Although the ascended Blacks ideology that we need to play the game of respectability politics to achieve success is ridiculous, very few Blacks really understand what we need. Lincoln Anthony Blades breaks down the issue.
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Yesterday, I discussed the dichotomy of Ray Jasper, a Black death row inmate in Texas who will be executed in less than two weeks. To be honest, Iâm proud of the article because I feel itâs fair, yet ultimately rooted in reality. Jasper accurately analyzed how Americaâs prison industrial complex preys on minorities, yet that isnât his plight because heâs simply a murderer with seemingly little regret for his actions and compassion for his victim and his family. But, like most things posted on the net, I knew the response to the piece might go all the way left (as it did) and somewhere along the line I would be called a self-hating coon who enjoys seeing my people locked up.
So, late last night, I called my boy up and we decided to hit the gym. As we ran on the treadmills I explained to him some of the emails I received about the article and he was absolutely dumbfounded. After I left the gym and I shared my experience with some other people I know, they couldnât understand the backlash either. Although we all have different nationalities, come from different socioeconomic realities, and fulfill various job titles, we pretty much saw Jasper for exactly what he was, and knew his defenders were more enablers than anything else. But we represent the middle ground because the battle over whether systemic prejudice exists in the justice system is being battled out between two sides: The so-called âascended Blacksâ and niggers.
Recently, Esquire.com decided to republish an essay that John Ridley wrote for them in 2006 called âThe Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger.â Seeing as Ridley had just won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for 12 Years A Slave, clearly they saw a great opportunity to capitalize off Ridleyâs monumental success with a large wave of traffic from a highly-controversial piece. When I read that essay (my first time ever seeing it), I was immediately overcome with sadness. Ridley had great points, but like Ray Jasper, his points were lost in the reality of his being. His article featured âgemsâ like:
âItâs time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good luck. Just as whites may be concerned with the good of all citizens but donât travel their days worrying specifically about the well-being of hillbillies from Appalachia, we need to send niggers on their way. We need to start extolling the most virtuous of ourselves. It is time to celebrate the New Black Americans ⌠â
and âŚ
âOur preservation is too essential to be stunted by those unwilling to advance. As long as we remain committed to holding high our individuals of supreme finish, others will be inspired to loose themselves of the gravity of the waywards and downtroddens.â
Ridley is a brilliant writer, but his identification of his Blackness is rooted far more in his desire to buy into white privilege, than it is to elevate his brothers and sisters. In fact, itâs clear that his self-conceptualization of being âascendedâ is his way of distancing himself from âthe average niggerâ who revels in hip-hop, didnât attend an Ivy League school, and doesnât speak the Kingâs English. His patronizing essay maddeningly overlooked the societal problems he claims were forever fixed by âThe Dealâ that Black folks received from the Civil Rights Movement, as if our struggles with systemic racism ended with Jim Crow. Truth be told, I was actually more upset with the fact that he parroted his âintellectualâ insight from a Chris Rock stand-up routine:
A couple days after reading Ridleyâs essay, a brilliant rebuttal surfaced on XoJane titled, âOscar Winning Screenwriter John Ridleyâs N***ER Problem,â written by Kirsten West-Savali. In her article, she systematically pummeled Ridley and his arrogant animosity by simply stating the social truisms that undoubtedly affect the existence of African Americans as a collective minority:
- How incarceration rates are affected by a prejudice prison industrial complex
- How inadequate schooling affects dropout rates in low-income neighborhoods
- How glad-handing politicians do nothing to affect the racial disparities in the unemployment wage gap
- How âout of wedlockâ is an antiquated term due to the disproportionate amount of Black girls who are affected everyday by sexual assault
- How post traumatic slave syndrome and the new Jim Crow do exist
West-Savali crafted a great argument that directly counters much of what Ridley wrote in his essay, and while her piece was very true, it became equally as absurd as the âAscendedâ piece for one specific reason: It didnât address the role that Black folks have played in our own successes and failures. And thatâs why so much anti-intellectualism exists in these debates â thereâs no one willing to communicate the harsh truths to our people in a total and complete package.
