Gabriel on Black in America

Simply put…that special sucked. I maybe watched 30 minutes to an hour of it because my company wanted to watch the crap, but that is all. This however comes from the perspective of a socially aware Black man.

To me, the whole ‘Black in America’ special was just awful because I already knew everything that they were talking about on that special. Intelligent Black people have known about the struggles that the average Black person faces with their day to day life forever. Black people know about how education (or lack thereof) affects the Black community, we know about racial profiling, everyone has opinions on interracial dating/marriage. It is all common knowledge that any douche with a brain (and a blog in my case) can analyze and tell you everything that they covered in the series. Now all these people are clamoring about how CNN was brilliant and deserve awards for their excellence and competency in dealing with thus subject. Please…give me 5000 bucks and a video camera and I could make a better special. Now while I think the series is bad, I won’t say that it went without a purpose. That purpose is something that is desperately needed amongst people in the United States. White people SHOULD know about Black people.

Black people are forced and expected to know every aspect of White culture or else we seem uncivilized and unfit to wear anything more than a potato sack shirt and some itchy wool pants (commando…no drawz…one can imagine the pain). I speak from my experience in my various dealings with about half of my best friends in the world (White people). I have been expected to know a sundry of things that pertain to White culture. For example any time a music question comes up about the Beatles or Whitesnake (or something else that I find horrendous usually pertaining to classic/old as crap rock and or roll). If I admit I have never watched that show Arrested Development then I will continuously get told about how amazing of a show it is and then looked upon like I have AIDS once I admit that I no intention to ever watch that show.

But when I will bring up a rapper (who isn’t 2Pac, BIG, Kanye West or Will Smith) certain White friends of mine have never heard of them before. EVER! But I can’t call them out on their ignorance or look at them in disgust or flabbergastosity (yes I made that word up, one of my majors is Sociology…that’s how we get down) because they don’t need to know. They SHOULD, but it isn’t required and their life will go perfectly smooth if they don’t know one iota about Black culture. And given the state of things the necessity of them needing to know about other cultures won’t change any. They’ll just steal it, pretend they didn’t, alter it to make it their own and pretend like they have always had it. However, this is nothing new because they’ve been doing it for centuries now.

FIGURE ONE: To unlearned White folks, this is the birthplace of fireworks…

 

But I’m not angry with them (that much). I’m angry with the fact that Black people were publicizing this thing to death! Facebook was covered with statuses talking about how they were watching the special. I saw none of these statuses from anyone else (although I didn’t look very hard). I also got a text message saying that if I wasn’t watching it, I needed to be watching it. My first thought was “Do rich white females who live in Southern California watch MTV shows? Odds are that they don’t because their lives are those shows,” So I proceeded to go back home and eat Chinese food (yes I’m fat, leave me alone).

The next day I was watching one of the 500 reruns on CNN and they showed some comments from viewers. All the viewers they showed were Black. Most of them were pseudo-intellectuals trying to use big words that didn’t go together, or tried to vary the words only to use the same things over and over again like Oswald Bates. I thought that the success of the special was the type of social dynamic (besides institutionalized racism) that made sure that all ‘Black’ movies in Hollywood would have to be about sports, Madea, or some quasi-religious, hood-set, comedy. It portrays the stereotype that Black folk don’t care about things that don’t relate specifically to them…even though we do because I wasn’t the only little kid in the hood watching DBZ. This pissed me off even more, so I left it alone (or else I’d end up hating CNN like I hate almost anything Tyler Perry related). In closing…the intentions of CNN were great, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions…and republicans…and democrats…and vegans…and fat people…and emo kids.

Gabriel on George W. Bush

No, I didn’t vote for him so save your Uncle Tom sellout rhetoric for someone else. But, I am tired of endless things in the media to take aim and attack him. Goodness, it’s like Kim Cattrall’s vagina…it’s old. The latest in this string of warranted verbal assaults on King George the second of Texas was in a Judd Apatow film that I saw on Wednesday (early release tickets are the pWn). The movie started out with a quote in which King George made a mistake with subject verb agreement. Ha-ha…funny right? Well maybe if he hadn’t been destroyed 500 billion times in the past 7+ years. However, everyone (about 75%) in the theater (yes I interchange theatre and theater…I use theatre when I am in the mood for sweet tea and scones…if you don’t like it, read a book) started laughing. I waited until the laughter died down and yelled in a slurred and sarcastic tone “Ha-ha George Bush ha-ha…” two women sitting behind me got my humor and laughed.

SIDENOTE: Some people in the audience were like 12 and they were laughing the hardest at the Bush thing. I say that it is good that they are politically aware (not really) at such a young age. But no one cares what they think other than their mothers and fathers (and that’s only because they have to).

FIGURE ONE: Has a six figure trust fund…and an IPhone.

So in the event that any of my readers see a group of tweens (10-12) in the middle of the day at Starbucks rocking emo haircuts and talking about how capitalism is evil while ignoring the calls on their IPhones from their parents. Please beat them for wasting taxpayer money and not being in school to learn something useful. Tell them Gabriel sent you. Thanks in advance!

