useful to remember.
I have written about this incident previously, in The Rage of a Privileged Class. I dredge it up again because it was, for me, a defining moment. It was far from the most dramatic encounter of my youth, but it forced me to think deeply, in a way I previously had not, about how easily I could be stripped of my individuality, of my humanity, about how easily racial preconceptions could render irrelevant (at least at first glance) any truth about who I truly was. In the guard's eyes, I evidently was nothing but a thug, and his job was to run me out of the store -- to protect Marshall Field and Company, its clients, and its merchandise from this trash who had wandered in from the streets.
Some years later I experienced a similar humiliation. A maitre d', claiming he recognized me as a troublemaker, refused to seat me, and ordered me out of a San Francisco restaurant. When I declined to leave, he called the cops -- who eventually persuaded me to go. The small financial settlement I got after filing suit against the restaurant did nothing to assuage the anger that raged inside me for months after the incident occurred. At the oddest moments, the smirking face of the blond-haired maitre d' would creep into my mind, and I would fume anew over the fact that it took nothing more than the word of an arrogant white man with an inability to distinguish one black face from another to get the cops to literally kick me to the curb.
To be a black male in America is to recognize such treatment as a routine part of life. For, with minor adjustments of fact, the experiences related above are essentially universal among black urban American males. Some 52 percent of all black men (and 25 percent of black women) believe the police have stopped them unfairly, according to a poll taken by the Washington Post in 2001. And when you add to that the countless number who have been hassled unjustly by store clerks, bouncers, and other undiscerning gatekeepers, you pretty much have the entire black male population of the United States. For those of us who are the target, a steady diet of society's contempt is not shrugged off so easily. We tend to react in one of two ways: We either embrace the role we are told constantly that we are expected to play, or we reject the script and endeavor to create our own. For those unwilling to push themselves into the realm of self-invention, models of behavior abound.
Why are so many pimps black? Because sex is one area where (whether merited or not) we have been granted dominance, one area (and you can add certain sports to this) where countless white men envy us (or at least the myth of us) and fear we may outshine them. Pimping is easier (psychologically, at least) than proving ourselves -- than winning acceptance -- in arenas, such as the classroom, where we have been told we do not belong. We can draw comfort from the cold fact that whatever else they may think of us, whatever they may make us think of ourselves, they can never take away the awesome power of our physical gifts.
Like most men, I don't particularly mind being thought of as sexual. There are even circumstances in which I don't mind being thought of as a thug. There are times on the street late at night where such a stereotype provides a measure of protective coloration, so to speak. The problem is that the stereotypes carry a set of connotations -- self-fulfilling prognoses -- not all of which are either flattering or life preserving. And it is those connotations that are likely to get you tossed out of restaurants, refused admittance to stores, and pulled over by the police. It is those associated expectations that foretell a future circumscribed by the limits of someone else's imagination, those self-fulfilling prophecies that will have you hustling for pennies instead of reaching for greatness.
We can reject those expectations or we can succumb to them; we can follow the path of our presumed destiny or somehow find another route. The wonder is that so many of us refuse to give in, that we summon the strength to resist society's expectations and discover how truly wonderful -- and special -- we can be.
Being a black man in America has never been easy. It certainly wasn't for our forefathers. Yet at a time when the entire might of a race-demented society conspired to destroy their dignity, millions managed to hold their heads high. They refused to allow their humanity to be stripped away.
Every generation has its demons. Ours tend not to come clothed in white sheets dangling nooses from their arms. Many of our demons reside deep within us, invisible yet powerful, eating away at our confidence and sense of worth. In the worst case, they drive us to destroy ourselves -- or our brothers. And even when they don't kill us outright, they place us at a greater risk -- of miseducation, imprisonment, and spiritual-emotional devastation -- than any large population in America today.
It's not my intention to minimize the very real and formidable challenges that women face -- particularly women of color, who make up the fastest growing segment of America's prison population, who suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune much more deeply, very often, than do men. But that is a subject for another day.
So, for those who are black men, for those who care about us, I invite you to contemplate where we are headed and where we should be going. And I also invite you to spend some time appreciating our accomplishments, as well as our potential, and acknowledging all that we have become and overcome.
We strut through the world like some dusky colossus, looming larger than life itself: a nightmare, a fantasy, an American original -- feared, emulated, shunned, desired. We are Colin Powell and Willie Horton, Louis Farrakhan and Tiger Woods, Jesse Jackson and O. J. Simpson, the deliverer and the doomed. We are as complicated, as intriguing, as American history, and in many respects, are every bit as confused. Jazz and rap, art forms that we created and in which we excel, define American music, just as basketball and boxing, two activities that we dominate, are the face of American sport. We set the standard for style and make concrete the meaning of cool. White men in boardrooms envy our style and confidence. (Ally McBeal's nerdy law partner isn't the only one carrying around the likes of Barry White in his head.) White kids in the suburbs want to talk like us, want to walk like us, want to dress like us. Some of them, in their pursuit of ghetto chic, are even flashing rapper-wannabe gold teeth. Yet, as much as they want to be like us, they have no desire to be us. (Well, maybe some of them do want to be Tiger -- or Michael.) For as special and gifted as we are, we occupy a tenuous place on this earth. And admired as we may be in the abstract or performing on the court or floodlit stage, when we walk the streets at night, we are more likely to inspire anxiety than affection.
Cradled in America's ambivalence, we embody her contradictions. We swagger as if we own the universe, yet struggle with our own feelings of powerlessness. And we struggle as well with the knowledge (both exhilarating and overwhelming) that we are deemed extraordinarily dangerous -- perhaps the most depraved group anywhere -- judging from the numbers of us (approaching a million) in prison and in jail; some 11 percent of all black American males in their twenties and early thirties are currently behind bars. But we are also -- think Martin Luther King, think Nelson Mandela, or for that matter Bagger Vance of the eponymous legend or John Coffey of The Green Mile -- a shining, global symbol of morality and compassion. Some of us -- think Cornel West (part preacher, part pundit, part philosopher poet) or Harvard colleague Henry Louis "Skip" Gates (scholar, multimedia master, and academic impresario) -- are reinvigorating the nation's most venerated temples of learning. And those of us who are neither uplifting the world nor wreaking havoc on it can revel in yet another fashionable identity, one recognizable from Newark to New Delhi: the ebony prince of hip-hop, sovereign and creator of the most danceable rhythms on Earth.
