Ignorant Sh*t

Earlier today, I received this article in an email from a friend...The sender sent it out to a group of people and asked for thoughts and responses. I didn't intend to react so verbosely, but I thought the article and some of the things that I raised are worthy of wider broadcast. So, please take the time to read the article first, and then my response (with a few changes).

Read this.

After reading the article, I thought about hip-hop and its impact on the image of blackness. On his song, "Ignorant Shit," Lupe Fiasco does a phenomenal job of understanding his recent role to stardom, maintaining his humility, and positing a duty to use his music for a purpose. Using his pen as a "paintbrush" to "rearrange how they paint us," Lupe kills this song. Jay, also one of my favorite rappers, put out his version of this song (same beat, same theme, same title) on American Gangster, but doesn't do it as well.



Here was what I wrote in response to my friend's email:


"I had a few of reactions after I read this article. The first was shock; I knew the statistics were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad.

I was also surprised to hear about the international wave of incarceration and miseducation. The author makes it seem like the entire world is against black men, but he doesn't offer any statistics from the other countries cited. To that point, I wondered: Is the world really out to get black men? If so, why? And why is it such a fast moving phenomenon now?

Next, I thought about all of the programs that do exist to help black children and specifically, black boys. What is it about them that is not working? Is it a lack of resources or exposure? Or are there just not enough?

I also wondered what impact Obama's stature will have on the image of black men for our children, here and abroad.

The next thought I had was, what are we going to do about it? This article is very similar to the commencement speech at Morehouse's graduation a few weeks ago (for those who were in attendance.. .and awake). For those who weren't the speaker, Emmet D. Carson, Jr., used his time at the podium to tell the class of '08 all of the issues facing Black men and Black America, to the end that we need to do something about it. While it may not have been the most appropriate or inspiring commencement speech, its timeliness--and the reinforcement that this article provides--resound and indicate that something needs to be done. I think the list of goals that the author writes are good but there are just some other more essential obstacles, I think.

Everything that Jackson talks about is predicated on an ideology that I think was lost in the black community sometime after the Civil Rights Era. That is, the ideology of solidarity and a keen awareness of what it means to be Black. One argument is that segregation diluted this once ubiquitous and inherent knowledge of self. And that may not be too far off. In recent generations, there have been so many cultural 'mis-steps' or side-steps that many Black Americans have taken that all point to the holistic lack of a cultural identity.

After legalized segregation, Black people lost the ability to stand separate from all other Americans proudly and proclaim our Blackness. Before, it came out of necessity and near desperation that our ancestors found the courage to do so. Now, what really separates us from any other American? Hispanics and Asians have languages and more well-defined cultures. European whites (Irish, German, Polish, Italian, etc.) also have the same things. And there is a sect of whites in america who now have the awareness that they are 'purely' American. But we have a disconnected and disrupted history. Our language is not our own. Other aspects of culture that we have created in America have traditionally been ridiculed, stolen, or diluted by America's recent push for 'multi-culturalism'

Movements like Kwanzaa, Ebonics, Hip-hop, that all are attempts to assert and re-assert a level of boldness and uniqueness. It may sound funny, but when we make fun of and vow to never name our children "ghetto names," we are ridiculing attempts to define Blackness.

So, when we are examining the reasons why it is so easy for black men to become caught up and victimized by poverty, no education, and crime it is easy to attack those who are not in jail as complacent or indifferent. But, I don't think that we should use those attacks as guilt trips, like so many people do. The labels of complacency and indifference are grounded in our historical and cultural trajectory and need to be examined as such.

We need to get to the core of the situation in order to truly affect change and to truly solve anything. The challenge for us, I think, is to thoroughly understand black history and to create a body and platform from which we can begin to redefine Blackness in a way that can be understood, a way that inspires people, a way that makes people proud to be Black, and a way that cannot be taken away from us. It is an issue that is larger than incarceration rates and education rates. And it is one that is larger than just black boys/men. The answer has to come from all levels of the socioeconomic ladder, men and women, and all ages. "

It seems that Lupe was on to something...