We Is US: The United States (And That Means America)

 

 Over the last three posts, I've given you examples of how the absurdity of slavery negatively impacts our nation - I gave you a link to slavery, specifically, in the food industry.

   

 I've made the point conservative politics - unfortunately even the Republican Party's - aren't relevant, in any real sense, to our lives.

   

 We're doing the best we can, with what little we got, folks: 

 It ain't about hurting nobody,...

 

Why's There A Gay Parade - But Never A Black One?

 

Catchy title, huh? Yeah. I was going to try something with those two terms of endearment - Race Hustler and Victim Schtick - but gays, always saying we're the same, bother me. Where's the black fucking parade?

Never heard a white person ask that. Humph.

So, the fear is, the movie 12 Years A Slave might cause problems. I don't know why. 

It's just the kind of story black households live with, as personal history, and discuss - can the rest of the country deal? 

I don't know. 

I wonder if whites understand there are entire black families still licking their wounds - or do they think we wake up each morning thinking this is a wonderful land of opportunity and we better go get it? I don't know. 

If they're not denying slavery happened fairly recently in the life of blacks, then some whites are trying to deny it's had any affect on blacks as a people - like a family intimately understanding rape and other horrible crimes, along with toiling for free for centuries, can't do that. 

If some whites can't sell that idea, they just don't like you. 

Whites will listen to complete idiots before they contemplate someone else might have a clue. Sorry, folks, I've seen it and lived it. Considering how many idiot whites there are, that's a long-assed line I've had to wait in and, usually, it's too long to get to me today. Well, at least I had the "opportunity," right? Is that how it works? Oh joy. 

Right now, some whites like to rail about black-on-black crime, but are they going to consider that partial fall-out from white slave owners forcing blacks to "punish" each other? I don't know that either. They do love them some black-on-black crime, though. They never talk about white-on-white crime - which is the majority of crime, just based on volume. Maybe that's because white-on-white crime is just "crime". Isn't that strange? 

There's a lot I don't know because, with some whites, there's no way to imagine they share the same country. I'm expected to be open and honest, but they can't even acknowledge outnumbering me, and doing so by such a wide margin I can be driven mad by hearing the same lame racial jokes, the same lame racial arguments, and the same lame denials of every word I say, over and over and over again. Usually in a single day, online. "Thinking outside the box" is just a phrase to these people. They have no intention of trying it.

And there's nothing I can do about it - they hold all the cards. All they have to do is not to like what I'm saying, agree on that, and I'm done - right or wrong don't matter. Do they understand that? I don't know. They've rarely backed me up when I'm right (ask Ann You're-all-losers Althouse or Glenn I-like-quackery Reynolds) but demand friendship I rarely feel.  Not sure how that's supposed to work.

Did you know most of my donations come from people I rarely talk to? The ones I do, they don't have time - too busy writing "the narrative" of my life to be bothered with the real thing.

I can be affected by how white people are so concerned by white's opinions to the exclusion of everyone else's. Do they consider that? I don't know. I doubt most whites have been in that situation very often. Where blacks, as a group, can simply ignore them.

What do you guys think Dave Chappelle has been grappling with - why he had to pass on $50 million and run to Africa? (Wasn't he your buddy, playing a blind Klansman shouting "Nigger!") Do you think he was wondering how great being in this situation is - even with money? Are YOU in a "situation" just by waking up today? Are YOU writing a racial post for understanding? Nope. You're sitting there deciding.

I've got a white guy caring for me now - he's manic/depressive and barks "Nigger!" several times a day. Are you relying on such help? Could you handle a black guy in your house yelling "Cracker!" or "Honky!" uncontrollably? I bet you couldn't. Nor would you, and never will have to - but we're all the same, started from the same place, "living the dream," with the same chances in life, right? Please stop the bullshit.

I'm asking you for donations - without compromising my integrity or that of the blog - not the other way around, assholes. 

