Free Credit Report dot COM

If you’re a television watcher then chances are good that you’ve seen the commercial from Free Credit Report dot COM. There are at least four versions of the commercial I’ve seen. They all feature a guy strumming a guitar while singing about how he took his credit for granted. In one commercial, he didn’t find out that his credit had been messed up by someone who stole his identity until he went to buy a car. With his credit stolen and his rating so poor he could only afford a beat up, partially rusted, fifteen year old Geo Metro. He’s driving away from the dealership with his friends and is too embarrassed when he stops at a light next to some girls in a nice Ford Mustang GT convertible. They laugh at the guy and his friends as they pulled away when the light turn green.

In another commercial the guy had to take a second job to repay all the people who said that he owed them money on his credit report. He’s working at a knock off Captain D’s restaurant in a pirate costume and singing about not knowing his credit was bad. There’s a third commercial that’s not getting too much air time. But in the third one he’s singing because he didn’t know his girlfriend’s credit was messed up and when they went to get an apartment together they couldn’t do it. And in the fourth one he’s trying to buy a bike. Homey needs to chill and quit trying to buy so much stuff he can’t afford.

Talk about the power of persuasion. Don’t let your credit rating go astray. Log on to Free Credit Report and keep track of what other people are doing with your credit so that when you need it you won’t have to work so hard to repair any damage.

People have to understand that the entire credit system is designed to work against the individual to the advantage of the corporation. Corporate America designs a system of credit that is just way too easy to be manipulated and defrauded. This system is so easy to corrupt that all anybody needs to do is to get one of the many credit applications that the credit companies mail out in bulk to people like pizza coupons. The imposter only needs to fill the application out with a change of address and the credit company is more than happy to become the collaborator in the destruction of my credit. Somebody with my credit can buy things that I could only dream of. And then it becomes my problem.

If the mortgage meltdown has taught me anything is that the whole system of credit is skewed against the black population. Black people with good credit were given the more expensive sub prime mortgages just because somebody felt that they should be making more money off of black people. Maybe black people who are buying a house should have shopped around for a creditor. But I know without a doubt that some black people are so happy just to get somebody to take their application that the thought of shopping around just isn’t an option.

As much as possible we need to kick the credit card to the curb and do things the old fashioned way. Wait until we can afford it, put it in law away, or simply do without. Personally, I really like the idea of doing without until one can actually afford it. Not only do you avoid enriching somebody else for loaning you their money, you’re actually assured not to get in to too much financial trouble. Monthly payments for anything can easily hide how much you can pay for something. These days, car payments can be stretched out for as long as seven and eight years. Or you can lease a car for a few years, give it back, and have nothing to show for it. A lot of people who lease like the idea of getting a new car every handful of years. But people like me like the idea of not having a car payment.

If somebody uses my name to cheat some lending institution out of thousands of dollars then that is between the lender and the imposter. I had nothing to do with it and there is no way in hell I’m going to take responsibility for it. I am doing fine without a credit card. I will do fine saving up my cash to buy my next car. It may not be the latest with DVD encoded satellite navigation with the downloadable MP3 stereophonic sound system with forty speakers and xenon enhanced nitrous encoded backlights. The stuff they put in cars these days sounds like the techno babble from a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. I’ll do fine with what I can afford.

I plan to do my next house the same way. I will buy a fixer upper for cash. After I buy it, I might have to spend some time just getting it up to code so I can live in it while I continue to repair it. But, that’s okay because when I am through repairing it, it will belong to my family and me and not to the bank or anybody on Wall Street. If any lender wants to give somebody who pretends to be me any money then that’s between them. I do not have a thing to do with it. My credit is not my name and vice-versa.  I don’t have the time or the desire to protect a credit report that is so easily corrupted.

Victimization Without Being Enslaved

“Ok, im white but i dont hate black people, i LOVE black people. Anyway, is it alright for me to feel like a victim, even though i haven’t been enslaved, part of my family are Jewish.” - cantthinkofname

Thanks for the feedback cantthinkofname,

But before I answer your question, I have a few of questions for you. Why would it be okay for Jewish people to feel like victims when it is the black community that is the one currently being victimized by racial prejudices? Are feelings of Jewish victimization still valid because of what happened in another country over a half century ago? What reason do people of Jewish heritage have to continue to feel like victims? Are Nazis still somehow subjecting the Jewish people to unfair treatment? Do you feel enslavement is the only prerequisite for someone being a victim? Should a woman who has been raped feel like a victim even though she has never been enslaved? Should the family of a man murdered feel like victims even though none of the family members has ever been enslaved?

