Black in America and other thoughts

Some thoughts while this conference call zaps my brain.

So last week CNN ran their "Black in America" special, and the general under current of feedback I got back from my black friends was primarily negative. With people saying that they felt the shows were too negative, and/or they didn't say anything black folks didn't already know or say behind closed doors. However when speaking with my non black friends, it seemed to come across as an informative, shocking, and disturbing piece of news.

To which got me thinking, first of all, black folks were not the target audience for that show, as a black in America, why would one be led to think that 5-6 hours worth of a CNN special would teach you anything that an entire life's worth of lessons would not. Secondly, we as a people have not done a well enough job of conveying our relevance as an entity to mainstream America. We still come across as a group of people hell bent on killing each other, and complaining about our lack of opportunities. In no way am I trying to negate that at times we are, or have been given less than equal playing ground. However, we have struggled out of the gates, and are now still by and large, seen as "them" and not quite "us" in regards to American culture. We have yet to embrace the fact that we are Americans, we too deserve to be taken seriously and until we take ourselves seriously then who else will. We too are America, this is black in america.

This, and this, and this and this, are black in america. There is no shame of being Black in America, and we should not have to pander to the lowest denomination or belittle ourselves with jokes of bad credit, and fathering a million kids, or being able to dance, and jive all the time. We should boast, that we too are America, and heck, I say that as someone proud of my heritage, if you are reading this and are not black, you get your happy hips around some knowledge and learn about your people too. America is a melting pot, and should be treated as such, everyone here came on a boat, and if you didn't, we killed you when we got here, and shipped you to a reservation in South Dakota.

Speaking of which, are you aware that Native Americans have one of the highest alcoholic rates in the country, and are 5 times more likely to die from a booze related incident than other races. How else would you cope with being a people based on sharing, and using the earth who are run off by greedy who have spent the last 500 years pillaging what you so deeply cherished. Bottoms up.

So to those of us, who were not impressed with the CNN special, remember, it wasn't for you. For those that were, good, now go text your black friend and tell him hello (if I get any hello texts I'll be heated...not cause I got it, because my white friends better have at least two of me by now) on that note, I'm gonna go google myself...

...okay just googled myself and nothing. However there is a new search engine that just debuted today, called www.cuil.com pronounced "cool" its actually made by former google staffers, and I searched myself on it and found some stuff. Google you have been dethroned. I'm a simple man, appeal to my vanities and you got me

black power...that was for you babe