Tag Archives: black people

Girl, Forget a Sponsor, Date A Handyman! He Got Talent!

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These dollars can be yours if you cook and listen, honey.

One of my homeboys has a specific mantra when it comes to doling out relationship advice. Like to hear it? Here it goes:

Men should only pursue dimes; women should settle.

While I realize how ridiculous that sounds on paper, the fact is, that’s what 99 percent of all relationship books and funny looking talking heads are really saying beneath the 12-button suits, toothy grins and “I Know Obama” buttons. They tell women to keep their standards high…within reason. But you’d never tell a man that. And why should you? There’s no man “shortage”. There’s really no reason any man should be settling for anything less than what he wants. For every beautiful woman he comes across, there are at least five more equally beautiful women with as much, if not more, to offer.

Women are told to take men at face value and realize that a man is going to be a man and he’s going to keep you safe and blow your back out and make you feel like a whoa-man. And women pretty much should accept it. All the convos about men usually center around him being ready to commit and the process it takes him to get there. That’s a mighty disconnect. It states that women are ready to get married from birth and need to realize that men aren’t and should just support and accept a man as he is and love him for what he does bring to the table, not judge him for what he doesn’t. Between the justice system, the state of Arizona, and Black pride, Black men have it tough enough out here without having to prove to their women that they are worthy of time.

Th “media” has been on this like white on rice. Forget Teairra Mari and her “Sponsor” talk…she isn’t going to sell any records anyway. She needs to forget trying to find a man who takes care of her and find a man who will love her and listen to her talk about her hard days work of bringing home the bacon. At least that’s what CNN’s latest foray into the Black woman melodrama, “I Can’t Find A Man, Where Dey Be Hidin’ At Tyler Perry?” is telling them.

There is a saying that love conquers all, and for Watts that means Laurent Sagna’s salary and job status are inconsequential. She said she adores her 39-year-old blue-collar partner — who only completed high school — for the way he listens, for his affectionate hugs and musical talents. Watts ignored her mother’s concerns about his “financial prospects” when they married a few years ago.

“I’ve met and dated plenty of people with Ph.D.s, and it doesn’t mean they are smarter,” said Watts, who lives in North Carolina. “He might not have the degree, but he’s got a lot of talent.”

He’s got a lot of talent.

Guffaw.

Forgive my guffawedness, but that sounds like some rationalization to me. Besides, what the f*ck is talent anyway? Does he whittle? Is he a great whistler? Does that really make up for the $70,000 income gap. For the record, I think you should marry whoever the f*ck you want. If they’re broke and you love them. Great. If you admire, respect, and appreciate them, great. Do you. But don’t run no bullsh*t about talent to make yourself feel better. We all understand anyway. Us menfolks aren’t graduating from college or getting the good jobs and the ones that are have already hit it and quit it.

Real talk.

 I wonder what kind of self-realization all the women in the CNN article had to come to in order to accept being the breadwinner in their households? And was it a power struggle because society tells us that men are the ones who make the money and support the house.

However, this article lets us know that, even if you can’t support the house, brotha…you can ALWAYS find a woman who will. So why settle for anything less. Even broke and uneducated brothas can hit the jackpot. Men should only date dimes; women should settle.

Ouch.

I bring it to you, good folks of VSB. Ladies, do you care if you make more money and have THAT much more education than your man? Or do you only care if he cares? And fellas (yeah!), could you live with being the one who doesn’t bring home the bacon (or turkey bacon for the non-pork eaters in the room) and had you by about three degrees?

How low could you go?

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3

Wipe Your Feet On The Rug: Things That Are Just Disrespectful

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While it’s common knowledge in the hood that disrespect will get you killed, us bougie ninjas don’t always get those memos. Somehow, upon reaching a certain degree’d status in life, many of the rules of common decency go out the window faster than Ron Browz channeling Donny Hathaway.

Ouch. No pun intended.

While privelege and education have a way of turning anybody into a total douche, the flagrance that occurs in places of common frequent is disturbing. I’ve seen more straight up disrespectful behavior inside people’s homes for house parties and visits. Look, there is just some sh*t you do not do inside other people’s homes. There just is…or isn’t. Whatever it is, just don’t do it. It ain’t Nike. It’s the opposite of Nike. Disrespectful behavior is Asics. Or Sauconys – a shoe that somehow had a small resurgence in like 1998 for no good reason other than that they were cheap. Like 2 dollar hoes.

Confused yet?

Good.