When was the last time you ever heard of a Jewish teenager being clubbed to death by seven boot camp guards? When was the last time you heard of a Jewish teenage girl being punched in the face by a police officer for breaking curfew? When was the last time you heard of a seventeen year old Jewish male getting a ten year prison sentence and convicted of being a pedophile for engaging in consensual sex with a fifteen year old girl? When was the last time we saw an unarmed Jewish man shot dozens of times over for walking down a street with a bag of groceries and pulling out his wallet to identify himself? When was the last time we saw a Jewish man go to jail and had police officers ram a broken broom handle up his ass? When was the last time an American institution such as the American Medical Association admitted that they had a history of keeping Jewish individuals from becoming doctors? I think the answer is never. So why would someone of Jewish ancestry feel like a victim today?

How many black organizations have the political clout of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization whose primary concern is the interest of Israel and doesn’t even come close to having the welfare of the American people at heart? This non-American Jewish organization has a great deal of influence in the happenings of the American federal government. The Jewish community has people, programs, and organizations devoted to assuring that the Jewish state, as well as the Jewish community, flourishes and does well and has its central interest protected. It is nothing for any presidential candidate, even a black one, to announce his or her allegiance to the Jewish community and the people of Israel.

However, the black politician is careful not to appear too black for fear of appearing too sensitive to the issues that the black community faces. It is better for the black politician to appear ignorant of the conditions of the black community and tell black people to get black men to take more responsibility for the results in the black community born out of racial prejudices to keep black people’s ability to obtain education, employment, housing, and etcetera, severely limited rather than acknowledge the racial preferences that continue to hold black people at a disadvantage.

It is nothing to hear someone say that people in the black community need to pick themselves up by our individual boot straps. It is nothing to hear someone say that no one owes people in the black community anything. Black people need to learn to do for themselves. The black community will be stronger if somehow black people learn to create their individual jobs and individual educational opportunities. Black people are encouraged to separate themselves from the black community and embrace the racially generic dominant culture that is somehow overwhelmingly represented by white values. This is what we tell our own citizens.

But what politician is willing to go to the podium and tell Israel to take more responsibility for its own endeavors? What politician is willing to tell these non American citizens that we don’t owe you a god damn thing? The politicians of this country are willing to go on record and tell people half way around the world that the people of America will support you and America will protect you and will use a variety of euphemisms to express American devotion and affiliation and a sense of community while at the same time we tell our black brothers and sisters America owes you nothing. Why would anybody with Jewish ancestry feel like a victim in this environment?

To answer your question, I don’t think it is right for anybody to claim that they are a victim based solely on what happened to their ancestors or elders or anyone else. However, if the social environment that led to the subjugation of a people in the past is still practiced today, it should not be too difficult to understand that the same classification of people who were victimized in the past are the same classification being victimized today.

Despite any professions of love for anybody in the black community, some people have a tendency to think racial discrimination only comes in the form of institutionalized enslavement that may have happened a long time ago. Such overhanded and blatant racial prejudices practiced by the dominant community in the past against black people are all over now. However, now that we can rely on racial propaganda to easily explain away manifestations of blatant racism as the lack of personal responsibility in the black community, it is so much easier to tolerate racial intolerance no matter how much we may claim to love black people. We tell ourselves that the black people we love so much have never been enslaved so they can never make a valid claim to being victims of racial prejudice and make our own contribution to the perpetual state of racial disparity.

Gas Prices Are Dropping

Labor Day is just a handful of weeks away. Earlier this year, when gas was predicted to go to four dollars a gallon by Memorial Day, I made the prediction that it would easily hit four and a half by Labor Day. Predicting the future has never been my strong suit. Just yesterday I saw the price of a gallon of gas less than three dollars and forty cents. And I wonder how I could’ve been so wrong.

In the past, the price of oil would go up if there was even the slightest, unsubstantiated threat of an altercation involving an oil producing nation. I remember the price of a gallon of gas increasing a dime because there was talk of pirates harassing an oil freighter off the coast of Africa. However, in the past week or two, Russia attacked Georgia and has damaged a significantly pipeline controlled by British Petroleum. The pipeline was shut down which should have been a significant impact to an already tight oil market. And yet, the price of oil continued to plummet.

The threat of a storm in the Gulf of Mexico could send gas up significantly. Last year, a hurricane in the gulf could raise the price of gasoline at least a nickel overnight. In the past couple of weeks there have been significant storms in the gulf. Cristobal and Dolly formed in the gulf in the past month and the price of gasoline has continued to plummet.

The price of gasoline has fallen almost seventy cents in the past few weeks despite what has happened in the past few weeks. And on my way to work tomorrow, when I look at the price of gasoline as I past the station, I would not be surprised to see that it has fallen even further.

