Tag Archives: black community

The Biggest and Baddest On-Going Battles In The Black Community

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Somebody's got to die!

Worse than the Hatfields and the McCoys, bloodier than the Barksdales vs the Stanfield crew battle, and possibly even stupider than the Montague vs Capulet feud, the on-going acrimony between natural haired sistas and, um, unnatural haired sistas has officially reached it’s boiling point. Lives will be lost. Livestock will be raped. And, according to Demetria Lucas, discounts will be had.

From “Does Natural Hair Get You Ahead?”

Over the weekend, I read a story about a club promoter in Atlanta who was offering discounts to women with natural hair.

According to The Grio, the promoter expressed his “utter disdain” for weaves and love for natural hair on his blog, which includes a section where readers can find natural hair blogs and products.

“Now he’s putting his money where his mouth is,” TheGrio.com reports. “By giving $10 off tickets to his Atlanta Classic Post-Game Affair on the 24th of [September] and $5-$10 discounts to his FAMU Homecoming event [this past Friday]. Discounts [were] available to women with natural hair, and they[used] the code ‘natural’ when buying tickets.”

Now, I don’t plan on writing a comprehensive post breaking down all of the issues between black women with natural hair and black women with perms. Why? Well, I just don’t feel like writing the 200,000 or words that would be necessary to do that. But, I will say that this battle is just one of the more prominent of the many wars going on within our community today — decades-long points of contention that have the power to split families, end marriages, and, in some extreme cases, bleach skin.

Here’s a few more.

Lightskinned vs Darkskinned

The granddaddy of them all, you can argue that everything on this list stems from this historically heavy topic. You can also argue that since he was the only person in recorded history to successfully man up and fight on both sides, Michael Jackson needs a f*cking holiday.

HBCU vs PWI

A battle that’ll be even more contentious in the next couple of weeks, as hundreds of universities around the country will hold their homecomings, giving HBCU alums their yearly opportunity to be condescending f*cks and annoy the ever living sh*t out of everyone around them. Btw, HBCU brethren, you can continue to try, but you’re just not going to ever succeed at making me feel bad that I didn’t do undergrad at Cheney or Prairie View A&M. I appreciate the effort, though.

Northern vs Southern Blacks

A battle which basically comes down to the fact that northern blacks assume southerners are stupid, and southern blacks assume northerners are stupid for preferring Range Rovers over Impalas.

Uber-Christian Blacks vs Everyone Else

In the most lopsided battle yet, uber-Christian blacks are kicking the asses of the secular blacks so badly that many of the uber-Christian black leaders (Eddie Long, Donnie McClurkin, etc) have switched teams to make things more even.

Anyway, people of VSB.com: Will any of these battles ever end? Also, can you think of any other battles that should have made the cut?

Lastly (and most importantly), which of these wars would you spend $59.95 to watch on PPV?

—The Champ

***If you get a minute, check out “Does He Love Me” — The Champ’s latest at Madame Noire***

Who’s To Blame?

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***If you haven’t already, check out “10 Things You Probably Don’t Need to Know About Black Porn (…but I’m going to tell you anyway)” — The Champ’s latest at The GoodMenProject***

Unhealthy romantic relationships and their fallout are the bane of the black community’s existence. Every major issue plaguing us — poverty, crime, dropout rates, Tami Roman’s weave, etc — is either a peripheral or straight up direct effect of our collective inability to choose the right partner and be the right partner.

And, while there are myriad factors contributing to this, today, in 2011, most of the blame lies with us. But, in what’s quite possibility the longest, weirdest, dumbest, and more important “chicken/egg” game ever played, we can’t quite figure out if women should shoulder the majority of the blame for continually choosing shitty partners to mate with, or if men are mainly to blame for f*cking women over and not giving them many options.

In order to finally find some solutions, I invited the two smartest black people in the world — twins Jack and Jill Jenkins of Youngstown, Ohio — to VSB today to debate both the male and female perspectives. Hopefully we’ll finally be able to decide on an answer after hearing their arguments.

