Market for Ni99as

I'm not much of a fan of poetry-slam-style spoken word. Moreover, I'm not a fan of rap music at all. However, I find Taalam Acey's insightful critique of the external forces driving the degenerate coonery of the hip hop world to be absolutely riveting. In this piece, he mirrors my own long-held belief that hip hop's descent from its original incarnations as innocuous party music and more serious social commentary into its present state anomic state as a paean to violence, all manner of crime, misogyny and slavish consumerism was driven by the, primarily white, record industry executives who had (perhaps still have)a stranglehold on the dissemination of music.

When rap music fell under the sway of major studios, the genre began to shift away from the more uplifting messages of empowerment espoused by early rap stars, and aimed primarily at a black audience. The big media entities quickly realized that the adolescent white male market, dripping as it was with disposable income, was where the real money was. They also astutely discerned that what this white suburb demographic--who generally hadn't a clue as to the real lives of black folks but nonetheless had a whole mythology of prejudice built up around the dangerous black male archetype--would flock to in droves was hyperbolic displays of black male hyper-masculinity, aggression and criminality.

Tucked away within their insular suburban enclaves, they could vicariously explore their own antisocial desires At the same time, they could accomplish a feat that is seemingly the raison d'être of white American adolescents, pissing off their parents. However, unlike the rappers, whose scowling and dick-holding they found (and still find)so amusing, they could simply turn off the television and go back to a free and easy middle class existence when they'd had their fill. They didn't have to run a gauntlet of crack dealers and gangs, driven to desperation by cyclic abject poverty, on their way to and from school.

In the inner cities, those things were all too real. Even before the advent of gangster rap, poverty-fueled crime was a significant worry for even those with no involvement in any sort of criminal enterprise. However, criminality and ignorance wasn't something to be aspired to. What gangster rap has done is to create a generation of people, many of whom were marginalized to begin with, who have completely embraced a nihilistic rejection of all societal norms. I can remember when the insinuation that someone was a thief (even if they were one) was an affront within the black community that might well have precipitated a fist fight. Nowadays (god, I sound old) kids brag about stealing and robbing. Similarly, a generation or two ago, many people employed the esoteric vernacular of of the streets, but they didn't aspire to it. Now, kids on college campuses go out of their way to speak in broken English, allegedly as a function of "keeping it real." But, in most cases, it is pure affectation. Back in the day, black folks spoke that way because either they or their parents were one or two generations removed from the rural deep south. They lacked education and a facility with standard spoken English. Now, kids, whose parents graduated from at least high school and who spoke a reasonable facsimile of proper English in the home, go out of their way to sound like ignorant jim-crow era sharecroppers, ya heard?

Some people point to the financial successes of a small group of rap impresarios--the Puffies, Jay-Zs and Jermaine Duprees--as evidence that hip hop has improved the economic fortunes of the black community. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rap music has become a cancer in the black community. And, it has produced a generation of black males so inculcated with delusions of overnight success in "the rap game" and so marginalize in their appearance and inability to communicate effectively, that they have difficulty negotiating something so simple and essential to American life as the application and interview process for even a menial hourly job. How these kids could not see that they are being led by the nose by record industry weasel who see their misery as an amusement akin to watching caged animals at the zoo is a mystery to me.

Talaam Acey hit the sociological nail on the head with regard to the white record industry's attitudes toward the black community, whose cultural products they have so profitably exploited, when he said, "The bigger the monkey. The bigger the money ... if you’re effectively rapping about he gun clapping of the black man, say no more nigga, you platinum! ... Just write some bullshit. There’s money to be made for convincing black people that Jill Scott doesn't exist ... As long as white folk got money there’s a market for niggas."

Polly Wanna ...