So why, given our status as cultural icons and the inarguable reality of our intellectual accomplishments, are so many of us filled with self-loathing? Why are we still debating whether our great democracy is truly capable of appreciating the true range of our talents and the fullness of our potential? For one thing, we are haunted by stereotypes, rooted in history, that give America's admiration a double edge. The very things she admires about us are, in somewhat different form, what she abhors -- and always has. John Coffey, the noble, selfless, gentle giant in The Green Mile, is merely the most benign manifestation of a superstitious, sentimental, dim-witted creature not quite on the same intellectual plane as normal human beings. The giant's superior morality is not won through conscious and conscientious inner struggle, but granted at birth, like the untainted but also untutored innocence of a child -- a man-child who, in this case at least, dotes on his morally deficient superiors. Similarly, our physical prowess and aggressiveness, so admired in sport, becomes something altogether different in noncelebrity mortals, who are less likely to be received with the blissful anticipation accorded a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods (who are seen either as "superblacks" or as heroes who have transcended blackness altogether) than with the dread and suspicion that greeted Rodney King -- whom the police, in defending their violently aggressive tactics, portrayed as some kind of quasimythical beast, imbued with herculean strength and subhuman self-awareness. Even when we are perceived with our morality intact and our brains fully functional, as we drive Miss Daisy or impart mythic wisdom, à la Bagger Vance, we are implicitly advised that our purpose is not to achieve anything for ourselves, but to serve the interests of others, usually white. Such presumptions, although somewhat flattering, endow us with characteristics, positive and negative alike, that have less to do with us than with the idea of us, with the dream or nightmare we have come to represent. And those are the flattering characterizations. When we are portrayed as less idealized creatures, we can be anything from mack-daddy, jive-talking pimps to soulless, street-smart killers. And unfortunately, being human, many of us take those fanciful, often destructive images to heart and try to fashion an identity out of them. But given such powerful societal preconceptions, how much power do we really have to determine who we are? In today's America that question presents itself from a thousand different directions, but let me begin by briefly revisiting the issue of prison.
To put it bluntly, we are watching the largest group of black males in history stumbling through life with a ball and chain wrapped around their legs. The statistics would be shocking were they not so familiar. Some 792,000 black males -- a record number -- were in U.S. prisons and jails as of June 2000 (more people than live in San Francisco, the twelfth largest city in the United States), a grand metropolis of wasted black potential. And there is every sign that things are getting worse. Unless we somehow change our present course, one out of four black boys living in America today will spend at least part of his life locked down.
How have we reached this sorry point? I'll have much more to say about this later, but allow me to make a few points in passing. Over the last several years, researchers have generated reams of statistics that demonstrate, among other things, that racial prejudice plays a substantial role in who gets arrested, in who gets convicted, in who is written off and hung out to dry. But this vast social tragedy can't all be attributed to a conspiracy of the system. Much of the responsibility lies closer to home. There is something very wrong with the way many of us are defining our place in the world, and that something is landing a lot of us in jail.
Much of it has to do with an attitude all too common in the streets, an attitude that encourages young people, especially young black men, to sabotage their future. It "helps us embrace negativity, embrace sickness....We're proud of having been in juvenile [detention], in the penitentiary....[People] celebrate at funerals...with a fifty dollar bag of marijuana....'Your boy' got killed. You go all out." The observations come from Zachary Donald, a young man who is part of a remarkable group of "street soldiers" who belong to the Omega Boys Club (more on that later) in San Francisco. And the sickness Donald alludes to is not confined to any one urban area.
In Los Angeles, a man in his early twenties a few months out of prison tried to explain to me why he had ended up involved in armed assault, drug dealing, and a long list of other crimes. His mother and father, he explained, were serious, church-going people who cared deeply for him and had tried to instruct him in proper values -- as they had tried to instruct his five brothers and three sisters. But despite the love and religious values at home, every boy in his family had gotten in trouble with the law. All had been sent to prison. And so had one of the girls. The call of the streets, particularly for the boys, had been too strong, and the parents' influence had been way too weak. "I started hanging around gangs when I was ten years old. I saw the older guys, and I wanted to be like them," he told me. The story told by his mother was much the same. The closest she could come to explaining why seven of her children had ended up in prison was to attribute it to the neighborhood in which they had been raised, a neighborhood where cops assumed any black boy was a thug, where gang leaders were the most respected males around, where it was a lot easier to "affiliate with the wrong people" than to reject them and the suicidal values they represented. And whereas girls had the option of staying at home with Mom, and thereby avoiding situations likely to end with sirens, guns, and handcuffs, boys had no such option -- not if they expected to be treated as men.
To his credit, my young friend was trying to re-create himself. He had become part of a group of ex-cons who leaned on each other for support. And he was working with younger boys, some not yet in their teens, trying to get them to envision a better life. He recalled a kid of twelve he had met recently who was convinced he would go to jail. "By talking to him, I tried to get him to see that it doesn't have to be like that."
Yet I was far from persuaded, sincere as he was, that he truly believed what he was saying. The insightful words that tripped off his tongue so easily seemed not unlike a prayer offered to a god who he was not quite convinced existed. Given his particular experiences -- as a low-level drug dealer, gang-banger, and police-certified demon -- it would have taken a truly indomitable spirit for him to totally turn his back on the assumptions of his past. Holding faith in beautiful, life-affirming possibilities is always a challenge in neighborhoods whose very existence reflects society's judgment that certain communities (and the people who live within them) are not worth much investment. It's easier to accept the message that life is meant to be short and that the only glory we are likely to get is the glory won by following a code of the streets that elevates us by devaluing our kind.
In a world with values so perverted, it's perhaps to be expected that even suicide -- which we once, with some justification, thought of as a white thing -- is increasingly becoming a black thing, and more specifically, a young black male thing. From 1980 to 1996 the suicide rate more than doubled among black males from fifteen to nineteen years of age. Obviously, no one explanation could make sense of thousands of unnatural and unnecessary deaths (and here I'm talking not only about those who killed themselves intentionally, but those who died from sticking needles in their veins or from ending up on the unforgiving end of a rival's gun) but allow me a few speculations.
