I Got That Ignorant S*** You Like…
It’s amazing what offends me nowadays.
I can watch BET: Uncut and not be offended in the slightest at the exploitation. I’m actually more amazed at the audacity of some of the rappers and video girls than of the videos themselves. I mean how do you ACTUALLY have this conversation before shooting the “Tip Drill” video:
Nelly: Hey girl, E.I., you sure is fine…kind of. Anyway, when you get your eagle on, I was kind of just hoping, fa sho, if I could swipe Murphy Lee’s credit card down the crack of yo’ ass? Me and my derties think it would make a helluva camera shot…AND make you famous, ya dig….
Ugly Video Girl: Ooooooooh big daddy…anything for you, Nelly! Can you make sure its one of them new black American Express Cards…they are sooooooooo sexxy!!!!!!!!!! Get a good swipe too cuz I hate when I’m at the mall, and stuff, and they be having to re-swipe my mama’s card over and over…I like it when they get it in just one good swipe!
I watched Soul Plane the whole way through and was quite honestly amused by it. Not that it was a good movie, in fact it was really pretty stupid…BUT I was amused by it. And let’s be real…an airline run by a ghetto individual JUST might turn into what happened in the movie. I mean they are starting to have exercise classes on planes, who knows what’s next?.
Shit I’d fly NWA. And I don’t mean Northwest Airlines, either.
Bush not speaking at the NAACP didn’t offend me, I didn’t think that he should.
I once saw during the unveiling of the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, (which is a quite beautiful memorial, I might add) a white man, obviously from a place where black folks don’t reside or even visit, with a confederate hat on and a shirt that said, “If I’d Known It Would Be Like This, I’d Have Picked My Own Damn Cotton!” And you know what…I thought that shit was funny! And I thought the dude wearing it had big freakin’ cajones for wearing that shit in Chocolate City. I damn near wanted to slap him five and say, “I really hope you make it home buddy. Tight shirt!”
Chappelle Show race-based skits to me are hilarious…like the reparations episode…DAMN that was on point. I got into the biggest argument with some friends of mine about this. They were offended that Chappelle would make such sweeping generalizations about black people and worried that white people would think that we would behave in this manner if we actually did get Reparations. Welllllllllllllllll….I just had to point out two things.
1) It’s satire, intended to be social commentary but not necessarilly true, AND…
2) I have two degrees and I’d start a damn record label with my reparations. Call that joint…Thanks2DaMan Productions or something, ya know, out of respect.
But like I said, stuff like that doesn’t offend me in the slightest. Most people are offended because they worry about what white people are going to say or think about black people if they come across such garbage. And to them I say, “Who gives a shit, some of its true!” They (or those that have those thoughts anyway, not all white people) will continue to think what they will with or without “positive” movies and shows on the air. I, for one, cannot keep going out of my way to make sure that every white person believes we are all smart and educated when they are around me and undo what they saw on television.
You become the exception, not the rule. Remember that shit and you won’t be so offended anymore either.
So what does offend me?
Well gotdamn if it isn’t the bastardization of black culture in mainstream America. And by black culture I mainly mean hip-hop culture as it stands b/c regardless of who the participants are nowadays, much of what is perceived as hip-hop culture is largely considered to be black and/or minority focused and urban, which is the white code word for black. And well, we all know mainstream means white. The only thing that is usually on point is the CP Time…cuz they usually catch on two to three years too damn late!
Honestly…I can’t take that shit anymore. Hearing white people try to sound “black” (and I can hear the “what do black people sound like”…well I’ll tell you, that same sound you think of when somebody says “sound black”…shit we know what that means) as if its naturally them…that is my equivalent of hearing somebody scraping their fingers across a blackboard on purpose. Or white people who go out of their way to be “hip-hop.” Now let me clarify something here. I have no problem with people being themselves, be they white or black. I have no problem with white rappers/producers…hell a lot of them are good. Or even white people being immersed into the culture…because they understand the culture and don’t want to be me.
But I’ll be damned if throwing on six fake platinum chains and a bandana as a young white boy from Any Suburb, USA doesn’t annoy the living shit out of me. That is somebody standing on the outskirts of the culture acting on what they perceive to be “the culture.” Shit, I know being young and black is cool and all, but if you want to be me, then fuck…take everything that goes along with it. And you know what…IT SOUNDS AND LOOKS FUCKING STUPID!
(There is one exception here: Malibu’s Most Wanted. I know I know, this SHOULD be the epitome of what I’m talking about. But since that shit was just SO unbelievably unrealistic to me…I had to let that one slide. Thank you and kiss my ass.)