There are a number of factors that go into the price of a gallon of gasoline or the price of a barrel of oil. It is more than just the how many storms in the gulf or how many pipelines are stopped in countries at war. Even though there is a long history of these types of events impacting the price of energy commodities by sending them into the stratosphere, the bottom line is how much somebody is willing to turn the thumb screws and make astounding sums of money off of the pain of others.

The public has responded to higher energy prices by driving less, buying more fuel efficient cars, cutting back on unnecessary expenses, and paying more attention to the energy policy of the country. It has become a political issue for us to determine who is the best candidate to lead us into the future. A lot of people who claim to have our natural environment as a top priority are ready to throw that bitch to the curb when given the choice between nature and oil.

We have a choice on offshore drilling. We can better guarantee ourselves pristine beaches or we can risk a spill that can tarnish the environment for years to come. All that talk about accidents on rigs being a thing of the past is the same talk we heard when we decided to open Alaska up to oil drilling. It was virtually impossible for an oil related accident causing significant damage to Alaska’s environment. But one drunken tanker captain later and the previously unknown tanker Exxon Valdez became a household phrase. And contrary to propaganda that shows men in hazmat suits scrubbing rocks with a toothbrush and giving oil soaked birds bubble baths, Alaska has yet to recover from the damage to Prince William Sound.

If we are ready to sacrifice our coastlines to drilling why not put a nuclear reactor in everybody’s backyard. If we can take a chance on an oil spill we might as well be willing to take a chance on a Three Mile Island meltdown.

The fact that oil refineries are already operating at maximum capacity and have to be expanded or more refineries need to be built as well falls on deaf ears. The fact that it would be at least ten years before anyone would see a drop of oil is totally ignored. And whenever all that extra oil starts coming out of those offshore rigs, every drop will go on the global market and go up for bid just like every drop does so now. The only thing offshore drilling will do is make more money for the oil companies that are already making money hand over fist. I guess with all that extra dough they have available at the moment they can afford to buy all the propaganda they need to make this thing a national issue. And in typical American fashion we fall for what sounds like the easiest and most immediate solution without getting all the facts. We will simply believe what the most propaganda tells us.

The high price of oil and gasoline has actually gotten most of us thinking about conservation and saving energy and saving money. That’s a good thing. But the same conditions that have driven us to conserve and to curb our wasteful ways have also made us so irrational that we think that all we have to do is sacrifice our coast to the oil company gods and we’ll save another ten cents per gallon at the pump. In the meantime, somebody in some room somewhere will continue pulling the real strings on how much we’re going to pay for oil and gas.

With gas prices falling we will eventually forget about four dollar gasoline. We’ll think we’re getting a relative bargain when gas gets back to three and a quarter. We’ll go back to excessive energy usage and leave the alternative energy programs for the future. Just like our future tax burden where we continue our deficit spending today so our children can pay for tomorrow, we will extract every drop of oil out of the ground now so our children can figure out energy alternatives. We have a lot of faith in our children.

Energy prices are a funny thing. We don’t know why they go up and we don’t know why they go down. All we know is that we will pay whatever we are told to pay. We really don’t have much of a choice. Unless we make the choice to continue to conserve no matter how low the price goes we will continue to always fall victim to somebody somewhere pulling the strings on gas prices and making astounding profits. But then again, I could be wrong.

Brilliant Weblog Award

You like me! You really like me!

First of all, I would like to thank the many people who have come to my blog over the past year or so. There have been times when the writing has been difficult. There have been times when the comments and feedback from so many people have been horrendous. But needless to say that there have been a lot of people who have been supportive and it is for them that I like to dedicate this award to.

Did that sound officious enough?

I really do want to extend a humble word of thanks to THE ENCLAVE for nominating me for a Brilliant Weblog Award recognition. There is no greater award than to be recognized by one’s peers. Unless you want to count getting paid a ridiculous amount of money as part of an award.

THE ENCLAVE followed the format on the blog that nominated him so I will continue the program. I will identify seven facts about brotherpeacemaker.

1. I take the welfare of the black community very seriously.
2. I love conversation and talking to people although I am a bit of an introvert.
3. My favorite part of the country is the northwest. I love the mountains and the trees and the whole nature thing. I enjoyed living in Idaho even though I felt like the only black man in the state. Thank god for the internet!
4. I have moved back home to help take care of my mom.
5. I was well into my twenties before I lost my virginity. Not quite a forty year old virgin though.
6. My degree is in mathematics. But the only way I got through English classes is with the help of the old Saturday morning School House Rock cartoons. I find it quite interesting a noun’s a person place or thing.
7. Did I already say that I take the black community very seriously?