Jack: Even though most of y’all broads don’t deserve it, I still believe in chivalry. Because of this, I’ll let Jill make her argument first.

Jill: Ha! Let me? Negro, half of y’all can’t even buy a car without getting a cosign from a dick-drunk white girl. The only thing you’ll “let” me do is whip your ass in this debate.

Jack: One question: When you go to bed at night surrounded by your 27 cats, do you give each of them an individual good night hug or do you just hug them collectively?

Jill: Anyway…look. I and the rest of the African-American female populace are tired of being blamed for all ailing the black community. We’re fed up with being depicted as bitter and antagonistic welfare-dependent Bust-it Babies who contribute nothing to American culture other than Tyra Banks and the five future demons from hell who made their way out of our vaginas and are going to rob you and rape your pets in 10 years.

And, most importantly, I’m absolutely sick at the fact that some of y’all hypocrite analog-ass n*ggas have the audacity to blame us for getting played and occasionally left barefoot and pregnant by you. I admit that we need to make better dating and relationship decisions, but right now, you can’t fault us for not seeing the rare glass of water in the middle of the thousands of cups of bleach and beaver shit we’re forced to drink from.

Jack: Shhhh. You hear that noise?

Jill: What noise?

Jack: That’s the sound of the world’s smallest violin, playing a tune for the black woman’s woes. If you listen closely it actually sounds like it’s playing “Up Jumps The Boogie” by Timbaland and Magoo.

Listen, spare me with your sob story about being blamed for everything. Black males are still the one’s getting killed at record rates, we’re still dying of hypertension when we’re 37, we’re still having entire political campaigns playing on everyone’s fear of us, and we’re still being made to look like hyper-violent 4 year old superthugs. In the bi-annual Oppression Olympics — held yearly in Oprah’s backyard, er, Gayle King’s mansion — we’ve received each gold medal in every event.

But, I’m not here to talk about that. What I do want to discuss is why we get blamed for the shitty dating decisions that you all continue to make. Yes, it’s true that many women in the hood are left barefoot and pregnant by dudes, never to be heard from again. But, what’s also true is the fact that it’s usually the exact same dude knocking up the entire hood! Raheem, Raymond, Rakeem, Rakim, and Rashawn don’t each have multiple babies. No, Raheem has like 18 by himself; going door to door like a Jevohah’s Witness, leaving semen deposits instead of copies of Awake! Yes, it’s true that professional black women may have trouble finding and keeping men. But, what’s also true is that the same 573 chicks are usually each fighting over and f*cking the same seven guys.

Jill: Oh, here we go again with the “the community is f*cked up because all of us dumb black broads want the same men” argument. Seriously, this theory has weaker legs than Stephen Hawking. What you and your brethren fail to realize is that black male relationship dysfunction comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms. Many of the men claiming to be “good guys” are just wolves in disguise; guys who aren’t able to live the “player” lifestyle they want and haven’t been able to bag the video vixen they so desire, so they end up tricking us into dating them and liking them before they show their true colors.

Sh*t, you don’t think we all want to meet a nice man? You don’t think we want to be able to trust someone? You don’t think we want someone to love us back? Someone who’ll commit? Someone who we know will at least attempt to hang around if I end up pregnant?

Jack: Actually, I don’t think you want those things at all. I think you know how to say that you want them. I think that you know that you’re supposed to want them. But, your actions don’t follow your words. If you truly wanted all those things they’d be at the top of the list when you’re thinking of desirable qualities that a mate should have.

Instead, you end up being led by your stupid-ass p*ssy, and instead of meeting men who you know already have those traits, you end up falling for some loser, hoping that he’ll eventually have them too. And, as long as there is no incentive to be “good” — and by “incentive” I mean “p*ssy” —  you’re going to see more and more men go the dog route.

Jill: That’s exactly what I’m talking about!!! Why does it always come back to us? Why are we the ones who always have to be the social arbiters, the one’s responsible for whether everyone makes the right decision? I thought men were supposed to be the Alphas dogs, the leaders! Why can’t you police your own damn selves and just do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing for once, motherf*cker?

