I mean really.

Let’s have a heart-to-heart about the “real deal” when it comes to all of these mouth-dragging open book ‘stats’ about the State of the Black Parent, the Black Family, the Black Men, the Black Women, Black schools, public, private and otherwise; etc, etc, etc.

If we’re “keeping it real,” let’s keep it real on ALL sides, not just a few.

Unlike what William H. “Bill” Cosby said “They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English,” what “they” he was talking about is classically and historically wrong. Considering that Americans speak the American vernacular of true English, but not true English, the “they” that Cosby referred to kept their ears closer to the English-speaking ground than the rest of us. As a matter of fact, “they” speak the original true Anglo-Saxon English of their originating ancestors almost perfectly; and much better than nearly everyone else in this nation.

Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be…

But we “Americans” don’t speak ‘olde English’ any more… speaking of REAL English(e). [“That be-tway-on-web het may hit ye-frem-man”] means [“The internet made me do it”] in the American vernacular.

There is much on-going criticism about “those” Black people, and not enough about “these” Black people, the Cosby kind of Black folk –the highly educated ones who speak American just fine, and still even better than most white people.

I’m going to play “game changer” about what I have observed in the Black community over the years, despite Bill Cosby’s tongue-lashing over something that only applies to certain Black people who apparently just don’t give a mama rat’s teat about “proper American.”

I’m also going to politely swipe at Yvette Carnell’s and Boyce Watkins’ and even Cornell West’s over-arching need to media-criticize Barack and Michelle Obama over anything and everything that catches their attention that nobody else gives a diddly squat about but them.

Let’s challenge the stats for a moment about the alleged ‘disparities’ in the Black community and say that if those were REAL sho-nuff disparities, “Black people,” particularly Phillip and Sharon, would put their money where their instigating mouth is.

Instead of tongue-lashing Pookie & Shaniqua, as did Bill Cosby, Phillip and Sharon might see to it that Pookie and Shaniqua trip over an institution of higher learning every time they fall out their front door.

Joe and Jane Doe would have, and have, done it for Skeeter & Twila, their own redneck cousins who have expressed a real desire to see a better way out. Those who don’t want to go, don’t. Simple. That ends the entire conversation about disparities right there. If Skeeter & Twila don’t go, then they are exactly where they want to be doing just what they want to do.

How much more effort does it take to put a $12 million college in the same place as the $24 million prison that is sitting there now? Or to demand that prisons become institutions of higher learning, colleges, whether the prisoners like it or not. They force them to work for free, they can force them to go to school, also. Tell them to put their lips where their lip service is.

Do Phillip and Sharon truly have a clue how much Pookie and Shaniqua‘s social ploys and economic antics cost ALL of us in the long run?

While it is true that Black people aren’t monolithic, and that cultural diversity is expedient in today’s world -especially since nearly all of us Black folk are unequally mixed with some kind of European genome that came after our African ancestors- the fact remains that when those certain money-controlling ‘milking-the-stats-until-they-curdle-like-cheese’ white folks do get together to decide who gets what and how much, Black people become uncomfortably monolithic as-hayell.

As to “Pookie and Shaniqua” (our momentarily made-up “Cosbyesque” inner-city couple), how much effort does it take to demand that the $24 million dollar prison be removed from the community and replaced with a $12 million college FOR THEIR OWN CHILDREN?

The answer is “None.” No effort whatsoever is required. It’s the same EXACT money, only less expensive and more productive and American-ish. It’s a simple matter, really, of rallying the necessary forces. Power concedes nothing without a flat-out demand. Period.

So until Pookie and Phillip, and Sharon and Shaniqua get off their hostile verbal isht-tossing mouths and do something about it, nothing is going to change. It hasn’t in 45 years, because we’re still talking about it.

