In the place of Morning Mail today I’d like to address something that I tried to address before and it fell on deaf ears. Some of you may or may not have heard about Mark Cuban calling Kenyon Martin a thug or punk or whatever he said. You can check out the entire article here. (Insert link here) I find this to be very intriguing all the time when things like this happen because what this is an example of is when people outside of African America decide to open our dryer door and take out our dirty laundry.
Let’s go back to Don Imus and his “Nappyheaded Hoes” comment. I may have been one of the only vocal people about saying, “Had Steve Harvey has said this, we wouldn’t have done anything but laugh.” He didn’t say anything we already didn’t say to ourselves or in closed company. Hell, then you had a rap song come out in which the rapper Hot Stylez says,
"You rat lookin’ boy, will you marry me, splat lookin’ boy, Whoopi Goldberg black lip lookin’ boy, Midnight train Gladys Knight lookin boy, You poor lookin boy, Don Imus ol’ nappy headed ho lookin’ boy"
And we played it in the club and we all shared a laugh. What’s worse is that if we were watching the games were saying to ourselves, “Damn these some rough looking chicks.” Ok and be real son, be real. When your pony tail ain’t got no hang time and you try to pull that joint back, you get that nasty kitchen… you was saying to yourself, “Nappyheaded hoes” or even worse. Don’t front.
So when Mark Cuban calls Kenyon Martin a thug. And the Dallas Mavs fans call the Denver Nuggets thugs. How upset are we? Very upset that Black athletes are considered thugs in this day and age. They can’t be respected for who they are as individuals and basketball players. WRONG. Because we’ve all been watching these playoffs and we’ve said to ourselves, the Nuggets are a bunch of “thugs.” And let’s be honest with ourselves, we’ve been calling Kenyon Martin a thug since he was at Cincinnati. You cannot get on the cover of the SLAM magazine with platinum fronts in your mouth, or have a serious street reputation in the clubs for your “thuggish” behavior and then expect self respecting law abiding citizen to let you get away with crying wolf when someone calls you a “thug.” Hell no.
I feel like this is a constant reminder that we cannot hold people to a certain level of accountability and responsibility that we are not willing to hold ourselves to. And that’s really than real deal Holifield.
Always 100 with y’all.
2 comments:
But we can say that tho...they can't lol ..simple as that
*shrugs*
its a better than a double standard
I personally don't care what they think of "us"..they gon think what they want, getting upset about it does nothing to change their feelings
I think you hit it right on for the most part. I think the real issue is broad generalization made because people appear a certain way. We may be thinking the same thing, but to have someone outside say it, it gives credence to the belief that someone who is not qualified (read: not black) to make that assumption is in the wrong...
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