Many of us are lost in this America of the twenty-first century. We are less sure of our place in the world than our predecessors, in part because our options, our potential choices, are so much grander than theirs. So we are trapped in a paradox. We know, whether we admit it openly or not, that in many respects things are better than they have ever been for us. This is a time, after all, when an African American can be secretary of state and, possibly, even president. The old barriers that blocked us at every pass have finally fallen away -- or at least they have opened enough to allow a few of us to get through. But although it is fully within our power, collectively and individually, to achieve a level of success that would have been all but unimaginable for most of our forefathers, many of us are doomed to fail.
The deck is stacked against us in childhood, when we are least equipped to know what we are up against, when -- in the absence of strong and wise guidance -- we often compound the problem of our racial stigmatization by making unfortunate choices about life. Opportunities for deliverance, bountiful though they may be, are not so easy to spot, and by the time many of us learn of their existence, our optimal moment has passed. So we stay stranded on the road to nowhere.
Some of us, of course, get lucky. We somehow get plucked off the road to failure -- a path carved by centuries of racism, a road designed especially for us -- and placed on a different path. Yet, even those who make it to the privileged class have found that success in this not-yet-quite-integrated America comes with burdens of its own.
"Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" James Baldwin famously wondered. If, in fact, the house is not exactly burning, the friction within it periodically generates plenty of heat. For acceptance in that house is frequently provisional, and won at the price of sublimating one's true self, of denying pains others have no reason to share, of ignoring slights others are determined not to see.
There is also the matter of a weakening sense of black community. The gap separating those who make it from those who don't has grown wider. And in that wide space, resentments have grown. Worse, in that huge space, that wasteland between untapped potential and unlimited possibility, a sense of futility has grown as well. There is "no place to be comfortable at," as one youth who had tried suicide on several different occasions put it.
In The Fire Next Time, written nearly forty years ago, Baldwin observed that white people were "trapped in a history which they cannot understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men." What has become clear, in retrospect, is that the white man is not the only one trapped in that history. We are trapped right there with him. So many of us approach the world feeling that we don't really belong, that we really are the brutish figures the world once perceived us to be.
"You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger," wrote Baldwin. Today rap stars build multimillion-dollar fortunes by embracing the identity imposed from without, by relishing being "niggers," with all that that implies. We wallow in stereotypes and call the practice "keeping it real." And we do so totally without irony, without realizing that much of the so-called reality we cling to (that black men are sex-obsessed, strutting sticks of macho dynamite, brimming with street sense, devoid of intellect, driven only by desire) is nothing but a tragic myth rooted in a time when white Americans, in order to feel good about themselves, needed to believe we were something vile, something disgusting, something inhumanly strange. For how could such a righteous and religious country justify enslaving people unless they were less than real human beings? In our anger and confusion, some of us have emulated -- have become -- the thing whites feared so much, without bothering to figure out that that thing was never really our authentic selves.
That, I suppose, is only natural. At some fundamental level, people tend to believe that they are what their society tells them they are. Our challenge, as black men, as human beings, is to see beyond the assumptions that limit our existence.
The same year (1963) that Baldwin published The Fire Next Time Martin Luther King penned his famous Letter From the Birmingham Jail.
That letter was King's defiant response to a group of white clergymen who had counseled him to be patient, to keep his protesters and agitators off the street. But justice, King pointed out, was not prepared to wait. And neither was he. "I am in Birmingham because injustice is here," he proclaimed.
To see Birmingham today is to see a very different city than the one where King occupied a place of dubious honor in the local jail. During a visit there, I found myself at a dinner table with the city's mayor, a black man. He and the white constituents with whom he was dining were eager to put the old Birmingham behind them and to celebrate what the new Birmingham had become. No longer a place of oppression, Birmingham is a barometer of progress, a would-be symbol of how things have changed, for whites, for blacks, male and female alike.
The very week -- September 2000 -- that found me in Birmingham also saw James Perkins, a black man, elected to the mayoralty in Selma -- the first black man ever elected to the post. And to make things even more symbolically poignant, he was replacing Joe Smitherman, a symbol of the old South, a man so mired in the old way of thinking that he had argued during his campaign that Selma needed a white mayor to keep industry and white residents from fleeing.
That such a blatant appeal to racism did not pay off says something hopeful about the America we are now constructing -- though, given that most of the voters were black, Perkin's victory doesn't exactly prove that Alabama has become paradise. Still, how do we square the very obvious progress with the fact that so many of us feel thoroughly incapable of reaping any of its fruits? How do we square the lifting of barriers with the fact that black men are literally falling in droves, destroyed by everything from bullets to depression to AIDS?
We begin by recognizing a simple fact: Though this may be the best time ever to be a black man in America (and here comes the all-important fine print), you only prosper if you make it through the gauntlet. And that gauntlet is ringed with bullies armed with ugly half-truths with which they will try their damnedest to beat you to death. So what you must remember is this: Your best chance at life lies in rejecting what they -- what much of America -- tells you that you are, perhaps rejecting, in the process, ideas you have harbored for most of your existence of what it means to be black and male.
Being a black man in the twenty-first century is a very complicated thing. It requires us to be open to unprecedented possibilities. It also compels us to acknowledge that all the success some of us enjoy is not enough when so many -- by some standards, the majority of black men -- are denied the opportunity to share it. It requires us to rethink who and what we are and, as we have done so many times in the past, to invent ourselves anew. This book, this extended letter, is not meant as the final word on what that process will entail. The aim is a great deal more modest. It is more in the nature of an invitation to contemplate the possibilities of the journey yet before us, and a review of some of the strategies required to arrive at the end of that journey intact. It is also an acknowledgment of the strength, beauty, pain, and confusion of those of us negotiating our continued survival in a country that still can't decide whether it most wants to love us or lock us down.
September 21, 2010
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE DARK ALWAYS COMES INTO THE LIGHT....