Jack: Get the hell off your moral high horse. People (all people, men and women) are going to do what’s expected of them and what they’re allowed to do. The only difference between you and us is the fact that you’re policed by your uterus. If you subtracted the possibility of pregnancy, y’all would be “unpoliced” just like we are. You think it’s coincidence that our families started to go in the shitter at the exact same time y’all became “sexually liberated” and started popping birth control pills like they were Tic Tacs? Male behavior has always been the same. The only difference now is that it became cool for you all to be hoes.

Jill: I see someone has recently graduated from the Michelle Bachmann school of Misremembering Facts. “Our families started to go in the shitter” when you all decided to go all Dirk Diggler on us in the 70′s; staying home all day and sleeping in different beds every night. Also, do you realize that you’re trying to convince me that a man’s truest instinct is to run away from responsibilities they created? You do realize that, right? You’re basically trying to get me to believe that an unpoliced black man will do something that no other animal in the entire f*cking kingdom does? Do you really want to “win” that argument and convince me that even roaches have more of a moral foundation that black men?

You know what? Nevermind that. Seriously, though, Jack. No one is asking you all to be saints. Just be as decent to us as we’ve tried to be to you. Just make a gotdamn f*cking effort. Is that too much to ask?

Jack: Do you really want me to answer that question?

Jill: No, I don’t. I don’t believe a word of anything you say anymore, so your answer would pointless.

Jack: That’s a shame.

Jill: I know.

—The Champ

***FOR THE DMV VSBers: Come join Panama Jackson this Saturday, August 6, 2011, from 10pm-3am at Liv Nightclub for Reminisce, a party dedicated to the the 90s brought to you by Shine On M Productions x Just Cause x Very Smart Brothas. With music provided by Sup Qool DJ Quartermaine, it’s going to be a throwback to the days when most of us were in college and living the good life. All 90s hip-hop/r&b/dancehall all night long. And most importantly (and best of all) its FREE until midnight ($5 cover after) OPEN BAR on rail liquor from 10-11pm and NO DRESS CODE. Come out and party like you used to do to the music you still listen to and take a shot with Panama Jackson.***

The People Vs. Conversate

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I get the feeling that one of these ninjas conversates and the other one converses.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why some Black folks HATE the word “conversate” so much. In the reading ninja commrunity, hearing a Black person say “conversate” is akin to a white person using the word n-word. All of a sudden the sky opens up and the spirits of dead slaves pour down their disappointments and blackberry molasses upon the souls of Black folks. You know somethings will never change.

But really, what’s the big damn deal? I get it. It’s not a real word. (Sidenote: According to Dictionary.com, it is commonly recognized as a word nowadays, who knew?) But we make up words all of the time. Look —-> trill.

I know for a motherlovin’ fact that a huge segment of the reading populace was runnin’ around talking about how “trill” things were. I know I was. There was even a southern d-boy argument about who came up with the term. That’s how serious it was. Granted it’s a slang term and perhaps that’s where the argument breaks down. Perhaps the big problem is the assumption that people using the word “conversate” don’t actually know any better. These ignant ninjas really are ignorant. There’s no joke. No punchline. They’re allegedly using it because they don’t know that it’s “converse”. But are they really? Put a pin in that, we’ll come back to it later.

Now, I could chalk that up to syntax and English snobbery. Hell, Twitter has proven that even the smartest of ninjas really have no idea how to spell common words and phrases they’ve been using for eons. This commonly riles people up, understandbly, I suppose. For example:

For all intensive purposes. I can’t tell you how many people I know with degrees show up on Twitter or Facebook and write that statement and effectively admit that they have no effin’ clue what it is that they’ve been really saying despite knowing how to use it.

Back to “trill” for a second and this idea of not knowing any better. While the reading ninja in me loves made up words, I also know when to use them. I won’t be sitting in a meeting with my boss and point out how “trill” a certain estimate of something is. It won’t happen. And I think we can safely assume that most reading ninjas won’t. But, again assuming, that the people who use “conversate” don’t know any better, maybe the fear is that they WOULD use that word, on purpose, in a setting where they’d make us all look bad. Is that it?

