By Darryl James
Part of our Soul as a people can be found in what we can create when we come together. But with marriage on the decline and the genders nearly at war with each other using public propaganda, our proverbial Soul is now divided.
For example, men once lead the Black community. Now, women have ostensibly displaced them, but not really.
In the battle for equality, some of our women wanted to take the lead, but many of them won’t even follow themselves. No one is being groomed to lead, so clowns of both genders are doling out empty, useless recommendations while claiming to be leaders.
And there is no way for anyone to lead when all bets are off and many paradigms have been turned on their heads.
For the first time in our history, more Black people are claiming that there is no racism and therefore, no need to deal with the problem of race or racial issues. To them, anyone who cannot get ahead is “choosing” to be left behind.
Our historic first Black president is being attacked more viciously by looney Negroes than anyone else and those lunatics believe that they are “revolutionary” for calling him out and refusing to “give him a pass, because he is Black,” even though they were as quiet as church mice when previous presidents were wreaking havoc on the world.
For the first time in our history, more Black women are now asserting their status as women above their status as Black people as though that will get them above racism, when really, it just leaves fewer of us focused on Black issues.
And it leaves more of us divided.
You can say anything negative about Black men and many people will readily agree. Even if it is unproven or outright false.
Black men are blamed for interracial marriage (even amongst Black women), the infection of Black women with everything, anti-intellectualism, the decreasing marriage rate of Black women, poverty, wild children on the street and global warming.
People claim that there are more of us in prison than college and that most of us are deadbeat dads. Research proves these claims to be false, but the lies are spread rampantly.
But say anything about Black women and dead-brained morons will come out of the woodwork to claim that you hate all women. Even if what you say is true.
With no accountability, we’ve seen many Black women become over-s*xualized yet undereducated about s*x. We’ve seen more of them prepared for life alone and fewer prepared for marriage, while many of them think that being single mothers automatically makes them Strong Black Women. We’ve seen many of those single mothers prepare their daughters to work hard and live independently, while preparing their sons for nothing.
And in the midst of fewer marriages, many Black mothers and fathers have either adopted a false permissive parenting style or no parenting style at all while selfishly pursuing a hedonistic lifestyle foisted above the children they made because they thought parenting would make them look good, not because they really wanted to be parents.
We’ve seen such soulless parents produce a generation of Soul dead children who are now adults with no idea what is good and so pursue nothing and get awarded anyway.
Those soulless parents have produced a generation of children who think that two dead rap stars are heroes, who think that s*x is free and hard work is for suckers and who think that drug dealing and violence are the natural pursuits of Black men and that s*xual objectification and avarice are the natural pursuits of Black women.
Where we previously would have had an ability to police our own and so make necessary community corrections, too many of us have adopted the majority’s standards and now rely on people outside of our community for ways and means to move our community. As though they really care.
That’s why many Black women supported Hilary Clinton because she is a woman, and many Black men supported her because her husband is a “friend” of Black people. Her husband, Bill Clinton, who presided during a time when Black college enrollment decreased while Black prison enrollment increased.
A president who joined his wife in making nearly slanderous racial remarks and making certain that the presidential campaign of 2008 was focused on race.
And still we celebrate the denigration of our Soul by anyone who dares to do so, including ourselves.
This is why we can watch America’s new favorite coon, Flavor Flav, clown, buckdance and embarrass the race in bright colors and then tune in to BET (The Bulls—t Egregiously damaging Television network) and watch comedic drivel from the new King of Coons, Tyler Perry.
We are so Soul dead that Perry is defended against Spike Lee, while some dare to call Perry a “Black Leader,” even though his assault on the Black image is setting us back to the days of Stepinfetchit, which is no shocker to our collective Soul, because many of us have no idea who Stepinfetchit was or why he was a problem, and the rest of us just don’t care as long as Perry can make us laugh.
Instead of fighting to garner more dignified representation of ourselves, we simply accept the cooning and buckdancing that assaults us through the silver screen or the small tube.
We perform and then watch these things on television because, as many dead Soul Negroes claim, “We have the right to do so.”
We have the right, but it’s still wrong. And it is killing our Soul, even as the nation loses its own.
Yes, America is losing its own Soul, but African descendants in this land aren’t built for the selling of their Soul, because without our Soul, we are nothing. We will not become white with privilege and we will no longer be what we once strove to be—self-determining and self-sufficient proud Black people.
We will just be Souled out.
Darryl James is an award-winning author of the powerful anthology “Notes From The Edge.” James’ stage play, “Love In A Day,” opened in Los Angeles this Spring and will be running all Summer. View previous installments of this column at
www.bridgecolumn.proboards36.com. Reach James at djames@theblackgendergap.com.
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Thursday, June 2nd 2011 at 7:45AM
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