Two DeKalb County men filed lawsuits Tuesday alleging Bishop Eddie Long coerced them to having sex with him in exchange for lavish trips, cars and cash from New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
The men’s attorney called Long a “sexual predator” and said she is now talking to other potential victims.
“It’s not just these two. There are young men around him at all times,” the men’s attorney B.J. Bernstein said. “There are kids at risk now.”
The men, Anthony Flagg, 21, and Maurice Robinson, 20, began having inappropriate relations with Long at the age of 16, which is the legal age of consent in Georgia, Bernstein said. Bernstein said she has not contacted DeKalb law enforcement because of Long’s ties to so many DeKalb officials.
Both men filed lawsuits Tuesday against Long and the church, alleging the bishop breached his pastoral duty.
Atlanta attorney Craig Gillen, who represents Long, said his client "adamantly denies the allegations in these two lawsuits and it is unfortunate that these two young men have chosen to take this course of action."
While Long likely cannot be charged with a crime in Georgia because the men consented, he could faces charges in other states, Bernstein said. The sex acts occurred while the men were between the ages of 16 and 20, the suit alleges.
The attorney said she has asked the FBI to investigate allegations that Long had sex with the men in hotels in New York, Dallas, Tennessee, New Zealand and other areas.
Long took Flagg to New Zealand for his 18th birthday, Bernstein said.
In separate trips, Bernstein said, the men flew on Long’s personal jet and shared a bed with him at the hotels. Long used the alias “Dick Tracy” when he checked into the hotel, the suit alleges.
However, the bulk of the relations occurred on the mega church’s property, including inside Long’s “guest house” on Snapfinger Road in south DeKalb, Bernstein said.
Flagg and Robinson’s parents both moved to DeKalb specifically to attend Newbirth. The two men met while enrolled in the church’s Longfellow Academy, which is for teenage boys age 14-17.
While at the academy, Flagg and Robinson developed relationships with Long, Bernstein said. They began spending more time with him and were placed on the church’s payroll, the suit alleges.
By the time they turned 16, Long began taking them on separate trips and inviting them to his home, Bernstein said. At one point, Flagg and Long held a private “marriage-like” ceremony where they exchanged vows, Bernstein said.
In exchange for Flagg’s love, Long bought the teenager a Ford Mustang, the suit alleges.
Robinson received other gifts, including introductions to T.I. Chris Tucker, Tyler Perry and other celebrities who met with Long, Bernstein said. The bishop also let Robinson drive his Bentley.
Bernstein said she has emails, text messages and photographs between the men and Long.
“The bishop used biblical verses to coerce them. He out front being homophobic and making all these remarks when at the same time, he is leading a double life,” Bernstein said. “They [the plaintiffs] aren’t gay. They just wanted to be loved and cared for by a powerful man.”
In June, Robinson was charged with breaking into Long’s home, stealing jewelry, an iPad and other items.
Robinson committed the burglary in retaliation after learning that Long was involved with other men, including Flagg, Bernstein said.
“He lashed out,” Bernstein said. “But if it weren’t for that act, we wouldn’t know about this. He talked to his friends and learned Long had other ‘spiritual sons.’”
Bernstein said the church is named in the suit because several other members were aware of the allegations and “protected” Long.
In June, DeKalb County police arrested two men, Anthony Boyd, 19, of Decatur, and Maurice Robinson, 20, and charged them with burglary, according to the police report obtained by the AJC.
A security camera at the church on Woodrow Road in Lithonia caught most of it on videotape.
Two men wearing dark hooded shirts, dark pants and white gloves were recorded using a key to enter the church during the night between June 13 and 14.
The men’s attorney B.J. Bernstein, said Robinson committed the burglary in retaliation after learning that Long was involved with other men, including Flagg, Bernstein said.
“He lashed out,” Bernstein said. “But if it weren’t for that act, we wouldn’t know about this. He talked to his friends and learned Long had other ‘spiritual sons.’”
Long was named 21 years ago as pastor of the then 300-member church that would become New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.
It has expanded beyond its Lithonia home and has satellite churches in other cities. The 240-acre Lithonia campus is like a small town; the church claims 25,000 members and promotes a myriad of ministries, such as the annual Hosea Feed the Hungry and help for the homeless and addicted.
Craig Schneider and Megan Matteucci contributed to this article.
September 16, 2010
AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK TOP CHEF.....
Kevin Sbraga was crowned the winner of "Top Chef" season 7 which was shot in Washington D.C. and concluded in Singapore. The other finalists, Ed Cotton and Angelo Sosa, settled for the runner-up positions.
In the final challenge, the judges wanted them to create a four-course meal; vegetable, fish, meat and desserts. This time, each of the contestants was accompanied by previous winners, Ilan Hall, Hung Huynh and Michael Voltaggio. Ed was partnered with Ilan while Angelo and Kevin got Hung and Michael respectively.
Unfortunately, Angelo was sick on the preparation day and was told by doctor to take a rest. Hung then took over his part by taking directions from Angelo by phone. Judge Eric Ripert brought out the "proteins" the contestants must cook and they are cuttlefish, lobster, red mullet and cockles. Meanwhile Tom Colicchio brought a whole duck and pork belly.
Angelo miraculously recovered by the time they had to cook and he served royale mushrooms with noodles and pork belly, Asian-style bouillabaisse, duck and foie gras with marshmallow/cherry shooter and shaved ice and coconut milk called "Thai Jewel". Meanwhile winner Kevin cooked eggplant zucchini and roasted pepper terrine, pan-seared rouget with cuttlefish noodles, roasted duck with dumplings and coconut pana cotta he named "Singapore Sling 2010".
In the end the judges picked Kevin's meal although the chef only won one quickfire and elimination challenge throughout the season. Judges throught Kevin cooked the duck better than anybody. "It's absolutely huge that I'm the first African-American Top Chef," Kevin said after the announcement. "My dad, my sister, my friends, guys at the barbershop- I mean, they're going to eat it up. They're going to love it."
Kevin is entitled to $125,000 prize, a feature in Food & Wine magazine as well as a spot at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.
FUNNY BUT TRUE RULES TO BEING A MAN.....
1.) It is ok for a Man to cry under the following circumstances:
- When a heroic dog dies to save its master.
