Rod and Karen discuss dinner with fans, the new can opener, girl who needed a ride, emails from food places, innovative porn ads, Pope Francis cool with gays, Don Lemon not cool with certain blacks, JayZ gets charity checked, Reza Aslan, naked woman gets left by boyfriend, bananas thrown at Italian minister, Fake firefighter, dog walking in the rain, stripper with a trunk of cash, death by TP, DJ rapist and sword ratchetness.
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This episode….man. It bothers me when people throw out the “Uncle Tom” tag recklessly. To me, a person really has to earn it, meaning its not enough that they’re not black enough, but they are actively working to attack black people. Its especially annoying when white liberals try to chime in on which conservative black guy isn’t really black. That’s not your call, pedo. That said, if Don Lemon is openly trying to sweep the Uncle Tom Awards like Karen in the Tippys, who am I to stand in his way? Guess its not enough that the damn President wears his pants around his waist, doesn’t use the N word in public, and raises his kids yet still gets all sorts of open racist slander. Oh, and since Don is gay, I’m waiting for him to give tough love to the gay community about what they can stop doing so they can get marriage equality quicker and stop being the target of hate crimes.
Speaking of people not being black enough, a quick comment on Harry and Hova…. I’m not upset Belafonte criticized Jay-Z. Jay-Z has been a public figure for quite a while and can handle himself. Jay-Z essentially said the same thing that Kendrick Lamar was praised for saying at the BET Awards, that kids who see him on stage making it from where they are now gives them hope. But what annoyed me about Belafonte’s comments was not his charity check, but what seemed to me like a bit of a black check. People were saying Jay-Z should have worded his comment better, but what about Harry? Belafonte is a smart guy who knows what he’s saying when he criticizes Jay-Z for not doing enough social activism, then in the same breath says Bruce Springstein does so much social activism that he might really be black. Beyond social activism being used to be a black measuring stick now, I would think Belafonte knows better than to criticize someone’s activism as if that person is dead or not capable of doing more going forward. A few decades back, Billie Jean King famously criticized Belafonte’s good friend Arthur Ashe for his seeming lack of activism, commenting about how she was blacker than he was. Ashe didn’t even have many people defending him from that criticism, including Belafonte, but by the day he died, few people in the 20th century did more for social justice than Arthur Ashe. So I caution these people that are quick to talk about what people like Jay-Z or Tiger Woods or whoever as if their life stories have already been written.
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In my opinion Uncle Toms do exist and the only way to identify them is to know what’s in their heart. Uncle Toms try to appease white folks to gain some type of credibility or influence and could care less about black folks. I don’t consider you an uncle tom if you’re criticizing your culture with the intent for it be better. What is Don Lemon? It’s hard to tell because unfortunately any time a black person speaks on a public stage, the majority of his audience will be white and it can appear to some black folks that he is trying to appease them. You really have to know what his intentions are.
I agree that racism is a big problem in this country. I also believe as a culture, black folks have a lot of work to do. I think that a lot of black folks don’t want to have the conversation because they’re afraid white folks will hear it too. It seems like every time a black person criticizes black culture they’re always vilified for it, but behind closed doors a lot of us agree. When such issues are brought up, many black folks say, “white people do it too†to deflect the issue. We have to look at such issues in a relative sense because if every time there’s an issue and we say white people do it to, nothing is ever going to be solved. For example, more white people are on food stamps than black people and at first glance it makes sense because the white population is much greater than the black population. When we dig deeper we find that blacks are only 13% percent of the population and take in 22% of the food stamps. While whites are 65% and take in about 35% of the food stamps. My point is, once we look deeper into the numbers we can have a more honest conversation about the issues, rather just deflecting and saying “whites do it tooâ€.
Now onto some of Don’s points:
The “N†word; in my opinion the word ‘nigga’ is a juvenile and vulgar word to use. Although when amongst people who are like yourself, vulgar terms can become enduring in weird way. Just like a woman calling her female friend a cunt or a bitch. Or a gay person calling his gay friend a fag or queer. It’s really that simple and I wish people would stop playing dumb on this issue. I do find it ironic how people(including myself) use such words in positive way. But like I said, it’s a juvenile way of speaking and even though I’m a grown man, when I’m around my niggas, I sometimes talk in a juvenile way. That being said, I understand how a more mature person would take offence to such terms no matter who says it. We all have a line; some have their line at just friends, just black friends, or just in the context of a book or article. To some people, the word evokes a certain feeling no matter who says it and I can respect that.
Trash; I agree with him on this point and I believe Bill Cosby brought up a similar point years ago. You gotta respect where you live and stop destroying what you have. It is rampid in a lot of poor black communities but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I recently visited Japan and I was surprised by how clean the very poor areas were. I know this is just an antidote but it’s no secret that Japanese people as a whole take they emphasize honor and shame. They feel like even though you have very little, you must preserve and take pride in what you have. I think they prove that just because you’re dirt poor it doesn’t your community can’t be nice and clean too.
Education; I also agree with Don. Rod, I know you kind of brushed it off as not a big deal when he said he was accused of acting white by his peers, but this is big in the black community. When kids say this and they’re comfortable saying it, they’re in reality saying you’re acting right and that’s a bad thing. Getting an education and talking correctly is the right thing not a white thing. You can say it’s just an anecdote but every educated black person I know including myself was accused of talking white when we were younger and unfortunately there was less of us and more of them. Now, I know white kids pick on each other too but relatively speaking it’s much more prevalent in the black community. I’ve been to white and black schools and in my experience, the white kids would pick on the super nerdy kid, while in the black schools you might get picked on for just trying not to be dumb. It’s a similar problem but the base lines are drawn very far apart if that makes sense.
Now I’m sure we all agree that we should take education seriously, clean up after ourselves, and stop having kids. However, to enact change our urge to do these things has to be greater than the urge to not. We can hope and dream to the cows come home but as long as we give into urges contrary to what our hopes and dreams are, the cycle will continue.
Now some might say I’m an uncle Tom and a sell out but quite the contrary, I have a black militia streak deep inside of me because at the end of the day, white people created this problem and black people are left to fix it. Nevertheless we have to work fix it along with fighting racism. I know white people will be looking when we have such discussions and that sucks but until we find a way to have secret black meetings, this is how it has to be. We can have our black pundits and freedom fighters to fight on our behalf, but I would argue that we need folks that have valid points to criticize the culture from within as well.
I’m a big fan and premium subscriber.
Keep up the good work.
Anthony
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