Understandable Mistake or Shameful Shit?

So I've been following this guy Humanity Critic for a couple of weeks now. He's got some interesting stuff to say and a style to his writing that I like, appreciate, and will probably start to bite. HC is constantly Twittering and has put me on to some good links regarding Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State talk that's been going on.

Well last night I got a tweet about Busta Rhymes being a homophobe with a link in it and the link takes you to a video of Pharrell and DJ Premier talking backstage or in a Green room somewhere.

The whole setup is a little crazy because before seeing this I wouldn't have really thought that Premier and Pharrell would hang out. Premier is 42 but looks like he could be in his 50's and Pharrell's little skinny ass probably won't ever look more than about 19, so the visual is striking when you see the two of them together. Then consider that stylistically the two men are on opposite ends of the spectrum; Premier is straight old-school and Pharrell skates and listens to Steely Dan. But when you look at the variety of artists that both Premier and Pharrell have worked with and the success that they've both enjoyed, it's not that surprising that they would be kicking it.

In this video Pharrell is telling a story about Busta Rhymes. Not surprisingly, Pharrell is a pretty talented mimic and the way he relates the story is funnier than Hell. In addition to changing up his voice he also takes on the Busta's abrupt and strident body language, the extra loud tone, and the barking rhythm that makes Busta Busta. The conclusion of the story is that Busta is upset because some dude (one of the Jungle Brothers) that wanted to take a picture with him was wearing mascara.

I could go either way on this story. I'm not down with the homophobia, but tripping because some dude is wearing mascara doesn't really mean much to me. This isn't me defending Busta or going soft on homophobia. Just like accusations of racism, I like to wait until things are fairly clear cut before I level the charge of homophobia against someone. None of this is the point of this post, we're just getting to the incident that inspired this post's title in the next couple of paragraphs.

So like I said, I've been following Humanity Critic and I decided to follow up on this by leaving a comment on his blog at vibe.com. In order to comment you have to register, mildly annoying but really no big deal. They ask for your city and state, I type in Washington and in the drop-down list for states "DC" is nowhere to be found. Fuck me gently with a chain saw, I can't believe this just happened.

Now ten years ago or maybe even five, I could understand how something like this happened. But it's 2008, shit like this should have been straightened out a long time ago. It's incidents like this that have radicalized my thinking about DC statehood. When I first moved to DC getting representation in the House would have been enough to keep me happy, but now I say fuck all that! DC STATEHOOD NOW!!

As far as Vibe goes, I've always thought the magazine was kind of whack and now I have proof. Vibe.com I'm puttin' y'all on blast. This is some trifling, shameful shit. I find this diss of DC especially disturbing from an African-American oriented publication and website.

Who the hell is running your site that they didn't notice that you have ZERO users from D-Chocolate City-C? Maybe you just don't care that you don't have any users from DC, it's not like there are any black people there or anything.

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Prop 8 and the Nonsense it Has Wrought

I don't usually make a point of staying up on what's going on in California politics, but this Prop 8 thing is worth paying attention to. As a Black man who isn't down with homophobia, the backlash towards African-Americans because California voters came down on the side of bigotry and intolerance is troubling and starting to piss me the fuck off. Dan Savage, the homophobe's bogeyman, a dude who always struck me as being pretty level-headed and pragmatic is now foaming at the mouth like a loon blaming Black people for the Prop 8 debacle.

A quick spin around the interwebs shows that plenty of brothers and sisters, gay and straight, are upset and speaking out against this latest bit of bullshit in Cali. This hasn't been enough to prevent people who are, quite rightfully, upset about the vote on Prop 8 from calling Black people niggers. I'm annoyed that despite the progress we seem to be making as a society, when some shit goes wrong the first thing that many people want to do is try to blame Black people.

Even so, I refuse to respond to the hate and stupidity being shown by some with more hate and stupidity. I'm feeling optimistic and strong these days and I feel compelled to use that optimism and strength in a positive way, so I say this to all of my gay brothers and sisters (Black, White, Yellow, Brown, and any other color there may be out there): I'm still here with you. Call me a nigger all you want to, I don't give a fuck, it's just a word; a word that is powerless unless I give it power and I refuse to do that any more. You're pissed and rightfully so, you see the great promise of this country coming closer to reality but at the same time you see yourselves continuing to be marginalized and discriminated against. It's fucked up and wrong, but we've got work to do and fighting with each other over who is to blame doesn't help anyone.

I'm sure someday Ta-Nehisi is going to say something that I disagree with, maybe he already has and I missed it, but for now I remain unabashedly on his tip. He sums up my feelings on this senseless conflict perfectly.

Today is the first day I haven't hit my goal of 500 words for the day since I made a new commitment to this blog and to myself. I'm not gonna trip about it, if I wanted to come up with 60 more words to type I know that I could but that seems kind of stupid.

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