I’m not saying that I feel sorry for him, he (as a president) deserves most of the crap he gets, but I’m sorry for myself because I have to listen to uncreative, unimaginative (recycled from the Daily Show and Colbert Report) jokes by hippie, ultra liberal, free spirited a-clowns. However it isn’t their fault (the parents should have beat them more as children). I blame Hollywood. In general Hollywood is filled with rich, yuppie, douches that think just because they play deep and insightful characters on television or in the movies that they are deep and insightful as well. News flash…you aren’t (a select few are genuinely good people I guess). They just make a lot of money and ran out of coke to do, so one day so they decided to ramble about their political affiliations and beliefs on how the world should work in their coked out minds. They neglect to realize that if the world worked that way then they would be out of jobs. Since most of the people in Hollywood have no other real talents, the world would be overrun by porn stars and subpar musicians…kind of like it is now…only worse.

Now I don’t care what people think of him. I personally think that as a president (not as a person) he is a major douche. But, it seems like every pseudo-intellectual PWP with a degree in Geography who wants to prove their worth as a future non-profit worker does so by taking aim at President Bush and his administration. But please, I urge people…give it a rest already. Everyone knows the man isn’t a good speaker. We all know that most people in the WORLD don’t agree with his policies. I’m just tired of it. Find another person to mess with…or wait a decade until VH1 does a special on him with v-list celebrities. Then it’ll be cool again (not really).

Gabriel on Natural Hair

In continuing with pissing off various groups of people who happen to be my friends I will devote this post to something that touches me very deeply, Natural Hair. I will begin by saying that there is no other form of hair that looks better on a Black woman than natural hair (in my humble useless opinion). As a friend of mine stated; “How can natural hair not be right for Black women, it’s what we were born with” The current explosion of natural hair styles that is taking the ‘educated’ Black world by storm is proof that the best natural hair styles pWn the best processed hairstyles. Dreadlocks, braids, afros (pulled back with a headband or braids) and various other natural hair types are sexy. However…this is just the positive spin on natural hair.

These are some not so positive spins on natural hair:

The females with natural hair that are crazy black radicals that dub themselves ‘pro Black’: Besides (as another one of my friends put it) “single white females that are pregnant, new mothers or proud parents of multiple children whose dating history happens to consist of the darker complected male” who happen to be attracted to me there is another group who is tends to be attracted to me. This group consists of the ‘pro Black’ female. I personally don’t think that minorities can be racist against White people because racism is a social construct that needs to have the power to oppress backing it. Minorities don’t have this power. But…if I were to call a minority group racist, ‘pro Blacks’ would be it. They secretly hate white people, but might have friends that are white just to keep up appearances (No Glove…this isn’t me, I hate you). They ramble about how they aren’t racist, but let them hear that you don’t think interracial dating is evil and they will try their best to shred you of your dignity not only as a Black person but as a human being. They can be spotted because they normally rock wild Angela Davis afros and are stereotypically angry black women. They wish to shred every bit of European influence and ancestry from their lives that they can.

FIGURE ONE: You can also set these females apart because they celebrate Kwanza…effing Kwanza…

 

Females that have natural hair to rid themselves of European standards of beauty but still do White people stuff: The aforementioned group could be classified with this group except these women are not ‘pro Black’ at all. They try to be (much like Episcopalians try to be Catholics), but can’t quite bring themselves to do it. Because these women have one vice. ‘White culture’. They go natural to rid their own bodies of European standards of beauty and all that jazz, but still appreciate as much white culture as they can take on the outside. They have predominately White friends, live in white neighborhoods, enjoy shows like “The Hills” and “Sex in the City”, go to predominately White schools (don’t we all L), and date almost exclusively White men. Now I don’t care about interracial dating all that much, or people who are immersed in ‘white culture’. I just find it funny (weird and haha) how they justify the hairstyle choice. Oh well.

FIGURE TWO: “Like oh my gosh Shaneka…your natural hair is like…so totally awesome!”  

Females that have just decided to go natural and are bald headed for months on end waiting for their hair to grow: This is like a double edged sword. Yes, when the hair grows you will be beautiful and natural…but for the 6 months to a year (depending on how fast your hair grows) that you are bald headed…it is not cute. It is horrid. For people like me who happen to be (or have been) in a relationship with one of these people it is awful. They want all the glory and glamour of having natural hair, but then get pissed off when people think that they have a Y chromosome. If their hair wasn’t so short (or in a fade for some crazy individuals) people wouldn’t think that. So they shouldn’t get upset. It’s like a fat person being mad at people for making fun of them because they are fat…it’s their fault. They need to stop being fat. Or in this case, stop chopping all their hair off in one fell swoop and they won’t get that problem. But as angry as those people make me nothing compares to the…

Females that claim to be natural, but you really can’t tell because they just press their hair all the time: If people can’t tell you’re natural…then you aren’t. Simple and plain. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t put a perm into your head for a year. If you still have remnants of that original perm, then you are not yet natural. Don’t decide to wake up one day, miss your hair appointment, and then claim to be natural because you’re tired of White people’s crap. You were running late one day and it was a fluke. If you want to process your hair, go for it (women with processed hair can be fine too), but just be you. These women are on par with females who are my complexion (dark…) but claim that they have Indian in them instead of admitting that they are perm junkies…

I used to have a stronger preference, but given my experience with all of this ‘natural’ crap I’ve had to notice, endure, or hear about the preference isn’t really that strong any more. Yes natural hair is sexier, but I’ll take a permified, processed, woman over some bald headed militant any day. But that’s just me…