Back to disrespectful behavior and sh*t you just shouldn’t do when going inside somebody else’s home:

(By the way, this entry was inspired by Toya’s brother Walter on Tiny & Toya: We Got a Show and We Still Don’t Know Why)

1. Not speak to the owners of said house

If you walk in you speak to the owner. You do not wait until they speak to you. It’s just like AIM/Gchat decorum. If you log in,  you speak first. It’s like you came into their house. It’s just disrespectful to not speak to somebody up in their house…or even acknowledge that you’re in their house. Walter, I’m looking at you. Or I would except you kind of scare me. Like, if I saw you in the street, I’d cross the street. I think it’s the teeth.

2. Not wipe your feet on the rug on the way in

To quote the great Big Gipp from the soothsayers Goodie Mob: “…that’s disrespect like coming in my house and not wiping yo’ feet on the rug…” You know why? Because maybe, you’re going to be the one who saves me. After all, you’re my wonderwall.

3. F*ck up the bathroom…and then trying to sneak back to the party…

…and then be an active participant in the “who f*cked up the bathroom?” quagmire. It’s just rude. I realize that a broken toilet on your squat is embarrasing and feels much like a breached contract. It’s simple. Use toilet. Flush toilet. Contract complete. So when there are problems it’s a quite vulnerable spot to be in. But (pun), you still did it. Fess up. Plus, when you’re gone for 25 minutes, everybody KNOWS you lit it up. Just light a match and pass the dutchie on the left hand side.

4. Bonin’ in the owners bed

I think lovin’ in anybody else’s bed is just nasty.  Unless you’re in high school when it just seems exciting. At some point, you’re supposed to respect the 1000-thread count Polo Egyptian cotton sheets and just get it in on the floor if you absolutely MUST get it in. Plus, grown folks have expensive ass comforters and it isn’t like you’re carrying around a Tide stain remover pen or anything. And even if you do…ewwwwwwwww!

5. Smoking

All respectful people know that you smoke OUTSIDE. Only a true douche would roll it up, light it up, smoke it up, inhale AND exhale indoors in somebody else’s house. You got to be on some Grade-A douchery to do such a thing. Stop it.

BONUS:

6. Having suspect ass “dating experts” tell suspect ass single women why they can’t get a man

Steve Harvey, Hill Harper, and Jimi Izreal? Really? Sherri “my hips are too gone to box with God” and Jacque “How’d I End Up On this Panel” Reed? Overmarried, undermarried and overmarried?  Oversingle and Ovaries on fire? Really Nightline? You gonna tell Black women they can’t find a man by having a bad comic, a gay dude, and a dude who’s shirt hates women chop it up with two women who can’t find a man for good reasons? That right there, ninja? That sh*t right there?

Is just disrespectful.

Anyway, those are just a few of the disrespectful things you can do in somebody else’s home. I know quite a few of you are some disrespectful mofos. Share the knowledge and pass the wealth. Or something.

F*ck it, pass the peas like they used to say.

Panama has spoken. You are better today.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3

Fear of Flying.

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Being as it’s Black history month and seeing as how most of us probably forget that fact that half the time once we graduate from high school, I figured that perhaps I should devote a little time to “Black issues”.

What are “Black issues”? Good question. But they sure as hell aren’t Jet Magazine.

Rimshot.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently – both because of the FAMU forum and because I try to spend at least twelve minutes of everyday on substantial thought – trying to determine what I think some of our biggest “problems” are. Now, this presupposes that we have problems but I’m fairly sure that we can all agree that as a community, we have a long way to go, Obama or not.

Can I get an Amen?

Yay-men.

I’m not afraid of failure. Strange as that may sound, if I fail that means I gave something a shot and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I tried to be sexxy. And I won. I tried to become the next Jay-Z. I failed. It’s all part of the game. But at least I played.

What does scare me to death is mediocrity. I’m deathly afraid of being just another mediocre person of little consequence to anybody but those who know me. I’m afraid of becoming like the people I see on the train going to and from work looking like their just passing time while they wait to meet Hayseuss. Amen.

I’m afraid of just doing what everybody else does to just “make it”. I’m afraid of being $20 away from being on the street. Hell, I’m afraid that if I decided to never blog again tomorrow, nobody would care and I’d fade into the obscurity that so many of us accept.

Telling you my biggest fear was a roundabout way of telling you what I view as a large problem for the Black community: complacency. Ever since we started following white people into the suburbs and getting the types of jobs we once considered out of our reach, we stopped pushing. We made it. The only problem is our version of making it was somebody else’s version where we were placated with better housing and more quality education opportunities.

