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There are no simple answers, only oversimplified ones. But the cure to all social ills lies in uncovering the truth. In this unflinching, timely, wide-ranging collection of essays, professor William Cobb lays bare the black experience of the past decade using cinema, music, literature, politics, and pop culture. "On the Stroll: The Pimping of Three 6 Mafia" is a fascinating take on the first hip-hop group ever to win an Oscar. Cobb lambastes the group for flaunting onstage every stereotype that the movie they performed in (Hustle and Flow) so carefully and brilliantly avoided. In "The Trouble with Harry," Cobb argues that Harry Belafonte's absence from the funeral of forty-year friend Coretta Scott King is a tragedy, and Martin Luther King's children should be ashamed of themselves. In "The Devil and Dave Chappelle" Cobb discusses Chappelle's decision to walk away from a $50 million contract as not just a comedic choice but also as a social and political choice. Chappelle's humor was largely an "inside joke" shared among blacks. When his audience grew, he felt that a line had been crossed. This new audience was laughing at him. Not with him. Chappelle realized that one wrong laugh could put him on the wrong side of the line between genius and Uncle Tom. From the "too smart" irony of Dave Chappelle to the cultural relocation of Bessemer, Alabama; from the gift and curse of the first generation of black prosperity to the failure of history to act as a guide for the present; Cobb reflects on the post--civil rights era with fondness and hope, concern and caution

Is Gay The New Black

So today I was lucky enough to tune into a particularly interesting episode of The Tyra Banks Show. The topic of the show was “Is Gay The New Black?” It was not the first time I heard the question asked, I have fought with many a gay man about this very topic, in the past I have been a very stanch member of the opposing crowd arguing that while there are clear parallels, being gay and being black are two very different animals, my general point being that a person does not have to know your gay, but theirs nothing you can do about the color of your skin. So the concept of being judged on your sexual preference was inherently different. Easily refutable I know, but I think deep down inside I was wrestling with the question of whether or not homosexuality was a choice or a birth status. I was wondering if it were reasonable for gay people to repress their longings and do what was necessary to fit into society. It would certainly be easier, at least in some lights. Sure you would spend a lifetime repressing your innermost fantasies and desires…sure their would always be a part of you unhappy and dreaming of life the way it could have been, but…whatever! I mean, you would do what your supposed to do, marry a member of the opposite sex, have a few rug rats, move to the suburbs, become a deacon at the church, hide your gay porn in the attic, in a broken floor board underneath the Christmas tree and one day when no one expects it jump off a fucking bridge. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t sacrifice at the root of everyone’s American dream? Don’t straight men have to sacrifice their insatiable, dirty, animal-esque, sex drives in exchange for monotony… I mean monogamy? And don’t straight woman have to give up their ownership of their bodies in order to fit seamlessly into the dogmatic idealism of our patriarchal misogynistic culture? So I wondered to myself what gives us gays the unmitigated gull to think the we could have our proverbial cake and eat it too???
Then Miss California opened her big watermelon splash lip gloss soaked lips and forced my eyes wide open ( which pissed me off because I was very comfortable on my little fence of self hatred) Her comments (however trite and downright inarticulate) made me realize that the fundamental problem with this issue…beyond religion or moral reasoning….is the violation of the creed that this country is built upon, the right for each of us to have the right to pursuit life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Keyphrase: PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. How can I pursue happiness when I’m being persecuted and punished for who I choose to love? When suicidal self loathing seems like a viable option? When I’m being denied the right to choose the person I love as my lawful partner? It was only then that I realized that while gay can’t be the new black (for the simple fact the blacks are the new are the blacks) the two do sit dangerously close together on the roster of communities fucked over royally by the American Dream Machine!!!! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote about laws and justice from inside a jail cell after being unjustly arrested for illegal parading. He wrote, in his famous essay Letters From a Birmingham Jail, “An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself” In this case the numerical majority is straight America. A country who upholds marriage as a sacred union of two souls, and yet denies all that decorated indulgence to other members of society, the only proper way to deny gays the right to marry would be to make marriage itself illegal( which with divorce and domestic abuse rates as high as they are may just be a good idea) but as long as one group of tax-paying Americans have a right that another group is denied, there is injustice!!!!! I’m not sure if The Tyra Show was a repeat or if it was a new show shot in lieu of the recent situation with Miss California, but I certainly think it was severely relevant. We are on the cusp of a new civil rights revolution. It is time for the gays to demand emancipation from the strongholds of arbitrary traditions that have took refuge in cowardly hiding behind the thin veil of religion. Traditions that are rooted in fear, rhetoric and religious ambiguity . It is time for us to unite. It is time for us to understand and force the world to understand that marriage is only part of the issue. We will no longer be afraid to walk down the street, we will no longer be forced to lie about who we are to be accepted by you. We will no longer sit idly by as our young members are harassed in schools so bad that they can see no other way out of their misery than suicide. The denial of our right to marry is also the denial of our rights to be who we are, it is a statement to the rest of society that we are defective, that our desire for the privileges bestowed upon every other member of society is unreasonable(even prisoners are allowed to marry in jail.) That our insistence of social and civil justice is a cancer on the heart of America. These ideas are evil and they are enablers for the hateful, ungodly and un-American treatment we suffer everyday, it will no longer be tolerated. One of the issues I always had with the idea of gay being the new black was that I felt it was an opportunistic, exploitative and condescending ploy by the middle class gay white propaganda machine to put itself in line with the black civil rights struggle in order to foster sympathetic whites and bamboozle apathy from the black community for their largely racist and exclusive agendas, in short…I wasn’t down with it!!! I still have some of those feelings and I do believe the gay community, like the black community have lot “house cleaning” to do. But first I think its important that we do see the parallels in the situation. It’s important that black people understand that conserving and respecting our social progress depends heavily on not participating in the persecution of other minority groups, Martin Luther King, Jr said “ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We must remember it was not long ago that the color of our skin dictated who we could marry, our right to vote, where we could live and where we could go. We also must not forget that the bible was used to justify slavery, for we were once the descendants of Ham.
What is true at the end of the day is that people will always have their objections to many factors of other peoples lives…I don’t think people should were polyester or talk with their mouths full or use the bible as a weapon, but I also think people should have the right to exercise their beliefs. I do not however think those opinions should hold the power to prevent other people legal and natural rights to happiness, family and liberty. We (gays) must fight until “by any means necessary” our rights are respected and upheld. But we also want the straight world to know we would much rather sit down and have brunch and discuss our differences with dignity and candor. After all the center of this conversation is something we can all agree is the must beautiful and essential thing in the universe……..love.