Now for the hard part. I have to make my own nominations.

1. Cancer Logic
2. IntelligentaIndigena
3. Mookie’s Mike
4. theblacksentinel
5. Why Am I Not Surprised

Thanks to everybody who’s been along for the ride!

All Is Fair In Love And Hair

For most people, there is no one they love like they love their mom. The bond between a mother and a child is truly special. I know I hold my mom in seriously high regard. As a kid, I had to compete with my brothers and sisters for my mom’s attention. But my mom had no competition for my attention. Dad and I didn’t get along very well at all. He was a too strict disciplinarian and felt that I was onerous. One day he went so far as to suggest that I was some form of subhuman. So trust me when I say that the relationship with my mom was truly unique. There isn’t much that I wouldn’t do for her.

My mom hates my hair. I’ll walk into her presence and all she can see are my locks. Without anything to prompt her, my mom will start complaining. “Why don’t you cut your hair?” I’ll look at the clock and I’ll retort with something like, “Looks like we’re ahead of schedule today!” She’ll continue undaunted, “You would look so much better if you’d cut your hair.” “I think I look pretty good now.” “But you need to set an example.” “I’m trying to set an example to black people that we don’t have to conform.” “But can’t you do it and look nice like everybody else at the same time?”

My mom is seriously old school. She’ll be eighty years old this year. She started losing her children to the Locked Side about fifteen years ago when my baby brother started locking his hair in his sophomore year in college. All of us, including me, tried to talk him out of it for the sake of his professional career. But he ended up postponing his pursuit of a professional career and dropped out of college for a while. He continued to grow his locks in more of a Rasta style, kind of puffy and naturally bleached by the sun. A few years later I started twisting my hair. And then one of my nephews started his locks. And finally another one of my brother’s started his locks.

Since then baby brother cut his locks off and became very professional. He got a degree and is doing very well in his career. His locks were thirteen years old when he cut them off. The fashion statement had worn itself out. My nephew wanted to get a retail job and thought it best to cut his hair if he wanted to expand his career opportunities.

As I write this the only other person in the family who continues to wear locks is my brother. He started growing his locks about a month before I got my last haircut. His hair could have been longer but he keeps his trimmed to a particular length. His girlfriend wears locks as well. When they first met she did the permed hair thing and all that like most black women in the corporate work environment. The woman would spend a good hour each morning trying to do her hair up in what everybody learned was proper fashion for black women. One day she started locking her hair. She was shocked to actually see how much time she was spending doing something she hated doing.

I had sacrificed my hair as part of my Yemonja initiation. After three years without a haircut my locks have grown to a pretty good length although they have yet to touch my shoulders. I try to get it touched up every two weeks. However, sometimes it’ll be as long as four weeks in between touch ups. I do my best to take care of my locks because I like for them to look good uniform and neat. But the way my mom would tell the story you’d think I was some kind of male Medusa with snake heads hissing about. And unlike my brother who only sees my mom once in a blue moon, I made the choice to put myself in front of my mom on a daily basis. Our routine has become practically a daily ritual.

I’ve tried to explain to my mom that my hair is not just a choice of fashion. For the longest time black people who do everything they can to conform to the rules of being black as defined by conservative white people will get better employment opportunities and more frequent employment opportunities if they just submit and profess their acquiescence to the dominant system. Black people should understand that they can be proud of their ethnicity and their inherent natural appearance and still earn a living as a professional. I would like other people in the black community to see that we can be black as defined by the black community and still be professionally employed.

Mom doesn’t hear me talk about black people developing a new understanding of ourselves. Yes we need liberation from the mind of the dominant culture. Just having a black man going to his job and wearing his hair in an ethnic style primarily unique to black people could give others the inspiration to step outside of the artificial boundaries that the establishment has setup around the black community. We don’t always have to be a rocket scientist or the first black astronaut to be an inspiration to others. Sometimes we could simply be the man next door who wears locks and works as a database application developer. Black people breaking walls don’t just happen on television it happens right in the neighborhood. We all can do a little something to help inspire each other in the black community.

But mom remains undaunted. She’ll say something like, but don’t we need to look presentable while we do it? Why would anybody want to wear their hair all locked up and looking like mice could be living up there? It bothers me to see you with your hair like that. If you loved me you’d cut it. I love my mother very much. I’m pretty sure my mom knows I’d do just about anything for her. For mom, I’d run right into the deepest hell of black people subjugation and back. I would do anything for love. But I won’t do that.

