Posts Tagged ‘Black’
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Ok we’ve all done it, and Beyonce Knowles is suffering fallout similiar to that of other pop artists like Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera; as fun as it to watch artists fall, we have to wonder why a part of us is so obsessed with the fact that they do so to begin with. Knowles tried, unsuccessfully, to sell us an album that was rushed together in record time with the same charm that allowed her to slowly, yet surely, create record sales in the past. Some attribute it to her saying that her records are only for blacks, personally I attribute it to the fact that her album simply isn’t that good. Quite honestly, if you hadn’t realized by this point that her records or for blacks, and needed her to state that for you; I mean it’s like Martin Lawrence stating that his television show was for blacks, it isn’t that hard to figure out. You could even go as far to state that Knowles is trying to take it back, reclaim it, as it was chic for Janet to have crossover sales in the 80s and find a niche which allowed her to appeal to minorities yet still be good enough that everyone wants to hear her. Knowles was on the right track to doing that herself, gracing the cover of numerous magazines and doing television interviews in venues that most blacks weren’t paying attention to. She even had the Pink Panther movie, which was a big departure from roles such as that in The Fighting Temptations. Maybe she was tired of it all, after all it’s a big responsibility.
No you do not need a real explanation for the falling record sales. So what does Beyonce Knowles do, star in what was the hottest movie of the year! Yeah I think by now everyone has forgotten about whether or not Knowles’ records were meant for everyone, or which demographic she is attempting to appeal to. Though she didn’t pick up any awards for her performance, you have to admit it was a great move on her part. Love her or hate her, just one more part of being a superstar, though allow the material to speak for itself …
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much has been made about Bill Cosby’s statements about poor, inner-city youth. granted, Cosby may have made his statements before, and his position may mirror those of “true” civil rights leaders of the past, as his supporters are quick to point out, but at the end of the day, one cannot take his statements into consideration without taking a look at the real divide between those poorer African-Americans that are stuck in our ghettos and those that are well to do in our middle class, as well as those that have truly made it and are rich.
my own experience has been that it is easy to go with the flow and only hang around other blacks and whites as “privileged” as yourself, than to go against the grain and deal with blacks that aren’t as fortunate as you are. ideally, being college educated would have “shielded” me from having to digress and deal with the “lower class” of African-Americans. but that’s such a * joke it’s ridiculous, I mean, can you really humor me any more than I already am. for one, for such a prestigious Black university, the majority of those students came from lower, or outright poor, communities. don’t tell anyone, but there is a serious outreach program to get poor students into HBCUs because quite honestly, there are as many, if not more, middle class or rich blacks that choose to go to the public, largely Caucasian universities as it’s chic to take advantage of opportunities you formerly couldn’t because you were excluded from being able to partake of them, as opposed to building something of your own. too many of us do it these days. I found myself almost caught up in it as my own college trips included visiting largely Protestant, Christian institutions where I would be even harder pressed to find another African-American as I did in high school. Certainly I knew better.
once I did get into school though, I found that campus life was predominated by Greek organizations, which appeared on the surface to deal more with cliques and society than they did actually giving back to the communities they so readily represented. a few too many parties, a bit too much status. entirely too much rhetoric.
if we’re so happy and content with bourgeois society why do so many of us slum in the ghettos forsaking an education to learn about inner city life? Why are so many of us striving to be Kanye West? If the only thing separating the upper class from the lower class is French designers and European automobiles, as opposed to baggy jeans and the subway what difference does it make how some of us talk and act, if the rest of us are doing it in private?
i don’t question that the civil rights leaders aren’t doing all that they can, or that they’re in it for themselves, or whatever. i don’t even really have that much of an issue with what Bill Cosby or anyone else had said on the matter, or not. but i wonder, if what we have to be so proud of to begin with truly exists, or if it isn’t just a convenient way to pretend to create some type of status or differentiation between the haves or have nots, or just another illusion …
therefore if i knew better; i’d strive harder to work for that life where i don’t have to concern myself, so much, with that one could consider to be, well, an embarassment, “blight”, on what so many of us are supposed to be working to get away from. then again, it’s not quite so “bad”, yet the irony is, that one would even have to take such a thought into consideration to begin with, particularly when it was just yesterday, that so many of us were ready to die, just to enjoy much of what we take for granted, yet don’t respect, today …
okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well ... 
Too proud to be black, or perhaps you’re not good enough …
Posted by: goofy328 on: February 13, 2007
In The New Black Nativism, a viewpoint in Vol. 169 No. 8 of Time Magazine Orlando Patterson goes to great lengths to show his displeasure for what he considers to be a new, post-modern mentality of African-Americans in which you now have to actually prove that you’re “Black” culturally; that the old tried and true methods of being of 1/16th African ancestry no longer mean that you are stuck, that you have that back-door access to the Black community because of the stigma associated with trying to pass (for white) because you were forced to digress. All of this because our history of allowing others that weren’t traditionally African-American to lead the way, through the medium of civil rights is in danger because of a new sensibility we’ve adopted in which we have to be convinced of why you want to help us in the first place. This observation in light of the fact that African-Americans aren’t standing behind Barack Obama, a candidate that few, if any, actually know about. Are they this desperate, that they would stoop to trying to guilt African-Americans into supporting their candidate by association; that fearful that Hillary Clinton would win or that Obama couldn’t withstand whatever negative campaign her camp may be willing to engage in? Or, what’s worse, holding onto the hope that this is the only way we can get a Democrat into the White House.
It was never about cosmopolitanism to begin with it was simply the fact that we needed all of the support that we could get, and if that support came from Africans, Jamaicans, or anyone else who was willing to suffer the injustice that went along with fighting for one’s civil rights offer incurred then who was anyone to really question it. The fact that African-Americans have a narrow view of what Black culture is like now, and the issue of racial vs. cultural authenticity, are two different issues. Cultural authenticity was always an issue, though it became a more obvious issue once we were truly free to explore what that truly meant, and weren’t fighting to survive. You don’t have to be a carbon copy of what is safe for corporate America to survive in these days and times, but it does help, and yes, regardless of whatever benefits, or assets, acculturating ourselves may incur there are always, and will always be, African-Americans who are fine with things the way that they are because they work for them. Truth is, unless you’re struggling to break through that glass ceiling, or an urban professional to begin with, you could care less what someone who does want to be a part of that culture has to go through.
Whether or not Patterson is concerned that he himself isn’t welcomed into the Black community any more or whether he truly is interested in the fate of Obama is a question anyone who was reading that viewpoint is bound to ask. Quite honestly, being accepted into the Black community has little to do with race to begin with; and if anything, if Hillary does receive a huge amount of support from the African-American community, it goes without saying. That Obama isn’t supported has nothing to do with the fact that he isn’t your typical Democrat or anything to do with the fact of how “Black” he is or is not, or his mixed African heritage. Obama can win the support of African-American voters, but no, he doesn’t look or act like any of us so yes he would have to go out of his way to show how “sincere” his commitment to the issues that affect African-Americans are. Then again if I were ever to run for President, or anything else where I needed the support of the African-American community I would have to do the same thing, in fact any of us, who “aren’t in the building” per-se, would have to do the same thing …