That's because I was born into a situation - you guys were just born - and it's simply not the same.

Eric Holder said we're a nation of cowards. Well not me:

See you at the movies,...

Dave Chappelle Is Obviously "Racially Vulnerable" And His Fans Are Obviously (And Actively) Driving Him Nuts

This is cruel.

Sorry but, other than Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, I don't hear about a lot of comics dealing with this and the man is too important to let it slide:

“I'm watching Dave Chappelle quit stand up,” tweeted Lesli-Ann Lewis. “He's tired of White people treating him like he should shuck and jive.” Writing for Ebony, she expanded upon her use of that historically loaded phrase:  

Being in that crowd, a sea of drunk White male faces and seeing Chappelle sit there and be jeered at made me uncomfortable. Heckling isn’t uncommon for comedians but often when a comedian as famous as Chappelle puts their foot down, it is usually respected.  

While the racial makeup of the crowd was incidental, the way they treated Chappelle is not. It speaks to a long complicated history: the relationship between the White audience and the Black entertainer. This is a relationship you can easily trace to early minstrel shows, to archetypes of Blacks that still define the roles we’re offered today. 

One of the reasons Chappelle abandoned his sketch comedy series at its peak of popularity was that he grew uncomfortable with the response to his racially charged humor from white audiences. During the taping of an ill-fated sketch in which he donned blackface as a “black-pixie” who prodded black people to perform as stereotypes, Chappelle noticed that one white male audience member seemed to find it a little too funny. “When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take fucking time out after this. Because my head almost exploded.” Lewis’ reading of last night’s performance seems plausible given this history. 

Why was the crowd so rowdy to begin with? Splitsider reports that fans were yelling well-known catchphrases from Chappelle’s Show “right off the bat,” and that it went downhill from there. (By most accounts, there was plenty of alcohol flowing as well.) Chappelle did a riff about Damon Wayans performing stand-up to a crowd that only wanted to see him do Homey the Clown—one of his signature characters from In Living Color—an apparent analogue to his own experience onstage last night.

I'm not too concerned for Chappelle - he's married, with a child, and has a good head on his shoulders - but he might need to re-think his relationship with America from here-on-out: 

 He's no longer the *blind* KKK leader they thought he was,...

 

Self-Serving? (Why, If That's The Case, I'll Take Two) III

This piece on Dave Chappelle sounds so familiar to TMR it almost physically hurts to read it:

Theories for why he quit abound. Some say he had a mental breakdown, others presume he suffered from being “the one righteous man in a world of corruption”, as Jason Zinoman, a comedy critic for the New York Times, writes in his e-book “Searching for Dave Chappelle”. Though Mr Chappelle has never fully explained his reasons for leaving, in interviews he has said that he worried his comedy was becoming socially irresponsible. He mentioned hearing a white TV-crew member laugh during the filming of a sketch in a way that made him uncomfortable. 

Race is an important theme in his work. When Mr Chappelle first started out, playing to racially mixed audiences in Washington, DC’s largely segregated comedy scene in the 1980s, he caught flak for “not being black enough” (a concern over racial fidelity that white artists never have to face). His TV show dealt with race frankly and often surreally: one sketch concerned a blind white supremacist who did not know he was black; another featured a “racial draft”, in which American ethnic groups “drafted” biracial or culturally hybrid celebrities (the Jews took Lenny Kravitz; the blacks took Tiger Woods; the Asians got the Wu-Tang Clan). In Austin a particularly funny (and unprintable) bit involved him hiring as his personal chef Paula Deen, a white Southern cookbook author who was recently fired from the Food Network for using racial slurs. 

It is not clear what is next for Mr Chappelle when this American tour ends in late September. Despite his long absence, he seems at home on stage. If there were fewer roll-on-the-ground laughs than the audience may have expected, there was also the sense that a restless innovator is pushing the bounds of his art.

Yep - I know the feeling: 

That's just what some of us do,...