A Letter To Bill Kesters

“Some of the situations you described - I don’t have the stats and doubt that you do too. I’m not denying that there’s injustice and racism committed against blacks by whites. Instead of stats I’ll just give you my general impressions based on my 50+ years of observation of this world. If blacks are denied education, that’s news to me.” - Bill Kesters

I asked you for the statistics on the number of well qualified black people being rejected for jobs. What are the statistics for black people being denied education? What are the statistics for black people being incarcerated when they are innocent? What are the statistics for black people being killed by police officers? What are the statistics for black people being portrayed on television and other forms of entertainment as thugs, murderers, and thieves compared to the number of black people portrayed as respectable and responsible members of the general community? What are the numbers for black fathers who are involved in their children’s lives compared to the number who choose not to and are not prevented from being in their children’s lives because of incarceration or death? You say blacks have more rights, opportunities and freedoms than any time in our history. I would argue that our ancestors were much freer back when they lived on the plains of Africa. What statistics do you have to support your conclusion?

You are correct in your assertion that I don’t have the statistics for all of these situations I listed which is probably why I don’t make blatantly ignorant assumptions about African Americans having more opportunities now than we did before or that we are somehow freer now than we’ve ever been before. I do recognize the fact that some black people have achieved wealth and status that many people could never achieve. However, to take such a simplistic and narrow minded view that such achievements apply to the entire African American experience is to ignore the plight of many in the black community who are still dealing with the affects of racism and racial discrimination.

I have no doubt that blacks being denied opportunities for education, or employment, comes as news to you. You’ve supplied more statistics on black males not graduating from high school and therefore the high unemployment rate for black males is understandable. But why are black males not graduating from school? How does this affect black females not being able to find opportunities? Does this have anything to do with the constant image of black people being portrayed on television and other mediums as angry thugs and dropouts? Does this have anything to do with the fact that black parents are too busy trying to just make ends meet and never being able to take the time to learn to be good parents? How come white people who do not graduate from high school have fewer problems finding jobs and other opportunities?

Yes I am disappointed with the situation of black people. Yes there are large numbers of black people who are contributing to their own problem by submitting themselves and their children to the image that corporate America paints of black people. But I also know that to constantly point the finger at black people and say “you are wrong” and “you are less than” without looking at the entire picture is not the solution. High profile black people and black people who are able to achieve despite the perpetual messages from corporate America that depicts black people as everything problematic in America do not have the right to sit back and say that they found a way so other black people who don’t are lazy or are some other problem that social programming constantly labels squarely on the shoulders of black people.

The slavery that black people suffered here in the United States is unlike any form of slavery ever experienced on this planet. You talked about the slavery of Greece and Egypt. Please! It is a fact that when people were enslaved in Egypt and these other places, families stayed together. The slaves were still considered fully human and not just someone’s property or only three fifths human. The slaves in these other geographies and times often had mechanisms in place where they could earn the right to be considered full citizens. These slaves were not denied the right to an education or a living.

When slavery ended in America and white people held all the property and wealth, black people had to make due with nothing in order to survive. For generations white people did not provide the enslaved descendants with an education or much of anything else other than the minimum. And when slavery ended little effort was made to prepare the black community for competing with people in the white community for employment and educational opportunities. Black people simply had to struggle through and do their best to qualify in an environment designed to assure their failure. Our black ancestors had to somehow pay for housing and food and all of their other needs with their only possession being the rags on their back. And from this they were supposed to compete with white people for opportunities.

America has never provided the black community with the fair footing needed to compete fairly. People passed a law and said okay you’re free now go get your own jobs and your own schooling and quit looking for a handout because slavery is over. In the meantime, we tolerate police beating and killing black people for the crime of being black. We constantly see black people being depicted as criminals and depicted as less than moral on television and we don’t think these subtle messages have no influence on our children’s understanding of who they are or where they are or what they are in this social construct.

You are very correct that I don’t have the statistics to support any argument that black people are still feeling the affects of racism because that is not the concern of a society hell bent on depicting black people as everything corrupt. It is very true that people in the black community need to take more responsibility for who and where and what we are in the 21st century version of America. But black people don’t realize we are all in this together. We don’t have the luxury to say only poor black people are the problem or only ignorant or uneducated black people are the problem. We don’t even have the luxury of saying that rich black people who turn their back on the black community are the problem. As long as one of us is being left behind the entire black community is being left behind. Need proof? With only 0.0025% of us committing homicides against white people, the entire black race is depicted as killers of white people. We all need to wake up to this problem.