It won’t change 45 years after Obama is long gone and deceased, and a part of this nation’s history that some backwards-thinking people would prefer to forget. Unless…

Furious, another UI writer, asked a VALID question: Are we going to do something, or do we simply prefer to bitch about it? In the final analysis, how Pookie and Shaniqua speak or talk the ‘olde english language’ of their original Americanized African ancestors no longer has a danged thing to do with it.

But that brings us to a very prickly matter about something I spoke of before in thorough detail, right here: LINK. And to something else I talked about when I wrote about values, attitudes, and beliefs, as well as motivations and perceptions here: LINK.

I was talking, not to white people, but to Black people about white people, those white people; just like Bill Cosby was talking about those Black people that Michelle Obama and everybody else has blamed for the sins of the forefathers that have more to do with what was passed on to them than what they chose for themselves.

Now comes … the real question:

If Black people and white people actually DO have different sets of VALUES in America, and then back up those values with the “Lion’s Share” of Black communal spending, why be in denial about it?

Why bother to pretend that differences automatically represent disparities? Maybe there is nothing “disparaging” about it.

If Black people spend where they value…and prove it by spending more on it, then why keep talking about, rehashing the same-old/same-old like we haven’t been down this road 1,001 times in the past 45-50 years? If we (us Black folk, that is) prefer Beyonce and Scandal over St. Paul’s College and all of the other HBCU’s that are bleeding out by the day, and if we (us Black folk, that is) prefer Air Jordans and rap music over childhood education and land trusts, then so be it.

White people try to “downgrade” Black people by talking as if Black people should like or give a damn about what they tell them to give a damn about.

More than enough Black people downgrade other Black people by telling Black people what they should give a damn about based on what white people say they should give a damn about.

Maybe the actual truth is that “those” Black people simply don’t give a damn about what anybody says they should give a damn about, be it Joe and Jane Doe or Phillip and Sharon Jennings-Duvaulier.

In other words, if what Black folk value in life shows up where the majority of the money goes, who’s to say there’s anything ‘disparaging’ about it?

Most people spend on what they value the most, and and when they make a choice to get, and stay, on the back of the economic bus with white people, then there is no blasting President Obama for working on the bus that white people own and are driving. If he doesn’t get their bus going, and get their hotels back up and running, we’ve got no ride and nowhere to go. It’s that simple.

That was -at one time- by design; now it’s by choice.

A man who takes his $400 after-tax paycheck and heads straight to the corner market for liquor, snacks, a lottery ticket and a connection to the local “weed man” and then takes what he has left and heads to the mall down the “screet” for a pair of expensive kicks from a company that will never hire him has exactly what he paid for. If he then comes back to Mama’s house and tells her that he doesn’t have enough money to find a place of his own, eats up her food, runs up her lights and gas and water bill in order to “make it,” all rent-free, of course … then he has told the world what he values by where he put his money, and his Mama is on her own if she lets him come home and soak her for it.

To get really racially stereotypical about it, Black people’s plantation-driven and white controlled “westernized values” in entertainment, sports, “bling,” and pricey clothing and shoes, as well as investments in the mega-churches point to the way to our true values; and they are no worse or better than white people’s self-inspired “values” in science, technology, engineering, and medicine.

As “Sheriff Andy Taylor” would say “It keeps them driving the bus and us riding it, and those of us who are still riding on the back of the economic bus must like it something fierce, or we’d have gotten off it a long time ago and bought our own.” The person who doesn’t own the bus and isn’t driving it can’t tell anyone which way to turn. If Black people wanted off the white economic bus, we’ve had more than enough time to get off it. And don’t tell me “we ain’t got the money.”

President Obama seems to think we’re full of excuses about economic problems that don’t seem to exist or that we create because we want to play with our income, earned or unearned; and make other people pay the bills. It’s hard to argue with that. But why not “challenge the stats”? Maybe the stats are wrong. We have plenty of resources and money for stuff we “ain’t got no use for.”

It is what it is, and “if you like it, they love it.”

Where be da racial economic disparity in dat? 

Come clean about what we do have, own it, and keep it rolling.