Black People: Don’t Buy Into the Great American Myth

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Black People: Don’t Buy Into the Great American Myth

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One of the biggest problems that we have in the Black community is how we allow ourselves to be portrayed in the media. There tends to be a blanket profiling of Black people by the media as little more than dysfunctional hood rats with a few functional Black people sprinkled in for the sake of appearance, but as aberrations, and the poverty pimps among us have a vested interest in perpetuating that myth in order to feather their own nests.
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But the fact is, the truth is just the reverse. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the vast majority of Black people in this country are middle class or above. African Americans are the second largest consumer group in America with a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002 African American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses, and 47% of Africans Americans own their own homes. So the kind of dysfunctional Black people commonly being portrayed in the media are a minority of the Black community, but they are a highly vocal, flamboyant, and inordinately publicized minority.
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If White people were portrayed in the media in the same way as Black people, we'd think that the majority of White folks were barefooted Hillbillies. So if you’re a Black person and reading this article, simply look at your own situation, and that of your family and friends. The chances are overwhelming that you and your close associates are living at a level comparable to the average White middle-class individual. The same is true of myself, my family, and virtually all of my friends.
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So the Black community is doing itself a huge disservice by just sitting back and allowing ourselves to be portrayed in this distorted and negative fashion. It sends the wrong message to our children. When they sit around for hours on end watching the antics of Lil’ Wayne and others flaunting the very worst of who we are, it sends the message to our young people that they have a moral obligation to be stupid in order to demonstrate their Black pride. They’re, literally, being instructed in what it means to be Black by sources other than ourselves. They’re being taught that being Black means wearing pants saggin’ off their asses, engaging in reckless and irresponsible behavior, scarring their bodies with ugly tattoos that can prevent them from obtaining employment, and giving priority to chasing "bling," momentary pleasure, and superficial trinkets over pursuing education, knowledge, and investing in themselves as individuals.
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If we’re tolerating these things in our homes, we have no right to complain when the rest of society refuse to hire us, and profile us a superficial and irresponsible idiots. But the fact is, we’re not only tolerating it, we’re making people filthy rich by supporting an industry that thrive on producing videos that are nothing short of ten minute commercials being circulated around the world saying that the very womb of our culture are sluts and whoes who are only good for abuse, and that Black men want everything out of life but a job - and will do anything to get it.
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That’s not who we are as a people, but that’s the way we’re being portrayed. That’s who our young people are looking up to, and that’s the way the rest of the world sees us. So if we allow this to continue, whose fault is it when the rest of the world believes their lying eyes? No wonder unemployment is so high among Black people. I wouldn’t hire anyone like that either - would you?
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So the Black community needs to come down on the media like a sledgehammer, and stop them from slandering our community. We also have to start letting our children know, in no uncertain terms, that stupidity’s not cute. We can't start to disseminate that message too soon, or too early in a child’s life, and since kids tend to gravitate toward those things that they’re rewarded for as "cool," it’s not enough to simply address this issue as individual parents - we might as well be spittin’ in the wind. We have to address this issue as a COMMUNITY.
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We’ve got to let BET know that if they want the community’s continued support, they’re going to have to change their call letters to stand for Black Excellence Television, and their programming is going to have to reflect that. We have to make it clear to BET, MTV, and the rest of the media that if they want the support of the Black community that they’re going to have to air programming that’s consistent with our agenda as a community - programming that reflects manhood as having the character to face and defeat adversity, and strength as being tender enough to sooth the wounded feelings of a baby girl.