I’ll give some examples since I don’t want my point to be misconstrued here as being anti-white, its all based upon specific experiences. One happened at a Plantation of all places, and the other I witnessed on TV recently…but has been mirrored on cutting room floors across the nation.
Last May (2003), my mother was in town for my graduation from grad school. So being as she came to DC for the first time, she wanted to see it all. A short drive from our nation’s capital is the beloved Mount Vernon Estate/Plantation of our first president, George Washington. Though I try to stay away from Plantations as a rule, (I’m from the South…the whole damn region seems like a former Plantation), on a whim, we decided to visit one day.
This was the day I wanted to reject my urbanicity.
Not only was I the only black person there…but I saw and heard some of the most annoying shit ever. I remember one little boy asking his mother if Washington was rich, to which the mother replied…
“He must have been…he had quite a few slaves!”
I looked at my mother, who is white mind you, and just said, quite simply, “I hate white people…” And of course I didn’t mean it, but for once she gave me a pass for being an asshole. But anyway, what really struck me was the large group of kids of which this inquisitive little bugger was apart.
They were all dressed like they just stepped out of a Hip Hop for Dummies Seminar. Fake chains…and I don’t mean small ropes…I mean those atrocities rappers were wearing with pendants a few years back including but not limited to: manhole covers, midgets, cars, brocoli, etc. You get the picture. All of them had their clothes hanging ridiculously off of their bodies. Some of these kids were rocking Pac t-shirts and the like. Basically…everything I would think black folks would wear if I was white and had never actually seen a real black person.
And then the conversations they were having…Good Lord…I swear I wanted to sit them all down and say to them…you can’t go around saying “those threads is mad dope, word up!” Mostly because, NOBODY SAYS ANY OF THAT SHIT ANYMORE. Like they were just pissing me off with their lateness and syntax. And then I realized…the fault is all on me and my peers. If we didn’t walk around talking like we do and doing what we do so effortlessly and flawlessly and setting trends the way we do…I wouldn’t have to listen to these little fucks butcher a language and culture. I mean you’d think that since they spend so much money on it, they’d do it right.
And you know what made it really annoying??? These bastards were talking REALLY loud around me, hoping (I assume) that I would hear them and recognize their attempts at being “cool.” Now my attire that day might have had something to do with it too. I had on a doo-rag, and a bandana wrapped around my head, a dickies shirt on, some Timberland boots on (straight butta baby)…and a straw hat (I’m from the South…we do those big time down thurrr…). They assumed I was “down” so they wanted to show me that they were “down” too. Fuckin’ roaches. I told my mom that day that if it would help, I’d go home and burn all my “hip-hop” flavored shit just to make sure I didn’t influence any other white kids into being assholes and identity-crisesed!
I could really go on and on about this…
But last night I saw that asshole of a show on UPN “The Player” that brought all the painful memories rushing back. It’s about that model from Miami and all of the “playas” competing for her affection. Basically who could be the biggest “playa”. Will she “play” them or will they “play” her? Got damn…
Have you ever wanted a whole cast to burn in hell? It was almost worth ending it all for me…I was ready to call my mother and say, life has been good to me, but I shan’t go on anymore…white people have forced me to jump off of this building.
Every time I heard somebody, and it was always a white person, say “playa” I cringed. It sounded so…contrived. Like white people saying “nigga.” As a white person, you REALLY have to go out of your way to add that to your vocabulary. Unless, and this is a big unless, you grew up hating “niggers.” But we ain’t talking about “niggers.” To quote the late great Tupac Shakur:
“Niggers were the ones with ropes around their necks hanging from a tree. Niggaz are the ones with ropes around their neck, hanging at the club.”
Classic.
Now I know that being a player isn’t a black thing. But I’ll be damned if all these folks weren’t trying to have that urban edge to themselves…so everytime they said “playa” it was like they were trying to sound…black. The more they said it…the worse it became to a point where I think I hated everybody…even the black people, for not smacking the shit out of the white people, who to me seemed to be mocking the black people.
And stuff like this just really irks the hell out of me. And you know what, it’s only going to get worse. It isn’t like black people go out of their way to do the things that some segment of the white population latch onto…shit just kind of naturally evolves, like rap has. Thing is, when mainstream American catches on a year or two later and goes full monty on our asses…it’s just too much for me to handle. And I want to go out and start dead prez’n mufuckas. Shit makes me want to join the Panthers AND the Nation of Islam (pre-Malcolm’s trip to Mecca).
It really, really, really pisses me off. Not Soul Plane, shit not even Ghettopoly…but white people who really go out of their way to attempt hip-hop/black culture yet wouldn’t step one foot in Any Ghetto, USA, and end up looking like straight assholes …
Playa.