- The moment Angelina Jolie starts unbuttoning her blouse.
- After wrecking your boss’ car.
- One hour, 12 minutes, 37 seconds into “The Crying Game”.
- When she is using her teeth.
2.) Any Man who brings a camera to a bachelor party may be legally killed and eaten by his friends.
3.) Unless he murdered someone in your family, you must bail a friend out of jail within 12 hours.
4.) If you’ve known a Man for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits forever, unless you actually marry her.
5.) Moaning about the brand of free beer in a friend’s fridge is forbidden. Complain at will if the temperature is unsuitable.
6.) No Man shall ever be required to buy a birthday present for another Man. In fact, even remembering your friend’s birthday is strictly optional.
7.) On a road trip, the strongest bladder determines pit stops, not the weakest.
8.) When stumbling upon other men watching a sporting event, you may ask the score of the game in progress, but you may never ask who’s playing.
9.) It is permissible to drink a fruity alcopop drink only when you’re sunning on a tropical beach, and it’s delivered by a topless supermodel, and it’s free.
10.) Only in situations of moral and/or physical peril are you allowed to kick another Man in the nuts.
11.) Unless you’re in prison, never fight naked.
12.) Friends don’t let friends wear Speedos. Ever. Issue closed.
13.) If a Man’s fly is down, that’s his problem, you didn’t see anything.
14.) Women who claim they “love to watch sports” must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to drink as much as the other sports watchers.
15.) A Man in the company of a hot, suggestively dressed woman must remain sober enough to fight.
16.) Never hesitate to reach for the last beer or the last slice of pizza, but not both – that’s just mean.
17.) If you compliment a Man on his six-pack, you’d better be talking about his choice of beer.
18.) Never join your girlfriend or wife in discussing a friend of yours, except if she’s withholding sex pending your response.
19.) Phrases that may NOT be uttered to another Man while lifting weights:
- Yeah, Baby, Push it!
- C’mon, give me one more! Harder!
- Another set and we can hit the showers!
20.) Never talk to a Man in a bathroom unless you are on equal footing: i.e. Both urinating, both waiting in line, etc. For all other situations, an almost imperceptible nod is all the conversation you need.
21.) Never allow a telephone conversation with a woman to go on longer than you are able to have sex with her. Keep a stopwatch by the phone. Hang up if necessary.
22.) The morning after you and a girl who was formerly “just a friend” have carnal drunken monkey sex, the fact that you’re feeling weird and guilty is no reason not to nail her again before the discussion about what a big mistake it was.
23.) There is no reason for guys to watch Men’s Ice Skating or Men’s Gymnastics. Ever.
24.) When you are queried by a buddy’s wife, girlfriend, mother, father, priest, shrink, dentist, accountant, or dog walker, you need not and should not provide any useful information whatsoever as to his whereabouts. You are permitted to deny his very existence.
25.) You may exaggerate any anecdote told in a bar by 50 percent without recrimination; beyond that, anyone within earshot is allowed to call “BULLS**T!”.
Exception: When trying to pick up a girl, the allowable exaggeration rate rises to 400 percent.
26.) The minimum amount of time you have to wait for another guy who’s running late is 5 minutes. For a girl, you are required to wait 10 minutes for every point of hotness she scores on the classic 1-10 babe scale.
27.) Agreeing to distract the ugly friend of a hot babe that your buddy is trying to hook up with is your legal duty. Should you get carried away with your good deed and end up having sex with the beast, your pal is forbidden to speak of it, even at your bachelor party.
28.) Before dating a buddy’s “ex”, you are required to ask his permission and he in return is required to grant it.
29.) The universal compensation for buddies who help you move is beer.
30.) A Man must never own a cat or like his girlfriend�s cat.
31.) When your girlfriend/wife expresses a desire to fix her whiney friend up with your pal, you may give her the go-ahead only if you’ll be able to warn your buddy and give him time to prepare excuses about joining the priesthood.
32.) If a buddy is out-numbered, out-Manned, or too drunk to fight, you must jump into the fight.
Exception: If within the last 24 hours his actions have caused you to think, “What this guy needs is a good ass-whoopin.”, then you may sit back and enjoy.
33.) If a buddy is already singing along to a song in the car, you may not join him, too gay.
34.) Under no circumstances may two men share an umbrella.
35.) When a buddy is trying to hook up, you may sabotage him only in a manner that gives you no chance of hooking up either.
36.) Before allowing a drunken friend to cheat on his girl, you must attempt one intervention. If he is able to get on his feet, look you in the eye, and deliver a “F**** OFF!” You are absolved of your of responsibility.
37.) Never, EVER slap or smack another Man.
- When a heroic dog dies to save its master.
- The moment Angelina Jolie starts unbuttoning her blouse.
- After wrecking your boss’ car.
- One hour, 12 minutes, 37 seconds into “The Crying Game”.
- When she is using her teeth.
2.) Any Man who brings a camera to a bachelor party may be legally killed and eaten by his friends.
3.) Unless he murdered someone in your family, you must bail a friend out of jail within 12 hours.
4.) If you’ve known a Man for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits forever, unless you actually marry her.
5.) Moaning about the brand of free beer in a friend’s fridge is forbidden. Complain at will if the temperature is unsuitable.
6.) No Man shall ever be required to buy a birthday present for another Man. In fact, even remembering your friend’s birthday is strictly optional.
7.) On a road trip, the strongest bladder determines pit stops, not the weakest.
8.) When stumbling upon other men watching a sporting event, you may ask the score of the game in progress, but you may never ask who’s playing.
9.) It is permissible to drink a fruity alcopop drink only when you’re sunning on a tropical beach, and it’s delivered by a topless supermodel, and it’s free.
10.) Only in situations of moral and/or physical peril are you allowed to kick another Man in the nuts.
11.) Unless you’re in prison, never fight naked.
12.) Friends don’t let friends wear Speedos. Ever. Issue closed.
13.) If a Man’s fly is down, that’s his problem, you didn’t see anything.
14.) Women who claim they “love to watch sports” must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game and the ability to drink as much as the other sports watchers.
15.) A Man in the company of a hot, suggestively dressed woman must remain sober enough to fight.