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But in order to do that, we need an organized community, and a big obstacle to that is the self-serving poverty pimps among us who benefit from our suffering. We’ve got to eliminate these people. These are the ones who are primarily responsible for the plight that we currently find ourselves. When Martin and Malcolm were alive, the only thing they wanted from the White man was for him to leave us alone and allow us to live our lives in peace. My grandfather had a little verse that reflected their attitude. He used to say, "The only thing I want from this whole damn nation, is a pretty little wife, and a good foundation." I didn’t realize it at the time, but in that one little verse he was teaching me the meaning of life - and he had that, and more.
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But after the death of Martin and Malcolm, the poverty pimps swopped in to try to take their place, but both their philosophy, and their agenda, were much different. They convinced the Black community that we couldn’t make it on our own. They convinced us that we were incapable of such a monumental feat. They told us that we needed the White man’s help to move forward, so it was incumbent upon us to hire them as our official emissaries to the White man. That was in the late sixties and early seventies. But since that time, the "emissaries" have all profited greatly, while we’ve been sitting on our hands suffering, whining, and begging for the past forty years, and still waiting for the White man’s response. Sure we want our piece of America's pie, but the only way to get that is by organizing and making ourselves a strong enough political force to DEMAND it, not pay poverty pimps $30,000 an hour speaking fees to talk about how unjustly we're being treated. First, we already know that; and secondly, the only one it's benefitting is the poverty pimp. We're actually PAYING him to help spread the word, and profile us, as an hopelessly inept culture.
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So it’s time to bring the poverty pimp hustle to an end. We don’t need one voice speaking for millions; we need millions speaking with one voice. We also need to re-embrace our self-esteem, and begin to recognize who we are, what we represent, and the dignity of what we’ve managed to overcome. We're not puppies who need to be defended. We are a strong and vibrant people. One of our number has risen from the very bottom to become President of the United States. That's one of the most amazing accomplishments in the history of mankind. It's the equivalent of a captured slave rising to become the emperor of Rome, and it also speaks volumes about the American people's respect for excellence. But the poverty pimps have a vested interest in playing that down. They have a vested interest in playing you down.  
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But our history is clear. In spite of the fact that many of us have been dragged through the pits of Hell, we've managed to come out the other side as well adjusted and relatively well educated individuals. A study was done that shows that a White man with felony conviction has an equal chance of being hired for a job as a Black man with a spotless record (http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/study-black-man-and-white-felon-same-chances-for-hire/) That alone says it all. While we've been forced to engage in a 100 yard dash where our White counterparts were spotted 25 yards, we've still managed to remained competitive. So the fact is, adversity has made us MORE, rather than less.
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So don't buy into the great American myth. Yes, there are Black people who are struggling and at the bottom of the heap, but there are also many White people in that very same condition, and, in spite of having every advantage in life. So if you're Black and middle class, you've remained competitive with your White peers in spite of the fact that you were forced to wear lead boots during the competition. So you have much to be proud of - and not just the superficial pride of having Black skin, as James Brown suggested, but a genuine pride in what you’ve accomplished IN SPITE of your Black skin. So let us not allow our detractors have us confuse WHAT we are, or the title on our door, with WHO we are. We should ALWAYS invest in ourselves, because a great man will ALWAYS be a great man, even if he's on Skid Row.
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Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores. So I know who you are and what you're capable of, because I know who I am and what I'm capable of - thanks to you.