The middle.

It’s not a monetary thing, it’s a mentality thing. Mentally, the boat stopped being rocked because we reached more placid waters and got complacent and comfortable. And that would be great except the ideology exists across the financial spectrum. The people with no money sometimes just accept circumstances that they were unfairly handed as their lot in life and don’t aspire to greater. Mediocrity is the goal, not a motivator. We haven’t taught enough of our community to continue to strive for greatness. Some of us just have that innately and want to do mo’ better. Or better stated, refuse to believe that wherever they’ve gotten is where they’re supposed to end up.

But hell, where is there, anyway? That’s part of the problem. We don’t even know what to want for anymore so we find jobs we like and people we can tolerate and turn 50 and wonder what happened to the time and what we’ve contributed to society.

That scares me to death. What’s the point of living if nobody realizes that you’re alive?

It doesn’t require you to be Nathaniel Drew, EE Just or Harriet Tubman, but it does require you to realize that you have to keep on pushing towards somewhere.

People get ready, there’s a train coming. Word to Araminta.

Just get on board.

So my debaters and debatresses of VSB, are we too complacent with our current situation as a community? If so or if not, what does it all mean anyway?

Is we gon’ die?

Talk to me, Petey.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3

What’s In A Name?

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I rarely rarely ever agree with any Michael McWhorter says, but even a broke clock is right twice a day. Or so the saying goes. So when I was forwarded these excerpts from a post written by Mr. McWhorter on The New Republic Blogs, I was very ready to disagree and burn in effigy the font he used to write such malarkey. The thing is, in some ways I agree with his general premise.

Oh yeah, I forgot, here’s the premise (I know you all don’t like reading two posts in order to read one so here are the pertinent parts):

The figures from the American Community Survey just in are more than crunched numbers. They suggest that this might be a good year for a certain term now familiar in American parlance to be, if not consigned to history, reassigned.

Namely, as of now, almost 1 in 10 black people are foreign-born. About 1 in 30 are from Africa. Which means that they are–you see where I’m going–African American in the true sense. Certainly a truer sense–true as in making sense–than Tracy Morgan, Donna Brazile, Jesse Jackson, or Mo’Nique.

Interesting assertion, though quite frankly, anybody who wants to draft Mo’Nique in the next race draft is more than welcome as far as I’m concerned.

Continuing.

It’d be one thing if it were a hundred years ago and lots of black people still had parents who had been born into slavery and grandparents who actually “spoke African,” as it was sometimes put. But this is a very different time.

A possible objection, I imagine, is that native-born blacks are African in a “different” way than actual African immigrants–but this would be a feint rather than an argument: clearly, the proper formulation, if we are to put it on the table, is that native-born blacks are African to a much lesser extent than African immigrants. In truth, a black man from Jacksonville has more in common with a white one from Tucson than he does with a man three years out of Senegal.

And I would argue that native-born blacks are so vastly less “African” than actual Africans that calling ourselves “African American” is not only illogical but almost disrespectful to African immigrants. Here are people who were born in Africa, speak African languages, eat African food, dance in African ways, remember African stories, and will spiritually always be a part of Africa–and we stand up and insist that we, too, are “African” because Jesse Jackson said so?

It’s an interesting question, no? There is some truth there. While many of us refer to ourselves as African-American, the fact is, most of us are no more African at this point than that “Irish” kid in Boston who’s parents came over on some random ship in the 1700s. Sure we’re all of descent, but given that there really ARE actual African-Americans (children of first generation African immigrants born here) who seemingly still readily identify as African, how African American am I?

Truth be told, I pretty much just call myself Black anyway and I think I’ve heard more white people say African-American than I’ve heard Black folks say it. But it is a word that is commonly donned upon our community without much objection.

Consider this: a white man from down South and a Black man from down South more than likely share a lot of the same customs, eating habits, and religious practices. The only thing separating most of us is social justice and race. But American? Sure, we’re all as American as it gets. One of my best friends went to Kenya when we were in college and upon his return he said he’s no longer considering himself an African-American, just an American, because he couldn’t be more different than the folks he met in Kenya. While I found that synopsis a bit shortsighted at the time, I do understand what he meant.

I have African friends who’ve alluded to being fearful of American Blacks (we’ve talked about this before on VSB).

Of course, it’s not really Black folks holding onto the African-American thing as handily as it is white people making sure to let us know that we’re not “American” American so perhaps McWhorter’s words are directed at the wrong audience.