Understandably, somebody who uses conversate might likely use that word in any setting or circumstance, regardless of who’s present. Whereas I, again, know better. Here’s another monkey wrench – does it carry more weight if a white person says it? I’m asking because I get the impression that this isnt’ a Black thing, it’s a “conversate” thing. It’s a tricky English language thing. I can imagine a foreigner mistakingly thinking that two people have a “conversation”, but one person might “conversate” with another. Would anybody be upset if that happened?

To make that even more f*cked up, you go from “orientation” to “orientate”. Tell me that ain’t confrusing, Young Buck.

Let’s be real, English is one of the hardest languages to learn because of how many other languages we’ve pulled from. Not to mention the myriad homonyms, synonyms, etc. Hell, I can barely make it through some of the books like Souls of Black Folks because of the language use and I’m a motherf*cking honeybadger. We’re all aware of people who are extremely learned who don’t have a full grasp of the English language and all its nuance. And it’s not SUCH a huge leap to think that “conversate” is a real word. I mean, my ni**a, Converse iz and are shoes.

Hell, quick, quick…somebody define, without looking up: gerund.

But “conversate” is like nails on a chalkboard for many a ninja. It’s almost like the delineating point between ignant ninjadom and breaking out of the hood or something. In an odd twist of irony, I think I’ve jokingly heard “conversate” so much that I’ve had to check myself before to make sure that it wasn’t actually the right way to say “talk to a ni**a”.

Actually, that might be the legal definition of “conversate”.

Here’s another issue, I think “conversate” actually sounds better than “converse”. Unlike “irregardless” which clearly sounds horrible and is a double negative. But that all comes down to personal preference I suppose. And seeing as my ignorance is sophisticated, for all intensive purposes, I only use “conversate” in the midst of a powwow with somebody who eats #flamingyoung. Or who can at least appreciate what just happened there.

If you have no idea what #flamingyoung is, then you also have no idea what #theplate is and need to spend more time dealing with Black people who deal with other Black people who spend inordinate amounts of time on Twitter.

So VSBNation, I ask you, what’s the big damn deal with the hatred for the term “conversate”? And why do we seem to conflate it to mean so much more than it actually is?

Conversate with P.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka MR. YOU’D LET ME TEACH YOUR KIDS AND I’D TEACH THEM CONVERSATE aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3

Landmark Moments In The Black Community – The B-Sides

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We black, we know it. We dancing. It's our birthday. Booty butt cheeks. Booty butt cheeks.

This has been a good week for Black people. Really, it’s been a good week for those of common sense but I figured I’d just skip the niceties and go right to where I care the most, my kahmrunitee. Tyrese. Obama’s (military) accomplishment and ensuing speech will be remembered long time like a favor from an Asian chick who works at Happy Endings Got Me Working Day and Nite Spa. While it’s not nearly on the same plateau as Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, or the assassination of Malcolm X – and Martin for that matter – as landmark events in the Black community go, for current day ninjas, it’s our moment. They’re the kind of moments you will remember forever. Even if you weren’t even alive for them. They resonate.

You know, like the OJ Simpson verdict.

From Brown vs. Board of Ed to Alice Walker’s The Color Purple to Michael Jackson taking that final Moonwalk towards the sky, the Black community has a lot of moments that are and will be commemorated for eons to come. Little martian children will read about great accomplishments and beam…possibly up Scotty, but a beam is a beam.

But you know, there are also some events that are AS significant (okay not really) that don’t get nearly as much attention. You know how on old vinyl records, there was always a B-side record? It wasn’t as good as the hit on the A-side, but intended to get some attention and pull for the artist as well. We here in the Black community have a lot of B-side moments. Such as?

Glad you asked.