South Osectia, Georgia, and Russia

Frogs In Boiling Water

The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough. It is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out with the sudden realization of change in its surrounding environment. But if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, the gradual change in the environment will be too subtle for the frog to perceive and it will never jump out. However, Professor Doug Melton of Harvard University’s biology department says that if you put a frog in boiling water, it won’t jump out but will die from the trauma and if you put the frog in cold water, it will jump before it gets hot because they don’t sit still for you.

The story is generally told in a figurative context, with the upshot being that people should make themselves aware of gradual change lest we find ourselves adapting to catastrophic losses. This myth has been reprinted many times and used to illustrate many different points. One such point serves as a warning against existing in abusive relationships. We are not inclined to notice gradual changes over long periods of time. This is how some partners adapt to verbal abuse. People slowly adapt until, like the proverbial frog, they are living in an environment which is actually detrimental to their spirit.

With all the successes of the civil rights movement, the elimination of unfair laws, the creation of laws that were designed to help assure equality in education, housing, employment, and throughout our culture for black people, people in the black community began to feel that the struggle for racial equality was over. We took the woefully shortsighted belief that we had won. With these new laws on the books, no one would be so inclined to continue his or her discriminate against black people.

But the gains associated with the civil rights laws have been rescinded. Gradually, over a period of time, without ever doing much of anything to make a dent in the outrageous advantages associated with white privilege and the disadvantages associated with black subjugation, we the people of America find ourselves returning to an environment that tolerates racial discrimination. So many people are under the impression that it would be unfair to white people to do anything to correct the generations of institutionalized oppression perpetrated against black people by the dominant community with the aid of our governments at every level from the local to the national.

To do anything to help correct years of discrimination that has allowed the white community to prosper and gain wealth as well as to develop every advantage possible would be too much like reverse discrimination. The best thing for the country now is to ignore the past, keep the status quo, treat everybody equal, and pretend that white people are not favored but are automatically considered the best candidate because of some myth about superior white intelligence and black people’s lack of responsibility.

On the nightly news, we see story after story of black people alleged to have commit crimes of larceny and all the shootings in the black community and we are ready to tolerate law enforcers coming down hard on black people thinking that such heavy handedness is necessary because black crime has gotten out of hand. On the nightly news we see stories of the black community being ravaged by sexually transmitted diseases and we hear stories of black people dropping out of school or refusing to work. We hear statistics on the number of black people who live in poverty and the number of black women who bear children out of wedlock and the number of black men who father children with multiple women. We hear all of these things and we come to the conclusion that things would be better for black people if people in the black community would just step up to the plate and just fly right.

We watch our most popular black celebrities condemn other less fortunate black people for being all of the black stereotypes that we learn from watching network news and the various portrayals of black people in popular culture. Black people point the finger at each other for high profile white people feeling the need to call our black sisters nappy headed ho’s. Black people point the finger at each other for the gangsta rap phenomenon because a particular black rapper makes millions while the corporate record company he or she works for makes billions while promoting a lucrative black music stereotype.

We stand by helplessly while black characters on television like the single mother and nurse Julia portrayed by Diahann Carroll and Pete Dixon, the history teacher portrayed by Lloyd Haynes on Room 222 are transformed into today’s black celebrity staples like Everybody Hates Chris where the main character bucks and rolls his eyes in a perfect imitation of an early black minstrel player. Chris Rock’s television namesake follows a long line of black caricature notables such as James “J.J.” Evans, Junior played by Jimmy Walker, Steve Urkel played so well by Jaleel White, and Martin Lawrence who is one of the funniest buffoons of stereotypically black behavior ever to be put on television. Somehow, somewhere along the way, portrayals of the black community have become more blatant as they depict us as a community of losers and we have stood complacent. Some of us have even contributed to the problem.

Instead of black people working together to independently define our community in the type of image we want to be, our community has simply adapted to the dominant culture’s definition of what it means to be a black community. Too many highly talented black people are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder to carry out someone else’s will instead of working to help define the black community’s will.

A person can make a lot of money carrying out the agenda of richer people. To make the most money possible a person should work for the richest person available. The richest people in the land are white people. Therefore, it is only a logical conclusion that a talented black person looking to make the most money with their talent will make more money helping white people define the black experience rather than helping black people define the black experience.

This is not to say that rich white people are sitting around with nothing better to do than to focus on what makes black people black. But whenever black people are being considered for an opportunity in some area, the gatekeepers to the opportunity want to assure that the person being considered is the type of person committed to all of the employer’s objectives at the expense of just about everything else. Too often, our best and our brightest are willing to abandon any hope of black unity to appear as a rebellious independent thinker that eschews the traditional black community and raise their awareness above the point of color lines. But this is little more than a colorful way of saying that they are willing to put any affiliation of blackness behind them and carryout the will of the dominant community leaving the black community weaker and weaker.