Wannabes and Jigaboos of the 21st century!!!!!

House Niggas...Field Niggas. Amongst America's oldest rivals. For those who are not in tune with the situation I'll quickly explain. During slavery blacks were separated into two groups; the slaves on the field and the slaves who lived in the house(hence the titles field nigga...house nigga.) The slaves on the field worked harder and were treated worse, they were also typically of darker complexions. The house slaves were not treated as bad, they worked domestically mostly cleaning and cooking. Often the house slaves were lighter and in some cases they were the offspring of their slave masters. The slaves in the field resented the slaves in the house because of the privileges bestowed upon them, and the slaves in the house disliked the field slaves, and believed that they were in fact superior to the field workers because of their fair skin and their relationship with the master. Slavery ended in 1865. Unfortunately much of this mentality lives on today.

Black people (like or not) are still separated. It is getting better, but their is still a divide. The notion that dark skin is inferior to lighter still exist (no matter how many straight to DVD releases star Morris Chestnut or how many times us dark skinned people chant "The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice" the idea still remains. But in the past this situation has been looked at very narrowly, dark skinned people do not bare the burden of this issue alone. Many fair skinned people feel alienated and in some cases discriminated against by dark skinned people who assume that their light skin is an indicator that they believe themselves to be superior. How do we solve this problem??? Is the gap too wide??? Is the history to deep for us to mend??? Must we remain a culture of people separated by envy and stereotypes??? I say the answer to that lies with us!!!!

The first step to solving the dilemma is that we need to be honest about the problem. IT IS A PROBLEM!!! IT DOES EXIST!!!! It's easier to sweep these things under the rug to forget about them because they make us uncomfortable, to continue trying to live our lives while others are suffering underneath that same rug and since we are one, hurting our own selves simultaneously. We have to communicate about these issues. And we have to try to understand each other.Everybody has a story so we cannot be so quick to judge.

The second step is asking ourselves why we have these issues. Why after all these years of progress and struggle, we still make comments like he or she is too dark, their nose and/or lips are too big,their hair is too coarse???? or comments like She is too light!!!!, he looks white!!!!Why do we still have reservations about loving ourselves, in all of our hues and shapes. We can say that it's the slave masters fault. We can blame his preference for light skinned people, in who he saw traces of himself...but we have the responsibility to move past whatever may have happened in the past. We have to stop buying into these ideas!!!!! And finally the truth is I don't think white people generally care whether a black person is light or dark...I highly doubt that having light skinned saved anyone for being lynched!!!! Light skinned people, though some were in the house, were slaves too, like the rest of the "niggas."

NuBlakRevolution

This blog is for young Americans who are interested in exploring issues dealing with culture and politics from a new perspective. A perspective that is inclusive and represents individuals of color's taste, ideas, fears, joys, needs and wants. This blog is for people who are members of the new great American paradox: black and brilliant, street and book wise, dark and unapologetically lovely. This Blog is for a generation who are not ashamed of their ancestors chains, nor will they continue to wear them through the deceitful garment of self-fulling prophecy's and slave mentalities. This blog is for the grandchilden of jazz and blues, for soul's babies,for Hip-Hop.

We are the new class, and we stand on the shoulders of giants. We love both our countries, for better or worse. We will keep the flame. We are Americans. We are Africans. We are the NuBlakRevolution.