Ridley was absolutely correct to address the problems we have in our community that are the results our own faults. When you talk about the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans, the argument shouldnât be âare Black folks inherently more evil or is the man locking us up unfairly?â because the reality canât be addressed in the answers of either of those questions. Many Black peopleare being unfairly targeted by racial profiling, receiving unequal sentences, and living in conditions conducive to gangs and drugs. And some Negros are out here KILLING folks and doing FUCKERY without any real justification. I come from a middle-class town and you might be amazed to know how many of my Black friends, who come from two-parent, middle-class households, are beholden to gangster lifestyles. These dudes have white collar parents yet bust their guns on the weekend. To explain their behavior by employing social politics is simply stupid.
When you talk about the high-rate of unplanned pregnancies and STIs in the Black community, we canât just talk about how society hasnât provided us with enough education, because the truth is that many unplanned pregnancies are due to our carelessness. We know better, we have the resources to adequately protect ourselves, yet we choose to go raw because âthe shit feels better.â Yes, there are a lot of Black men in jail â but, there are also far too many Black men who are not in their childrenâs lives not because theyâre being held back, but because they are cowardly avoiding their paternal duties.
When you talk about education, we shouldnât frame the issue solely as, âkids donât have good enough study materialâ because the truth is that there are some Black children who donât want to go to school regardless of their socioeconomic standing. Oprah opened a school in Africa as opposed to Chicago, and they have far less adequate resources than their American counterparts, but they hunger for education. Truth be told, you donât need to go abroad to see great scholastic achievements in the Black community, especially when Black women are leading all gender-ethnic groups in post-secondary school enrollment. I will never downplay the effects school has on Black kidsâ progression and how standardized testing has negatively affected many young men and women, but to make that the sole problem is to avoid the reality that we do have some measure of autonomy in our own lives.
I am not an advocate for momentary symbolic moral victories, I am about breaking the system and recreating something new and far more inclusive and advantageous for Blacks. This is the ONLY way ANY minority has achieved any semblance of power in modern western civilization. The ascended Blacks ideology that we need to play the game of respectability politics to achieve success was rightfully struck down in West-Savaliâs article, but very few Blacks really understand what we need. Itâs cool for a film with a Black cast to win an Oscar, but that doesnât equate to freedom. Itâs cool to see more Blacks attend historically white institutions, but that doesnât equate to true freedom.
I guess the best way to sum it up is like this âŚ
âWhat did the man do to make you as dumb as you are right now?
And if we canât do it we should hush our mouth. If you canât do it for yourself, what the white man is doing for himself, donât say youâre equal with the white man. If you canât set up a factory like he sets up a factory donât talk that old equality talk. Get off the welfare. Get out of that compensation line. Be a man. Earn what you need for your own family. Then your family respects you. Theyâre proud to say thatâs my father. Sheâs proud to say thatâs my husband. Father means youâre taking care of those children. Just âcause you made them that donât mean youâre a father. Anybody can make a baby, but anybody canât take care of them. Anybody can go and get a woman, but anybody canât take care of a woman. Yes, we hate leavingness. We hate drunkenness. We hate dope addiction. We hate nicotine. We hate all of the vices that the white man has taught us to partake in and he accuses us of hating him. Why, because the white man knows youâre more dangerous sober than you are drunk. Yes, you are more dangerous sober than you are drunk. Heâs not worrying about no dancing, singing, clowning Negro. Heâs worried about you when you stop dancing, when you stop singing, when you stop clowning and start thinking. Then he gets worried and you should keep him worried.â
– Malcolm X
LAB
Originally appeared at UPTOWN Magazine
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, heâs an author of the book âYouâre Not A Victim, Youâre A Volunteerâ and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.
This is similar to the Chris Rock skit of Blacks vs N!ggas/N!ggers, what Bill Cosby says, what POTUS says, what basically Every Black Person- Conservative, Liberal, African, Caribbean, or anywhere else- Knows, Sees, has experienced and has SOME sort of Truth to it. That said, there is no Agree to Disagree within the Black Community, and Everyone non-Black pretty much lumps All Blacks the Same. We have a Colorism and a Culture problem to deal with, along with Raism, Sexism, Social Inequality OUTSIDE the Black Community as well; it will be hard to solve simultaneously but we have No Other… Read more »
A bit of a complex conversation to be having, but I can’t say I agree with what Ridley wrote!