16.) Never hesitate to reach for the last beer or the last slice of pizza, but not both – that’s just mean.
17.) If you compliment a Man on his six-pack, you’d better be talking about his choice of beer.
18.) Never join your girlfriend or wife in discussing a friend of yours, except if she’s withholding sex pending your response.
19.) Phrases that may NOT be uttered to another Man while lifting weights:
- Yeah, Baby, Push it!
- C’mon, give me one more! Harder!
- Another set and we can hit the showers!
20.) Never talk to a Man in a bathroom unless you are on equal footing: i.e. Both urinating, both waiting in line, etc. For all other situations, an almost imperceptible nod is all the conversation you need.
21.) Never allow a telephone conversation with a woman to go on longer than you are able to have sex with her. Keep a stopwatch by the phone. Hang up if necessary.
22.) The morning after you and a girl who was formerly “just a friend” have carnal drunken monkey sex, the fact that you’re feeling weird and guilty is no reason not to nail her again before the discussion about what a big mistake it was.
23.) There is no reason for guys to watch Men’s Ice Skating or Men’s Gymnastics. Ever.
24.) When you are queried by a buddy’s wife, girlfriend, mother, father, priest, shrink, dentist, accountant, or dog walker, you need not and should not provide any useful information whatsoever as to his whereabouts. You are permitted to deny his very existence.
25.) You may exaggerate any anecdote told in a bar by 50 percent without recrimination; beyond that, anyone within earshot is allowed to call “BULLS**T!”.
Exception: When trying to pick up a girl, the allowable exaggeration rate rises to 400 percent.
26.) The minimum amount of time you have to wait for another guy who’s running late is 5 minutes. For a girl, you are required to wait 10 minutes for every point of hotness she scores on the classic 1-10 babe scale.
27.) Agreeing to distract the ugly friend of a hot babe that your buddy is trying to hook up with is your legal duty. Should you get carried away with your good deed and end up having sex with the beast, your pal is forbidden to speak of it, even at your bachelor party.
28.) Before dating a buddy’s “ex”, you are required to ask his permission and he in return is required to grant it.
29.) The universal compensation for buddies who help you move is beer.
30.) A Man must never own a cat or like his girlfriend�s cat.
31.) When your girlfriend/wife expresses a desire to fix her whiney friend up with your pal, you may give her the go-ahead only if you’ll be able to warn your buddy and give him time to prepare excuses about joining the priesthood.
32.) If a buddy is out-numbered, out-Manned, or too drunk to fight, you must jump into the fight.
Exception: If within the last 24 hours his actions have caused you to think, “What this guy needs is a good ass-whoopin.”, then you may sit back and enjoy.
33.) If a buddy is already singing along to a song in the car, you may not join him, too gay.
34.) Under no circumstances may two men share an umbrella.
35.) When a buddy is trying to hook up, you may sabotage him only in a manner that gives you no chance of hooking up either.
36.) Before allowing a drunken friend to cheat on his girl, you must attempt one intervention. If he is able to get on his feet, look you in the eye, and deliver a “F**** OFF!” You are absolved of your of responsibility.
37.) Never, EVER slap or smack another Man.
September 14, 2010
September 10, 2010
September 9, 2010
JUST A LILTTLE BROMANCE OR IS IT ROMANCE?
What would this list be without a little "Bromance?" Friend and teammates T.O. and Ocho Cinco almost seem perfect for each other, both are divas on and off the field, both have their own reality show on VH1, and now both of them can spend time planning out their notorious touchdown celebrations. Of course I am not saying they are anyway homosexual, but the two are definitely a duo looking to make the NFL more competitive and exciting. However, playing in a tough division with the Steelers and Ravens, lets see how strong this relationship is and how long it can last if these two start losing.
September 7, 2010
TWO CENTS ON T.O., KITA AND MO...
First off let me start by saying I had no mental or physical outline for this blog. This was more of an obligation to aid 2 of my sisters at a time when their names are being driven under the bus. This bus is marred with criticism, assumptions and speculation and the driver(s) rotating shifts for this bus are mostly a collection of black women.
And not just the typical black woman who's getting her pedicure while gossiping with her girlfriends and talking about everybody who passes her by. These are your rational, just, fair, ethical, and sensible black women (and not to say they're not gossiping and clowning folks neither-just on a classier, higher level lol).
I acknowledge this distinction because most times superficial and judgmental women will criticize and deconstruct any little thing or flaw. So it was to my surprise that a bulk of the criticism aimed at Mo and Kita weren't materialistic or anything to do with some bad yakki (weave my brother, weave).
To paraphrase the sentiment from my female friends at Mo and Kita is as follows: "I can't stand them; they annoy me....I can't watch a show seeing two girls obsess over a man who clearly hates himself.....they're so unprofessional." That's just a smidgen of the shots fired at the controversial publicity firm duo.
Now don't get it twist, Dice is the first person to call someone out and respond to things objectively. But something doesn't sit well with me taking shots at my sisters public ally, especially when they haven't done anything to me that warrants this type of response.
What I have seen is two sisters defy the odds and become successful in a male-driven entertainment society. Yeah their methods are unconventional, but are they as wild as the Kardashians when it comes to taking care of business? You can say what the Kardashians do and what Mo/Kita do are different, but at the end of the day it's publicity, and any publicity is good publicity. With that said, they've done a good job of maintaining a professional image.
If anything they're doing damage control. Terrell Owens was once a lightning rod of controversy and suffered miserably to stabilize a consistent team (or advertisements) because Corporate America was scared to touch him. Thanks to Mo and Kita, they've helped TO become approachable and pleasant; to the point a friend of mine said "he has no personality" (ask Dallas about his personality in 2000 when he disrespectfully spiked the ball midfield on their logo, or Donovan Mc Nabb when they publicly feuded).