Last Sunday, my ex text-messaged me from a Superbowl party. At this point, I don't remember what she wanted. I wasn't watching the game. I have little interest in football. That said, if the Lions ever make it to the big game, I'll probably watch it. Admittedly, that is unlikely to happen within my lifetime. So, I had no vested interest in who won. However, I love New York City. The ex and I have been there many times, even since our divorce. Our kid, having grown up watching "Friends," (paraphrasing Woody Allen) romanticizes Manhattan all out of proportion. I suppose that's true of me too. So, when I replied to her text, completely as an afterthought, I wrote "Go Giants." To my surprise, she responded indicated her unequivocal support for The Patriots. This puzzled me. Detroiters and black people typically loathe Boston. This stems from both the bitter Pistons/Celtics rivalry of the 1980s and the quite common impression that Boston is a very negro-unfriendly city. The Patriots, of course, lost to the New York Giants. I didn't even know the outcome of the game until she sent me another text, which said "So what." When I called her back to inquire as to what that meant (I had already forgotten about the game) she informed me that NYC had indeed prevailed against the odds. As Mercury Morris said shortly after the game, in the NFL, on any given Sunday , any team can beat any other team... except in 1972. When I asked her why she'd thrown her support behind a team associated with Boston, she admitted that it was only Tom Brady that she was routing for. I pressed her as to why she would give a rat's ass about Tom Brady. Her reply was that he was sexy. This took me aback, as I have never heard her express any interest in any white dude; not Clooney, not Pitt , none of them. Her type is more typically exemplified by DMX... if DMX was taller and had an 11" penis. So, I asked her if she would screw Tom Brady, and she replied in the affirmative. That led me to think about all of the black women on the internet who blog about their preference for interracial relationships...
Quite a few black women in the blogosphere who express an interest in having a sexual relationship with a non-black male justify their predilection with the claim that black men have long since abandoned them in preference for white women. That is counter-factual. It's a ridiculous assertion to suggest that African-American men don't have an overwhelming preference for black women. The numbers of black men, who marry non-black women, even when restricted to African-American men of considerable financial means, are quite low. Black men, especially in the racist United States, who have white wives or girlfriends, are merely more conspicuous. For instance, no one takes notices of that the majority of NBA basketball players marry some girl who grew up in the same church that their grandmothers attended. However, when a high-profile black male athlete—fully inculcated with the white American beauty ideal through a lifetime of having been beaten over the head with the white media’s ubiquitous insistence of the aesthetic preeminence of bony yellow-haired white women—dates or marries a white woman, it garners an inordinate amount of attention from all quarters, most of it negative. Moreover, is rather hypocritical that black women, who claim their autonomous right to date whomever they please, would feel it necessary to espouse this sort of fallacious rational. I would suggest that there are more pragmatic reasons why black women are beginning to “date-out” in increasingly large numbers. All of this “black men don’t appreciate black women” business is a subterfuge for the reality that black women are now in a position to date/marry way up from a socioeconomic perspective.

Black women express an embracement of the white beauty ideal to a much larger degree than black men. This is strongly hinted at in the disparate grooming styles commonly employed by black men and black women. Black men go out of their way to distinguish themselves from whites. Black men typically groom themselves in opposition to the white male aesthetic, e.g. shaved heads, facial hair, braids, colorful suits etc. Black women, on the other hand, tend to groom themselves in imitation of whites. This is especially true with regard to their hair, which they often either chemically damage or cover up with weaves so as to appear straight. Additionally, there is an increasingly prevalent tendency for black women, whose bodies exhibit a more voluptuous goddess-like sexual dimorphism than any other group, to starve themselves into the emaciated and slightly androgynous body-type preferred by whites. This is particularly noticeable among young black women, who have been brainwashed from birth by the white media.

For the record, I have almost zero sexual interest in white women. That said, I have to agree that it is probably in the interests of college educated professional black women to widen their pool of potential mates, given sistahs' rather bourgeois priorities. With black women graduating at much higher rates than black men, for any number of reasons, there simply aren't going to be enough black men who are what a professional black woman would consider marriageable. Moreover, many black men who are educated professionals, myself included, don't necessarily want to commit themselves to domestic incarceration at the same stage in their lives that most black women do. If you're a black man with a halfway decent job, you're in a target-rich romantic environment. There is an argument to be made for staying single into one's late 30s... or perhaps even early 40s.