But I ask you, thinking people of VSB, does it still make sense for American-born Black folks to be considering themselves as African-Americans?

Hell, does it even matter?

What say you?

P has spoken.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3 (PENDING 4)

10 Biggest Stories of the Decade In The Black Community.

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It’s been one hell of a decade, hasn’t it?  There’s been all kinds of random happenings. And since the Black community is usually prone to being apart of some of the f*ckery that happens over the course of history (OJ, anyone?), I figured that we, here at VSB, might as well get to getting like everybody else and coming up with some kind of list about this past decade. And what better topic of discussion than some of the biggest stories of the decade in the Black community.

Some will be obvious. Some will be curious.

But Panama Jackson will be sexxy. The decade has taught us so.

Allons-y.

10. Tiger Woods becomes a Black man

While Tiger might be the biggest sports story (and possibly one of the biggest general stories of the decade) in the Black community, ole Eldrick’s Black card has been pulled a long time ago.  In fact, the last time I think he referred to himself as Black, the Wu-Tang Clan started an investment firm and I’m sure Mos Def was prominently involved. Either way, Tiger learned what happens when you go poking blondes all willy nilly…you lose sponsorhip deals. But hey, Kobe got his back (and called himself the Black Mamba) so the future looks bright for Tiger, though I suggest he begin calling himself Tigga. That way he can start rapping with Jay as Jigga and Dat Ni**a Tigga. There’s lots of potential here.

9. The rebirth of Ike

Apparently Chris Brown’s PR people forgot to tell him that you can’t hit girls past age 7. Well, in February 2009, young Breezy put a hurtin’ on Rihanna and became the story heard ’round the world. Domestic violence is nothing to joke with, so I won’t joke about it. However, keeping Chris Brown, the MJ-heir apparent, from performing at an MJ tribute during the BET awards just seemed egregious.

8. Man’s favorite pasttime gets the “Super” treatment

An odd choice, no doubt. But when you realize how many celebrities bucked the f*ck up once Karrinne Steffans became a household name in 2005, it becomes obvious that very few other people were as significant this decade. Hell, last time this many celebrities read a book, a guy named McCarthy was running amok. And then her subsequent book? That book put every male celebrity on full blast AND inspired an entire nation of video hoes vixens to learn how to read so that they could write their own terrible “memoirs.” Take that Reading Rainbow.

7. Beyonce pisses off lots of women

She went from being the lead singer of a too-young jailbait group out of Houston in 1997 to the most famous pop-star in the world in 2009. That’s no easy feat, especially considering she spent the entire decade being pelted with haterade by women near and far even though every hater has her albums and loves “Single Ladies”. Her accomplishments this decade are nearly unparalleled.

6. “WHY WON’T YOU LET ME BE GREAT???”

Beyonce would be unparalleled, except Kanye West entered the scene circa 2003 with his recently dubbed album of the decade with The College Dropout, and then managed to make himself into the most important figure in Black music today. You read that right and I did not stutter. Hate him or love him, Kanye will always be around because he cares about the music. He’s pretty much the Stevie Wonder of our generation. Plus the whole skinny jeans things has really taken off.

5. Author JL King ruins boys night out

In 2004, author JL King adorned Oprah’s couch and f*cked up dating ever since. He inadvertently convinced women around the nation, especially Black women, that every man was potentially trying to f*ck his homeboys. Almost overnight, the term DL became apart of the Black lexicon.

4. Rosa Parks finally stops suing Outkast passes

One of the icons of the Civil Rights movements, Rosa Parks passed away in 2005. She was one of the few non-Presidents laid-in-state in the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. She was so important to the fabric of this nation that every major media outlet showed coverage of her funeral and procession…except BET who thought their audience would be better served by showing videos since folks could catch the funeral on CNN or some sh*t (btw, I can’t find a single article about this now, back in 2005, BET had a press release explaining why they didn’t show the funeral).

3. Botched engineering and a Hurricane with a Black name give Spike Lee inspiration

Hurricane Katrina needs no explanation.  August 2005 is when most of us realized just how little many Black lives are. On the bright side, Spike directed one helluva documentary though.

2. Michael Jackson goes to Neverland

I’m really only putting this at 2 to show deference to the historical context of the obvious number 1, but really, globally, more people were touched by MJ’s death than Obama’s presidency. Hell, I still miss Michael Jackson.

1. Barack Obama ruins “the excuse”

Well, duh.

Did I miss any??

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3