'Who are their other clients?' is a half sarcastic question they ask? I'm sure they do have other clients, but obviously TO is their biggest one. Sure there were other artists on the Roc in '96, but who do you think Dame Dash was pushing the most? And lastly, before I get off my soapbox, I want to point something else out. Despite all the criticism they receive, you would think they'd be heroes amongst black women for riding TO for not preferring sisters and advocating he become more active in his children's lives. Though they support a colorblind love, there's been numerous times I've heard them clown TO for loving the "Beckies" or say something like ..."I just won't stand here and let him not be in his son's life." That's courageous and admirable for them to publicly take on those stances. I can't forget to mention also their selection of an assistant for him. They didn't get the hot modelesque chick (that I'd prefer). Instead they chose an older woman who has TO's best interests. And in regards to how they are perceived to be kissing TO's butt or seducing him, that's part of what the job entails.
Hell I'm nobody in the big picture, but I still like to be coddled a little here and there. You've seen Jerry Maguire and all the ass-kissing he did. That's just how it is with the client-agent/manager/publicist relationship. Sometimes I need some love from my Facebook constituents to keep it moving; even if it's condescending or pacifying! lol There's nothing evident or suggests that TO smashed any of the homies. I just see 3 people who have fun at what they do, and have fun doing it together because they know, love, and trust each other platonically. My only concern was with Mo's husband appearing to be soft and always emasculated.
Like why does your wife seem more concerned about TO then you? Or why is he doing LaMas class with your pregnant wife? But that's probably another topic of male/female roles in relationships...and that can probably be summarized as this: The Bread Winner calls the shots. Love it or Leave it.
There you have it Mo and Kita. I salute what ya'll doing. You guys are keeping it professional while still being yourselves and bringing flavor to the show. I ain't mad at ya'll!
*This was written under red terms, at 4 am, no proof-read.
from: http://thelegendofdice.blogspot.com/
And not just the typical black woman who's getting her pedicure while gossiping with her girlfriends and talking about everybody who passes her by. These are your rational, just, fair, ethical, and sensible black women (and not to say they're not gossiping and clowning folks neither-just on a classier, higher level lol).
I acknowledge this distinction because most times superficial and judgmental women will criticize and deconstruct any little thing or flaw. So it was to my surprise that a bulk of the criticism aimed at Mo and Kita weren't materialistic or anything to do with some bad yakki (weave my brother, weave).
To paraphrase the sentiment from my female friends at Mo and Kita is as follows: "I can't stand them; they annoy me....I can't watch a show seeing two girls obsess over a man who clearly hates himself.....they're so unprofessional." That's just a smidgen of the shots fired at the controversial publicity firm duo.
Now don't get it twist, Dice is the first person to call someone out and respond to things objectively. But something doesn't sit well with me taking shots at my sisters public ally, especially when they haven't done anything to me that warrants this type of response.
What I have seen is two sisters defy the odds and become successful in a male-driven entertainment society. Yeah their methods are unconventional, but are they as wild as the Kardashians when it comes to taking care of business? You can say what the Kardashians do and what Mo/Kita do are different, but at the end of the day it's publicity, and any publicity is good publicity. With that said, they've done a good job of maintaining a professional image.
If anything they're doing damage control. Terrell Owens was once a lightning rod of controversy and suffered miserably to stabilize a consistent team (or advertisements) because Corporate America was scared to touch him. Thanks to Mo and Kita, they've helped TO become approachable and pleasant; to the point a friend of mine said "he has no personality" (ask Dallas about his personality in 2000 when he disrespectfully spiked the ball midfield on their logo, or Donovan Mc Nabb when they publicly feuded).
'Who are their other clients?' is a half sarcastic question they ask? I'm sure they do have other clients, but obviously TO is their biggest one. Sure there were other artists on the Roc in '96, but who do you think Dame Dash was pushing the most? And lastly, before I get off my soapbox, I want to point something else out. Despite all the criticism they receive, you would think they'd be heroes amongst black women for riding TO for not preferring sisters and advocating he become more active in his children's lives. Though they support a colorblind love, there's been numerous times I've heard them clown TO for loving the "Beckies" or say something like ..."I just won't stand here and let him not be in his son's life." That's courageous and admirable for them to publicly take on those stances. I can't forget to mention also their selection of an assistant for him. They didn't get the hot modelesque chick (that I'd prefer). Instead they chose an older woman who has TO's best interests. And in regards to how they are perceived to be kissing TO's butt or seducing him, that's part of what the job entails.
Hell I'm nobody in the big picture, but I still like to be coddled a little here and there. You've seen Jerry Maguire and all the ass-kissing he did. That's just how it is with the client-agent/manager/publicist relationship. Sometimes I need some love from my Facebook constituents to keep it moving; even if it's condescending or pacifying! lol There's nothing evident or suggests that TO smashed any of the homies. I just see 3 people who have fun at what they do, and have fun doing it together because they know, love, and trust each other platonically. My only concern was with Mo's husband appearing to be soft and always emasculated.
Like why does your wife seem more concerned about TO then you? Or why is he doing LaMas class with your pregnant wife? But that's probably another topic of male/female roles in relationships...and that can probably be summarized as this: The Bread Winner calls the shots. Love it or Leave it.
There you have it Mo and Kita. I salute what ya'll doing. You guys are keeping it professional while still being yourselves and bringing flavor to the show. I ain't mad at ya'll!
*This was written under red terms, at 4 am, no proof-read.
from: http://thelegendofdice.blogspot.com/
NOTE TO R. BUSH....LEAVE THOSE WHITE WOMEN ALONE....
According to various sources, the official decision has been made to strip Reggie Bush of his Heisman Trophy.
The organization is completing its investigation and will agree with the NCAA's finding that Bush accepted improper benefits while at USC and was ineligible during the 2005 season, according to the report.
The Heisman Trophy Trust will reportedly strip Reggie Bush of the Heisman Trophy that he won in a landslide back in 2005. Bush will be the first player in the 75-year history of the Heisman Trophy to have the award taken away.
In July, USC president C.L. Max Nikias ordered the school's athletic department to return its copy of Bush's 2005 Heisman to the Heisman Trophy Trust. Nikias also ordered the school to remove nearly all references to Bush and former basketball player O.J. Mayo, including murals, as part of the NCAA's directive to disassociate the school from the athletes.
First Bush loses Kim Kardashian and now The Heisman?! He's losing the best things he had!
The organization is completing its investigation and will agree with the NCAA's finding that Bush accepted improper benefits while at USC and was ineligible during the 2005 season, according to the report.