On the other hand, in my purely anecdotal observations of white guys with whom I went to school and work with, they are hell-bent on getting married and buying a house way out in the middle of nowhere the very second that they graduate from college. And, again in my purely anecdotal observations, if marriage doesn't work out for them, they're ready to jump right back in there, over and over.

This is going to be a bitter pill for some black men to swallow, but it is likely that the numbers of black/white interracial unions, which are at present overwhelmingly between black men and white women, will shift to the opposite end of the spectrum. As previously mentioned, black women are graduating from universities and entering the professional ranks at higher rates than black men. This creates an environment where black women are surrounded by white males, with rarely a black man to be seen, for most of their child-bearing years. Patriarchy and racism are other factors that will contribute to this shift. As interracial unions become more socially acceptable, white males will find that they have less to lose by crossing the color-line than white women. Perhaps this wasn’t true a generation ago, but in contemporary society a white man who marries a black woman suffers no loss of social status. He is still a member of that most privileged of groups, Oprah notwithstanding, a white man in a white man’s country. Whether one wants to accept it or not, in this racist white-male-dominated society, white women do suffer something of a loss of social status when they choose a black male partner. One needs only to consider the disparity between the paucity of white female celebrities in relationships with black males as compared to the much higher number of black female celebrities involved with white to see this played out. Even white female celebs who shamelessly appropriate black cultural affectations—Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Amy Winehouse, Fergie, Gwen Stefani etc.—rarely ever become seriously involved with black men.

The only bright spot in this cloud of apparent black male obsolescence is that this may strike a blow against America’s innately racist nature and the de facto segregation that persists to this day. Whites show an overwhelming disinclination to live in proximity to black people, even black people of a similar socioeconomic stratum. But, no one is going to tell Robert De Nero or George Lucas that their black wives aren’t welcome in the inner sanctums of white privilege. Even if these black women completely reject all things black, and I’m not saying that they do, their very presence forces whites in their husband’s circle, many of whom have likely never had any social contact with black folks, to confront their racist mythologies. Moreover, most of these marriages, as with most of all marriages, are going to end in divorce. This will have the effect of creating a more equitable distribution of wealth by transferring vast sums of assets out of the hands of white males. And, whether or not these marriages last, they will, more often than not, produce children. A white man with a child, whom he would presumably love above all else, who would be considered black by society at large is likely to use his power to combat the institutional racism that would impact that child’s life… Strom Thurmond excepted.

The Itis

When I started this blog, I had no intention of writing solely about my ex-wife's sexual exploits. However, since we've begun to talk to each other again, she has been very forthcoming about all of the absolutely lurid shit that she's been up to over the years. We had a conversation today wherein she told me that I'm the only person to whom she could reveal herself. Apparently, neither her mother nor her sister nor her best friend are privy to her dark sexually transgressive behavior.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to when she'll get chatty and unearth some astonishingly hot and twisted episode from her past. But, as it just so happens, today (technically yesterday) was just such a day.

Let me put this into context. She and her man (perhaps ex-man at this point) are on the outs. So, he is no longer de facto living with her. This is, perhaps, a factor in why I've been seeing so much more of her lately.

Anywhooo, I took her out for dinner and a movie on Saturday. We ate Middle Eastern food, and we saw "No Country for Old Men." None of that is pertinent to this story. She told me that we couldn't stay out too late, because she had to take some piddling amount of money to her best friend, who lives way the hell on the east side.

She lives in the bleak redneck abyss of Macomb county Michigan. This is a blue collar--Reagan-loving--lower middle class post industrial nightmare, where it's always 1979 and the mullet has never gone out of style. If you saw the Emimen movie, "8 Mile," then you got a taste of how soul-suckingly grim Macomb county is.