1) The death of Ricky

I don’t care how old you are, you know that Ricky’s dead. In fact, any time I see a Black man running, I’m compelled to yell out RIIIIIIIICKY!!!!! with the force of three titans and two foster children named Shane. Boyz N The Hood was our first real look at South Central from a place we could care about, unlike Colors. We cared and when Ricky got shot, we cried. I remember seeing it as 12 year old and begging my uncle to never take me to South Central. Why? I didn’t want to get shot like Ricky. ZIG ZAG RICKY!!!! DON’T RUN STRAIGHT!!!!

Speaking of deaths…not quite on par but close enough….

2) The death of Stringer Bell

I promise you that I heard screams in my apartment building when Stringer got shot. Despite him being the one character I was ROOTING for to get murked, something about Stringer resonated to all of us. Every woman wanted him and every man wanted to be him. Again, DESPITE the fact that he might have been the most shady, ruthless, f*cked up character on the show. And if that was a spoiler, then let me add this too…

2a) Bodie getting bodied on the corner

Probably didn’t hurt as much but dammit if it wasn’t hard to see the one dude you really liked just as a straight up soldier catch a bad one.

3) Nipplegate

It’s the point where we realized that it really was us against them. Justin sold out Janet and never looked back. Her career never really recovered and she was forced at gunpoint to do Tyler Perry movies. She participated in one of the most retarded scenes in cinematic history…oh and that scene would be the ENTIRE film Why Did I Get Married Too. Justin went about his business to make more millions and just be white. All over a nipple. Who hasn’t seen one of those. I’m looking at one right now. Damn shame.

4) Halle Berry bares her boobs in Swordfish

Just a personal landmark for me. Nothing more, nothing less. The guys I was with? We all stood up to clap. Nobody cared though, that movie sucked donkey nuts.

5) Tupac/Biggie/rapper deaths

I’ll bet more ninjas know the birth and death dates of Tupac and Biggie than King or Malcolm X. Young and old.

6) The Game Season 4 premiere

Apparently it was the most highly watched cable program after the summer solstice but before the winter solstice on a Tuesday in November both before and after 8pm while going up on the downstroke. Or something. Point is, more of you ninjas watched the Game season premiere than would show up to a rally on education inequality. That says something. What? I don’t know. I was watching it too.

7) Whitney Houston tells us that “crack is wack”

Just like everybody else, I watched that interview and saw Bobby sweating like he stole something. Then Whitney hits us with the quote that will live longer than she will, “crack is wack”. She also asked for a receipt for all the drugs she’d done which subsequently showed up online a few days later. Notably, nobody believed her.

8) Some guy gives Tyler Perry a check to put on a stage play

Somewhere in Atlanta, a homeless Tyler Perry finishes up a manuscript for a terribly predictable and horribly written stage play starring him as a woman. He added some gospel, some really long songs, and a cast of other ninjas nobody’s heard about, and convinced somebody to give him the money for that first show. The rest as they say, is showbiz history. Nobody can pinpoint the moment where it all went left, but it happened. Spike Lee’s guitar gently weeps. Or it would if he could figure out how to come up with a decent ending for a movie. Spike has worse endings than 15 year old virgins.

9) We find out the DC Snipers are Black

Sad, sad day for stereotypes everywhere. Except them ninjas got caught sleeping. Literally. Just like Black folks.

10) Kanye West says that Bush doesn’t care about Black people

As unpoignantly poignant as his statement was, it somehow fit exactly what the entire Black community felt. This is also the point where people started believing that Kanye read books and/or was somebody to talk politics with. Boy were those people wrong. Point is, Kanye did Kanye things, and we’ll never forget. Like the Alamo.

That’s ten. What else you got? What are some sort of glossed over landmark moments in the Black community?

Shake something.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka MR. LOOKING AT THEM GIRLS WITH THE DAISY DUKES ON aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3

Represent, Represent: Carol’s Daughter

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This is NOT our best picture day.

When Champ sent me the link to Clutch Magazine’s article entitled Carol’s Daughter Inks Major Promo Deal with Cassie, Solange Knowles and Selita Ebanks, I actually laughed for a solid five minutes. Not at the article, but I began predicting the responses that would most certainly exist in the comments section.