The Heisman Trophy Trust will reportedly strip Reggie Bush of the Heisman Trophy that he won in a landslide back in 2005. Bush will be the first player in the 75-year history of the Heisman Trophy to have the award taken away.
In July, USC president C.L. Max Nikias ordered the school's athletic department to return its copy of Bush's 2005 Heisman to the Heisman Trophy Trust. Nikias also ordered the school to remove nearly all references to Bush and former basketball player O.J. Mayo, including murals, as part of the NCAA's directive to disassociate the school from the athletes.
First Bush loses Kim Kardashian and now The Heisman?! He's losing the best things he had!
SORRY SAGGERS....
A mayor in Georgia is taking a stand against the trend of sagging pants, signing a law into effect that will make it illegal.
The mayor of Dublin, Georgia, Phil Best, plans to sign an amendment to his city's “indecent exposure” ordinance.
The new amendment will prohibit the wearing of pants or skirts “more than three inches below the top of the hips exposing the skin or undergarments.”
Speaking to CNN, mayor Best says violators could face charges ranging from $25 to $200 or court mandated community service.
“We've gotten several complaints from citizens saying the folks with britches down below their buttocks was offensive, and wasn't there something we could do about it… we'd (rather) not fine anybody but we are prepared to.”
The amendment means council members put exposure due to baggy clothing in the same category as masturbation, fornication and urination in public places.
The mayor of Dublin, Georgia, Phil Best, plans to sign an amendment to his city's “indecent exposure” ordinance.
The new amendment will prohibit the wearing of pants or skirts “more than three inches below the top of the hips exposing the skin or undergarments.”
Speaking to CNN, mayor Best says violators could face charges ranging from $25 to $200 or court mandated community service.
“We've gotten several complaints from citizens saying the folks with britches down below their buttocks was offensive, and wasn't there something we could do about it… we'd (rather) not fine anybody but we are prepared to.”
The amendment means council members put exposure due to baggy clothing in the same category as masturbation, fornication and urination in public places.
NICKI MINAJ DOES ATL PRIDE...
Nicki Minaj performed this weekend in Atlanta as part of the city's Black gay pride weekend.
The Young Money Barbie took the stage Saturday at Traxx nightclub for “Pure Heat 2010” in a purple wig and spandex to perform her signature hits including “Itty Bitty Piggy” and verses on “Little Freak” and “Bottoms Up.”
The rapper whose spoken freely on her bisexuality before denying those claims to VIBE magazine, also performed “Roger That” and “All I Do Is Win” before taking to her Twitter account to say,
“Really didn't know Atl Gay Pride was gonna be that epic…Still in shock…”
The Young Money Barbie took the stage Saturday at Traxx nightclub for “Pure Heat 2010” in a purple wig and spandex to perform her signature hits including “Itty Bitty Piggy” and verses on “Little Freak” and “Bottoms Up.”
The rapper whose spoken freely on her bisexuality before denying those claims to VIBE magazine, also performed “Roger That” and “All I Do Is Win” before taking to her Twitter account to say,
“Really didn't know Atl Gay Pride was gonna be that epic…Still in shock…”
September 2, 2010
ACT OF PURE IGNORANCE OR SET UP?
According to online reports, rapper T.I., real name Clifford Harris, and his wife, Tiny, real name Tameka Cottle, were arrested in West Hollywood last night and charged with possession of a controlled substance.
T.I. was released from a federal prison in December 2009 where he had been serving a 12-month sentence on weapons charges. The rap star served out his sentence in a halfway house in Atlanta.
He is currently serving a three-year probation after pleading guilty in May of 2009, for attempting to purchase machine guns and silencers before the BET Awards in 2007.
This latest arrest could jeopardize his probation status.
The car the couple was riding in was pulled over after police smelled marijuana emanating from the car. According to a credible source, T.I. and Tiny were the only two arrested though there were others riding in the car with them.
“It sounds like a set up to me,” said the source this morning. “There was a bunch of people in that car. Why just take them two?”
The pair, who married last July in Miami, were taken into custody by L.A. County Sheriff Deputies. It is unclear if they are still in custody.
T.I. and Tiny have two children together, King, 5, and Major Harris, 2. Tiny also has a daughter, Zonnique, 12, from a previous relationship, who is home-schooled.
T.I. currently has the #1 movie in America, Takers, which took in $20.5 million at the box office in its opening weekend.
September 1, 2010
HOTTEST DUDE IN THE GAME....HANDS DOWN...
On his new album:
This project just like all of my projects will be a open window into my life, what I’m going through, how I feel and where I am right now.
On where he is:
I’m still learning and growing everyday. I do believe this project is in some ways the final installment of a trilogy. TI vs. TIP being the first one…. I hope that events of my life are captured in music in all of my records. So they were there for the beginning, they saw the middle (with Paper Trail) and now the only thing left to be seen is the conclusion.
On the advice he’d give to young Clifford Harris:
I would say man, if you knew what I knew, you would chill out… I would tell myself you’re going to be alright later on, all you have to do is cool out, you might not see it right now, but you have a reason to fall back. I just hope that I would listen.
On his best and worst character traits:
I can manage to be arrogant or confident as well as be humble and possess a certain level of humility. I can be aggressive and I can also be mild mannered.
On his future in hip hop:
I know I still have the ability to do it, but I don’t know if I have as much passion to do it as I once did… I might find that I’m more effective in another capacity, but I won’t know if I don’t ever try. I have other talents and abilities that I may not be paying any attention to because I have this first one that I’m very fond of and I’ve grown attached to… As an artist I still would like to be better, but as an artist, I think TI has had a stellar career already.
On loyalty getting in the way of business:
…If I say I’m gonna ride with you, I’m gonna ride with you. That’s personally, professionally. So even if I know that you might not be all what everyone else thinks you’re cracked up to be, I’m still gonna ride it out with you. It does get tiresome and it does get gruesome at time, but I don’t know no other way to be.
On being a daddy:
I make them look up different places and ask them where would they like to go. I just spend time with them. I try to stimulate their interests and build on that.
On his favorite quality in a woman:
Just having that instinct of when to take charge and when to fall back.
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