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A Father’s Pride

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2011/01/fathers-pride.html

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Wattree Defending Tavis Smiley and Cornel West - What is this World Coming to?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Wattree Defending Tavis Smiley and Cornel West - What is this World Coming to?

Okay, so maybe Hell can freeze over. If someone had told me yesterday that I’d be sitting here defending Tavis Smiley and Cornel West today I would have assured them that such a thing would only happen the day after Adolph went snowboarding through the pits of Hell.

But one must learn to prioritize one’s demons. While Tavis and West constitute a bitter threat to the poor, middle class, and Black communities in their effort to enrich themselves through yet another tour featuring self-service, demagoguery, and disinformation, it seems that the Washington Examiner has found themselves another grinnin’ young deludetant in the person of Ms. Star Parker, so we thought we'd nip this distraction in the bud.

In her article, "How to Keep the Poor Poor," she says, "Media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton philosophy professor Cornel West have just published their latest contribution to American poverty propaganda, ‘The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto’ . . . To the extent this book is taken seriously by anyone, the result will only be more entrenched poverty."

While I make it a point to never go anywhere near any of Tavis and West’s personal enrichment pamphlets, if they’ve remained true to form, I find no reason to doubt any part of what Ms. Parker has said above. But then she goes on.

"Smiley and West's message is simple. America today consists of a few powerful, rapacious rich people and a lot of unfortunate, exploited poor people. The rich are rich because they are lucky. The poor are poor because they are unlucky. And the only way to solve the problem is for an activist government to manage the economy and redistribute wealth."

That’s where the red flag went up. Even though I consider these two hustlers the quintessential demagogues, unless they’ve made a radical change in their bamboozlery, they never say that the rich are rich because they’re lucky and the poor or poor because they’re unlucky. In order for their flimflam to capture the imagination they have to be accurate in their premise, so they rightly point out that many of the rich are rich due to corruption, and many of the poor are poor due to social manipulation.

You see, Tavis and West understands that it’s very important that they maintain accuracy and not overgeneralize during the setup, so when they drop their false resolution on you they’ll seem like reasonable men, not clumsy and transparently idiotic like Ms. Parker does when she voices her corrupted version of their corruption of reality.

Ms. Parker’s spin on the Tavis/West resolution is, "the only way to solve the problem is for an activist government to manage the economy and redistribute wealth." We know that’s a lie because liberals don’t talk that way. The entire sentence is nothing more than a string of conservative talking points tied together - ie, ‘activist government,’ ‘manage the economy,' 'redistribute wealth.' Liberals have more finesse than that - even duplicitous liberals. The kind of gross inarticulation that Ms. Paker has engaged in has the glaringly obvious print of conservative clodhoppers all over it. So we know they didn’t say that, or even allude to it.

Tavis and West would say something more like, the majority of the rich (except for ourselves, of course) got that way through corruption and social manipulation, and the poor are poor because Barack Obama (that jive, Johnnie-come-lately-sucka who butted before us in line and won’t invite us to the White House or return our phone calls) won’t do nothing to help you. But for you Obama-lovin book-buyers, we want to point out that we love our dear brother.  So we're not saying vote Republican - just don't vote for Obama, and let the Lord decide the election." Then they’ll proceed to tell us everything that’s wrong with the country (primarily, Obama), but fail to tell us what’s wrong with us, or them.

Then Ms. Parker goes on to criticize Tavis and West for saying, "The 150 million Americans in or near poverty are there as result of unemployment, war, the Great Recession, corporate greed, and income inequality." What? Is she denying that? That’s one of the few things they’re saying that’s true.

One of the things that drives me up the wall about ultraconservative ideologues is how they can look you dead in the eye and spew hordes of total nonsense, inaccuracies, and flat out lies, then look at you like you’re the one that’s crazy. How can anyone with a brain say that we’ve got to keep the rich on a national welfare program because they're the one’s who are creating the jobs? Can’t they see that the only way that people are going to be hired to make tennis shoes is if the poor and middle class have the money to buy them? No one is going to hire anyone to make tennis shoes that they can’t sell. So it's the poor and middle class who create jobs.

So while Tavis and West might be greedy and self-serving bogeymen, the Republican Party is the Devil, and if Ms. Parker can’t see that, she’s a fool.

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Why is Healthcare Reform Too Expensive, While the Sky is the Limit For War?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Why is Healthcare Reform Too Expensive, While the Sky is the Limit For War?

I find it extremely curious that the very same people who are jumping up and down about leaving a debt on our children by providing affordable healthcare are willing to send the country into bankruptcy to dispatch that very same generation of young people to their death in Afghanistan. It's also curious that we only heard perfunctory grumbling from these people when we spent $700 billion to bailout Wall Street, but now that it comes to spending money on a stimulus plan to help the average American, all hell is breaking loose.

The GOP's behavior in this matter should make it clear to any reasonable observer that the Republican Party is ideologically oppose to doing anything to help the poor and middle class. The reason for that is when it comes to bigotry, they're a step ahead of the American people . Since they deal primarily in dollars and cents, they've come to recognize that mere racial division is no longer sufficient to accommodate the economics of the new world order. The greed of the beast must now be fed with the greater numbers found only in class.

