Everywhere you turn these days, it’s Black people’s fault for everything bad that happens in the world, and only white people are capable of producing anything good … or at least, some folks seem to think so.
There appears to be an escalation of these “old events” of Black-shaming since Barack Obama won the election in 2008, not that it’s anything new.
But Black people are an easy target when people are trying to find someone, anyone, to blame for their own wretchedness, or “ratchetness” as we like to say these days.
When someone does something intrinsically evil (or even slightly degenerate) to their own nature, the automatic instinctive reaction is to deflect and defer, or to transfer that internalized personal brand of “ugly” to someone else–any old easy target will do in this case.
Black people are an easy available target because the whole world seems to think “it and its dogs” can effectively run a road up a Black person’s arss for any old reason whatsoever. White people versus Black people, automatic credibility based solely on nothing more than race.
Anything and everything is the root of this Black-shaming, from single parenthood, to so-called “angry” Black women, to outright violent Black criminals, especially if it hits a dark person or someone close enough to dark-skinned; and it’s the Black American who gets scapegoated every time, almost without fail, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
One would be led to believe that having a “man” in the house is the big failsafe solution to all of the “ratchet” problems with single moms in the Black community when the truth is that any man who would abandon (or to hear some tell it, who would have the nerve enough to be dead while his children are still young) his girlfriend/wife, and/or his children doesn’t really have what it takes to raise a family anyway. Never did, probably never will.
We would be inclined to think there is no such thing as a white single parent, and even if there are, the media images of sparkling ‘above it all’ motherhood tell the whole story (not); or that there is no such thing as an “angry” white woman, and no such thing as an abused white woman, or no such thing as white people who do drugs and are stone slouch drunks and drug addicts; and definitely no such thing as a white criminal, or at least not a VIOLENT white criminal … etc etc.
Every sin, every crime, every bit of evil in a white person gets automatically turned from some humanistic fault or shortcoming on their part to “just plain Black vicious and animal” on the part of Black people.
Same ‘ratchet’ behaviors, twisted connotations and labels.
White woman jumps in the bed with and screws anything that moves, of any gender of her choosing, and it’s cute and funny, even a little sexy. Characters like Roz Doyle of Frasier come to mind, plus whomever the various bed wenches were on Friends and Sex in the City, et al; but Black woman do it, and they are “ho*’s” and “b*tches,” “skanks,” and “skeezers.” Of course, let’s overlook the fact that many white men call white women who do this “c*nts.” That’s not important enough.
Interestingly enough, Mark Gimenez, a British author who wrote “The Color of Law“ addresses these stereotypes artfully and skillfully in his work, which was modeled on the writings of some American authors who take racism and stereotypes to heart and try to explain them to us through characters and dialogue meant to break it into more palatable bites.
But here we are: “Black people” do this and “Black people” do that, “Black people” are this, and “Black people” aren’t that, and they never get around to being able to tell anyone exactly which Black people they are talking about. Certainly it can’t be all of us, or can it?
It’s an obsession with white people in America, and some Black people as well – the same types of folks who think that every time a Black person walks into a room full of mostly whites, they become an automatic expert on race. So, imagine how “Black people” must feel about being made the victims and whipping sticks of it world without end, as if white people don’t have their own illiberal issues that have nothing to do with us.
Why is this?
Since when did Black people in America become the The Poster Children for every single solitary sin or known evil on the planet, with so many white people and their head-nodding Black friends gainfully throwing the illicit race-brick, then hiding their hands and feigning complete innocence on all counts?
Better still, who gets to say imperfection is okay on white skin, but the most horrible thing on the planet if a Black person is just as imperfect and loosely immoral?
The same kind of mentality that says Black people have to be three times better at something in order to get to the back of the line and start behind white people with less qualifications, education, and skills.
So many Black people do strive to be that token, that exceptional Talented Ten Percent, or that “better Negro” in hopes that they will get some kind of leapfrog jump to the front of the back of the line.
Now we’re back to “You’re a credit to your race,” as in “You’re not like THOSE OTHER Black people.”
Same crap as 50 years ago, and with the same pick-up line – “We are not a monolithic people,” as if begging or pleading to be recognized by white people as ‘different’ is going to work.
That never worked, and it never will; and even if it did, would you be comfortable with it in your own skin?
This thing (Black this, Black that) keeps coming back around like a dog chasing its tail around in a circle while we stand there knowing that the dog will never catch the tail, and even if it does, what the hayell will it do with it?
Like the day when Wile E. Coyote finally caught the Road Runner, after years of us watching this sly man-fox-type thing blow itself up, drown itself, fall over cliffs, and even slice itself into shreds trying to trap the Ultimate Catch of the Century.
Man versus Man, or Coyote versus Road Runner, whatever.
If they do manage to successfully brand ALL Black people as evil, criminal, bad, ratchet, et al, what will happen then? Because those of us who know, know.
The thrill is always in the chase.
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