Debra also mentioned something about having to put in an appearance at a party being thrown by one of her co-workers (never have I met and tackier bunch of screw-balls than her fellow postal workers. Newman, from Seinfeld, was not an exaggeration. That is precisely the kind of scumbag who ends up delivering the mail.) So, long story short, I took her home around 22:00, kissed her on the cheek and went about my business. About 45 minutes later, I called her for something or other, and she mentioned that she had just gotten out of the tub. This struck me as every so slightly odd, figurine that, if anything, she would have simply showered. I didn't mention this to her. It is well enough within the realm of reason that a woman would simply want an impractical and not so hygenic--you're basically stewing in your own filth--bubble bath, that I didn't think it bore comment.

I went home and quickly fell asleep whilst reading The Nation and listening to Howard Stern. Fast foward to 05:30, when I work up and decided to run out for the Sunday paper and some just made kosher bagels. For some reason, maybe it's just the stalker in me, but I decided to drive past my ex-wife's house. Mind you, it isn't too far from where I live--I had to stay close in order to take our kid to school every morning until she graduated. However, I wouldn't want to have to explain to a majestrate what I was doing driving past at 05:45. As I approached the house, my breathing became constricted and my nuts drew up to my body. I don't know why the fear of seeing exactly what I knew I was going to see had such a pronounced autonomic effect on me, but it did. There, just as I suspected, was another car parked in the driveway behind hers. This is fitting, because I was to later find out that the car's owner was behind her at around the time that I drove past.

Sometime later that morning, around 11:00-ish, I text messaged her and asked her if she has gotten any last night or more correctly, this morning. However, in the interest of saving time and , to be perfect honest, simply not wanting to type of that on a tiny phone keyboard, I simply wrote, "You got some last night/this morning?" Apparently the question mark wasn't a clear enough indicator that the message was an inquiry. Because, she responded a few seconds later with "How U Know?" She thought that I someone knew that she did indeed get it that night, and then again in the morning before Mr. big-dick-du-jour went on his merry way.

When she told me this, I remarked something to the effect that I hoped that her overly endowed paramours appreciated how special what they were getting was. She instantly dismissed the possibility, saying that he didn't and that he has "The Itis."

Now, as far as I'm concerned--and sorry white people, Dave Chappelle didn't make this up, it's al old old old joke in the black community--"The Itis" is nigga-itis. It refers to stuffing oneself with food, and then--probably due to insulin resistance and the earliest stages of Type-2 diabetes--falling asleep. When I asked what she meant, because she clearly wasn't talking about his eating habits, she said that it was BD-itis. She was in a store at the time, and thought better of spelling it out. I, however, was well aware of what she meant. BD this and BD that is one of her favorite abbreviations. It means, of fucking course, big dick. So, apparently the guy who'd spent the night with her had big-dick-itis. Which, according to Debra, means that he is basically an asshole who knows that he can get away with almost anything where women are concerned because he has a very large penis.

She finally explained her thoughts on The Itis et al. today. On Sunday, she was too busy to go into it. Apparently there was a football game of some interests or something. And, while she was explaining what the itis was, she went on to tell me about another guy she used to fuck, who had an even bigger dick and a proportionately larger case of BD-itis. I'll write about that later. I might even try to turn it into an erotic story. It's pretty wild stuff. Suffice it to say for imagined Debra being submissive to anyone, not even a dude with a huge dick. The-now dead-guy with the 11 inch dick; She had him so emotionally distraught that he threatened to jump off the roof... of a house (what a fucktard.) Yesterday morning, however, she admitted to me that, for a while, she was fucking--there was no dating going on--a guy whose mother lived on her mail route, and that on a couple of occasions, he pulled her into his mother's house, presumably when she wasn't home, and engaged in strong-arm love.