There was a time the best black lawyers in the country worked single mindedly for the betterment of the black community. Now they work for the highest bidder. There was a time that the best black doctors in America worked purposefully for the health of the black community. Now they work for the greatest payer. There was a time that the best black teachers worked tirelessly to teach black children. Black businessmen did their best to uplift the black community. There was a time black professionals where the hope of the black community. Those days are long gone. Our talented young black professionals are no longer looking to use their talents for the improving the black community.

These days, black people sit at the bottom of the fictional boiling pot of water just like the proverbial frog. The traditional black community is a shadow of its former self because we have collectively made the choice to adapt to the gradual, incremental changes designed to protect white privilege and minimize any gains made for the pursuit of racial equality. The individual changes were relatively small and easy to adapt to. But for the majority of black people’s perspective, the end result is pretty catastrophic. The black community is just a sad shadow of its former self. Things will go well for those of us who have the talent and willingness to raise our aspirations above the color line. But for the rest of us, either the ones who do not have the resources to separate or the ones who choose to remain inseparable from the welfare of the black community, we adapt to the conditions around us not ever realizing the trouble we’re adapting to.

Trading Places

Perhaps my most favorite Eddie Murphy movie was the 1983 smash hit Trading Places with Dan Aykroyd. Everybody must’ve seen this movie at least a dozen times by now. It’s been twenty five years since its release. Mr. Murphy plays Billy Ray Valentine and Mr. Aykroyd plays Louis Winthorpe III. Mr. Valentine is a down on his luck, street hustling black man and Mr. Winthorpe is a successful manager director of Duke and Duke, a prestigious stockbrokerage firm on Wall Street.

The Duke brothers are Randolph and Mortimer, played in order by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche. The Duke brothers make a wager as to whether or not hereditary genes make a person successful or whether it was simply a matter of training and preparation. The two conspire to break Mr. Winthorpe while making Mr. Valentine a successful manager director of Duke and Duke. After Winthorpe makes a foolish scene at the firm’s Christmas Party, and after Valentine successfully transitions to a hardworking executive, the two Duke brothers meet in the executive men’s room to discuss their bet.

“Pay up, Mortimer. I’ve won the bet,” says Randolph with a smile of glee on his face.

“Here, one dollar,” says Mortimer as he handed the money over with an expression of disgust and disbelief.

“We took a perfectly useless psychopath like Valentine, and turned him into a successful executive. And during the same time, we turned an honest, hard-working man into a violently, deranged, would-be killer,” Randolph says while chuckling. It was as if he was talking about a game instead of two men’s lives.

He continued, “Now, what are we going to do about taking Winthorpe back and returning Valentine to the ghetto?”

“I don’t want Winthorpe back, after what he’s done,” said Mortimer as he took an opportunity to wash his hands and freshen up a bit.

Randolph turned to his brother with a look of concern. “You mean, keep Valentine on as managing director?”

Mortimer Duke stopped what he was doing and looked his brother straight in the eye. He said, “Do you really believe I would have a nigger run our family business, Randolph?”

“Of course not. Neither would I.”

Twenty five years ago nobody thought anything much about the scene. Everybody recognized the sentiment. From the very moment the Duke brothers new Billy Ray Valentine existed we understood that these two men didn’t care much for black people. There was the scene when the Duke brothers gave their elderly African American service butler at their executive men’s club his Christmas bonus of five dollars. Even in 1983 five dollars that was an insult.

Mr. Valentine was working hard to make money for Duke and Duke. When the Christmas Party was in full swing, Billy Ray was busy at work making sure the payroll or the bonus checks were accurate and nothing was out of line. There were a couple of scenes where Mr. Valentine even made considerable profits for the Dukes by falling back on his experience with human nature and applying it to what was happening in the market. He was more successful than the Dukes could have imagined. When Mortimer tried to encourage Billy Ray to steal Billy Ray instead did the right thing. Now that he had a good job, a good home, and everything in the world, why in the world would he do anything to screw it up? There was no need to steal. And Billy Ray thought he was set until he overheard the conversation in the bathroom between Randolph and Mortimer.

When Mortimer called Billy Ray a nigger no one had to interpret what was meant. He wasn’t simply expressing some frustration with black people. Billy Ray did nothing wrong and neither did any other black person. What Mortimer was expressing was his natural state of thinking, his racial prejudice, despite his firsthand experience with Mr. Valentine. Louis was the one that screwed up the Christmas Party. Louis was the one failed to live up to Mortimer’s expectation that white people were superior and a white man of Louis’ character would never stoop to doing something irrational. But nevertheless it’s Billy Ray that’s the nigger.