In order to compete effectively in a  global market, America can no longer afford the luxury of a thriving middle class - at least, one as large as the American people have come to expect. So the class system in the United States is rapidly being realigned.  That accounts for why the educational system and unionism are under attack. It also explains why undocumented workers are being allowed to flood into the country in unprecedented numbers. These people are not sneaking in - they're being herded. 

If the powers that be in the United States really wanted to stop illegal immigration, they wouldn't even have to touch the borders. All they'd have to do is arrest anyone who housed or hired illegal immigrants, but that's not conducive to their game plan. The leaders of the Republican Party and their corporate benefactors  are working diligently to get as many undocumented workers into the country as possible in order to undermine the wages of the American middle class, while the xenophobic tendencies of the Republican base is just as strongly dedicated to keeping them out - legal or not. So it's going to be quite interesting to watch the GOP try to resolve that conflict once their base begins to recognize they've being manipulated.

And yes, it's going to be just as interesting to watch you Teabaggers and such have to face that reality, because the fact is, the leaders of your party have already come to the conclusion that in order for the United States to compete in a global economy where the competition's workers work for mere pennies a day, it is absolutely necessary for the United States to grow an undereducated and hungry workforce.  They need a hungry underclass to both feed their war machine, and work for their corporations for whatever crumbs they decide to throw your way.

So the fact is, Teabaggers, if you don't wake up real soon, you're going to have to change your name to the Apple Peddlers to accommodate your new status - and I guarantee you, when that happens, taxes are going to be the very least of your concerns.  If your party gets its way, before long you're about to get a crash course in what it means to be Black in America, and then some.

So before you attend your next tea party, you need to give this matter some serious thought, because you're already being used in the very same way that the Confederacy used Black soldiers during the Civil War - like worthless cannon fodder. The only difference is, you've been given a megaphone to brag about your stupidity.

Now, you may want to write me off as being ridiculous, but think about it. Did the Republican Party promote demonstrations or give illegal "news conferences" to whip you into a frenzy when they gave the world's largest windfall to those who harass you every month over your mortgage and credit card debt?  Absolutely not - and that's in spite of the fact that Wall Street spent part of your money wining, dining, and passing out huge bonuses to themselves. So why are they doing it now, when it comes to helping you and your family?  And worse yet, they now have you blindly fighting against healthcare for your own family in order to protect the assets of the very same people who just robbed you on Wall Street. How dumb can you get?

What makes it more "socialist" to help you and your family than it is to help the rich and theirs? Yet, when President Obama suggested that it was time to help the average American, many of your Republican "representatives" started frantically looking for ways to refuse the money. In fact, Gov. Rick Perry became so incensed over the prospect of helping the people of Texas that he even brought up the possibility of seceding from the union.

Now I ask you, when have you ever heard of a politician becoming fighting mad over having money thrust upon him? That alone should send up a huge red flag for anyone with eyeballs. It just doesn't make sense - that is, unless the politician's interest is diametrically opposed to the people he represents, and that's exactly the case with respect to the Republican Party.

The Republican base is in deep denial. You're like a wife who catches her husband in bed with another woman. Then as the wife stands there in shocked disbelief, the husband hustles his lover out of the room, then casually looks at his wife and asks, "What woman?" He then goes on to convince his wife that she can't believe her lying eyes; that he only rented the room because he intended to call her for a romantic night of passion. Then after hearing his explanation, his wife wants to believe him so badly that she allows herself to be convinced that she imagined it all. She then apologizes for being so silly and falls into his arms, and a soaking wet bed.

While that's a well worn comedy skit, that's exactly what's happening with the Republican base. It should be clear to anyone with any kind of common sense that the Republican Party is aggressively working against your interest. But you want to believe your version of reality so badly, that you're willing to make love in a previously soaked bed.