But let’s start at the top with this. I don’t know much about Carol’s Daughter products. There’s a store here in Washington, DC (well Arlington, VA) , in Pentagon City Mall that seems earth-toned out and I’m pretty sure people that work there are required to wear linen. A lot of linen. What else do I know? I know Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and Jay-Z (and Beyoncé too?) are either co-owners or bought into the company. Kind of like they did with the Fela Kuti Broadway show in NYC. I know that many Black women love Carol’s Daughter products because they are apparently making products for us (with us being women…of which I’m not one, but you get my point. Pencil).

Now here’s my perception of Carol’s Daughter. I view it as a company that intended to cater to the Black women as a whole, and one that our sisters could support, laud and appreciate. Basically, I view(ed) it as a company that would be more likely to create products that support the whole Black woman experience, from natural to permed to whatever else Black women do with their hair. This is my perception.

Which is why I laughed so hard when I saw Cassie (looking like she ate something REALLY sour before this photoshoot), Solange looking her worst almost ever, and Selita Ebanks aka The Bird Arse Bird from the Runaway short film. The one company that you would think would buck the trend of doing what everybody expects (hiring light skint ninjas for their promo materials for a company that’s focus is African-Americans) is just like everybody else (read: white companies). Which is sad in a way, and kind of humorous in the sense that, wow, even when we run the show, we STILL do what white people do.

I remember a long time ago I wrote a post about the show Kevin Hill (starring everybody’s favorite Taye Diggs…too lazy to find it now liz linked it here for me) and the complaints that all of the women he dated on the show were lightskint. My argument then was that, well, at least they’re Black. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Instead of complaining about which Black women didn’t get the call, we should be glad that any Black women are getting the call period to be on television in a positive role. But you know what? That was a white company controlling the factors of production and calling the shots. Their house, their rules.

Carol’s Daughter is a Black owned company (as far as I know) and could take the opportunity to hire some women who are more representative en masse of the Black women in our community. And that’s not to say they shouldn’t hire any light skinned women. That would be just as idiotic as the current campaign, but there are definitely women of a darker hue in a somewhat public limelight who I’m sure would be interested in representing and/using the product line. Now it’s possible they reached out to a lot of women who turned them down. Let’s be real, Cassie, Solange, and Selita Ebanks aren’t exactly the A-list of Black community women. If it wasn’t for this article, I would have forgotten that all three of them existed seeing as I rarely visit any gossip sites and haven’t watched Runaway since it debuted. So maybe they reached out to Kelly Rowland (not likely if Beyonce is involved) or Gabrielle Union (not likely since she works for Cover Girl or something) or pick your brownskinned beauty. Maybe they got shot down.

Maybe their budget was too small to get a bigger name. I don’t know. But I do find it odd.

Now, of course, Black women in the few comments I did read went off and swore off the products, etc. Which is a bit premature if you ask me. Who knows what the future holds for the company and its ad campaigns. Also admittedly, I didn’t really read the comments, moreso skimmed, but the truth is, if we were to stop supporting companies that didn’t represent us fully in their ad campaigns, we’d be naked and eating juices and berries. Hell, some companies go so far as to make mockeries of us “cough*McDonalds*cough*. But we keep going there. So we’re going to stop supporting an actual Black owned company because of the choices another Black woman made?

Again, I had to step back and realize, their house, their rules. Could she have hired India.Arie? Yes. Did she? Nope. She still makes a product a lot of us can use and benefit from, right?

I don’t know that this will cause any real ripple effect or actual loss of support or sales. And really, I think it won’t. It’s pretty much a non-starter, but it does bring up a larger point about Black social responsibility.

If you have the ability to control the images put out of Black people, do you have a responsibility to the community to make it as fully reflective of the entire community as possible? What is the Black responsibility? Does it even exist? Does Lisa Price owe it to Black women to have a fuller representation of her products consumers in her ad campaigns?

Talk to me.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka PLYMOUTH RICO aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3