Today, now that we have so many examples of high profile white people using the word nigger in reference to black people, we know its no big deal. Black people call each other nigger, or some variation of the word, all day long so it only stands to reason that white people use it as well. We know white people would use the word as an expression of friendship and camaraderie. No white person would ever use the word as an insult to black people.

Today, people will try to blow smoke up each other’s ass and say Mortimer was calling Billy Ray a nigger out of an expression of friendship. Just like the way black people do it with each other. People will say that the conversation meant nothing because it happened behind closed doors. And the fact that they’d come out from behind closed doors planning to put Billy Ray back in the ghetto means nothing because the plan was planned behind closed doors. In fact, now that I think about it. If somebody was to try and do that same scene in a movie today it would probably come off all flat and confusing because people wouldn’t know what Mortimer would have meant by referring to the black man as a nigger. It’s just too confusing. There is such a gray line here.

A Room With A View

There is a room of twenty people, four are black and the other sixteen are white. Black people make up twenty percent of the population while white people make up eighty percent of the population in this room. Of the four black people, one of them is a criminal. That would make the black population’s criminal rate exactly twenty five percent. Of the sixteen white people, three are criminals. That would make the white criminal rate not quite nineteen percent. But because the black people have a higher rate, the majority of the people in the room, the white people, decided that the most effective way to combat the potential for crime in the room was to watch the black people since they had a higher rate of criminality.

In order to remind everyone in the room of the importance of keeping a watchful eye on crime, the people decided to put up posters and distribute reminders that the black people had a higher propensity for crime even though only one black person was in fact a criminal. The people decided that the actual number of people committing crime was irrelevant because the per capita rates could show that the black people were statistically more responsible for crime, despite the fact that when you added the number of criminals up, one black and three whites, the black population would have a one in four chance of being responsible for crime while there was a three in four chance that the crime was committed by a white person.

But the constant reminders around the room that black people have a higher per capita rates helped to ingrain into the people a natural condition of thinking that made everyone distrust black people. Whenever anything went wrong, whenever something came up missing, the first impulse was to ask the black people what happened. The fact that the white people had their own criminals among them was soon forgotten because the propaganda trained everyone to think that black people were more likely to be criminals.

The black people in the room thought it was unfair that they were the first suspects for any crime in the room. They knew that one of them was a criminal. But to assume that the black people were the ones behind the crime, or that the black person was the one who committed the crime, was not helpful to finding the real culprit. The black people tried to remind the white people that there were three criminals in their midst.

But the white people simply pointed to the propaganda that they had put up around the room. The white people simply pointed to all of the things that said black people were more likely to be criminals and that was more than enough to justify the majority of the people’s suspicion. The black people protested. The white people accused the black people of not being helpful in their effort to solve the crime problem in the room. The white people accused the black people of doing everything that they could to thwart the effort to control the proliferation of crime in the room. Soon more posters followed that black people could not be trusted.

The black people in the room began to look at the posters. The black people began to realize that in order to become part of the mainstream order they had to accept mainstream thinking. The constant propaganda was hard to resist. While the majority of the white people were quick to absorb the propaganda, to varying degrees, the black people were affected by the constant misinformation. One black person didn’t have a problem believing the propaganda and was quick to point to the other black people whenever something was amiss. Another black person developed a distrust of anything the white people had to say. The other black people would vacillate between the two. Sometimes they would stand with the white community. Sometimes they would stand with the black community. But most times they didn’t care about what was going on.

The people in the room were never able to eliminate their crime problem despite how hard they tried. If a crime was committed and there were no clues, it was always assumed that a black person was the culprit. Whenever a white person was found to be the perpetrator, that white person would be given every benefit of a doubt. They didn’t mean it. It was just a prank. It was an accident. Or whatever else could be claimed to dismiss the deed. However, if the crime simply couldn’t be downplayed, the white person paid for their indiscretion and that was the end of it.

However, whenever a black person was found to be the guilty party, a stern message had to be sent that crime by black people would not be tolerated. The laws of the room had to be upheld or else anarchy would result. And when the black person was found guilty by a jury of white peers, the white people would point to the propaganda and point to the black people as if to say that black people are everything the propaganda said all along.

The crime continued. The rates held steady with a ratio of one black person and three white people committing crime. But thanks to the propaganda many white people did not believe white people were the biggest source of the crime problem. Whenever asked, the people knew in their hearts that black people were the source of the majority of their criminal activity, despite the reality of what happened in the room. The crime rates proved it beyond a reasonable doubt, with the help of a considerable amount of propaganda.