That's why we call you wingnuts. Because it's nothing short of amazing how the GOP can get you to turn out in droves, and on the verge of insurrection, in order to prevent President Obama from shepherding in legislation that would prevent the insurance industry from cutting your throats. You've allowed yourselves to be convinced that blocking guaranteed healthcare for your families is in your families' best interest - and that's in spite of the fact that the families of the politicians you're listening to are comfortably enjoying that very same healthcare that they're claiming will lead to America's destruction.

Even though an audit by the Congressional Budget Office indicates that healthcare reform would actually lower the national deficit, you're allowing the GOP to convince you that the cost of protecting your families is too much of a burden for America to bear. But how does that square with the fact that in the very next speech these very same politicians are urging President Obama to send an additional forty thousand of your sons and daughters to possibly die in Afghanistan, at a cost of a million dollars per soldier?

So, pardon my terminology, but this is clearly a case of wingnuts seeing only what you want to see. You need to open your eyes to the fact that the GOP has but one agenda - regaining power. That entails two things - satisfying the coffers of their corporate masters, which entails picking your pocket; and sabotaging President Obama's effort to bring you relief, which entails making sure that you and your family are miserable for at least the next four years.

Your willingness to accept, in fact, promote this nonsense leaves many to believe that you either have less than an animal's sense of self-preservation, or that you hate the idea of Obama being in the White House so intensely that you're willing to throw both your families, and America, under the bus to ensure that he's not successful. That suggests that you're at best, merely stupid, but at worst, both stupid and racist - which, of course, is synonymous.

But don't feel alone, because you're not the only ones who need to wake up. If president Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan, we're going to hear clinking champaign glasses all over GOPland, because Republicans know better than anyone that the war in Afghanistan is a no-win quagmire just waiting to happen.

Dick Cheney is pressuring Obama into Afghanistan as a lobbyist for the war machine. If this man had any character at all, after his cowardly behavior during the Vietnam War, and his atrociously inept performance during his eight years in office, he should be ashame to face the American people. But he has no shame, and he's more than willing to give YOUR all to enrich the coffers of war machine.

While Cheney is a coward and was inept in office, he has a genius for destruction, and he's become fixated on trying to destroy President Obama. He knows that once Obama commits to escalating the war in Afghanistan the president is going to have a huge liability in the 2012 election. He also knows that an escalation of the war will waste badly needed resources that we could use to improve the economy. But most diabolical of all is that Cheney knows that escalating the war will leave the president having to account for the lives of your sons and daughters who are happily walking around today getting married, having children, and planing their future. He's depending on them not being around in 2012.  After that, Bush's disaster in Iraq won't look quite so bad. So again, Cheney is pushing for your kids to be used as cannon fodder to better Republican chances in the 2012 election.

Thus, the president needs to realize that it's easy for Cheney to pull for the war. He and his cohorts aren't contributing one thing to the war effort, so it's a win-win situation for them. Their kids are safely at home, they reap windfall profits, they make the president look weak to his base for caving in, and they take the Iraqi disaster off the table for the 2012 election.

So while we share differing political views, I'm pulling for the lives of your children, and I hope the president does the same. I'm hoping the president realizes that only the insane tries the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. As an intelligent man and student of history, he simply has to recognize that we've tried the exact same thing, using the exact same rationale, in both Vietnam, and Iraq, and they've both turned out to be utter disasters. All we've gotten in return is a hemorrhaging treasury, and bulging cemeteries.

Candidate Obama promised us change, and the most profound change that he can provide us at this point in history is fewer mourning families. I hope he recognizes that as long as this nation continues to treat our troops like pawns instead of people who love their lives, and have hopes and dreams for a future, all other change is merely superficial.

So as the president deliberates his course of action in Afghanistan, I'd like him to ponder two questions on behalf of us all. The first: What decision would he make on Afghanistan if he knew with certainty that his own daughters would be the very first casualties in an escalation of the war? In such a case, I'm virtually certain that he'd decide that the effort wasn't worth the cost. And the second question is, what makes the lives of our children of any less value than his own?

If the president can answer those two questions honestly, his course of action should be clear.


Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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