Monday Feature Fare: Dem Damn Nigras Set Us Back 50 Years!

Dem damn nigras always dancin' an' shufflin'!

Damn, we did “it” again. For the umpteen hundreth time in my lifetime, at least, we set us back 50 years. This time it was two of us who performed the setting back; they are brothers. No, no, not as in “whassup my brotha?” but as in, they are from the same family. Martelllus Bennett and his big brother Mike are NFL football players. Martellus – “Marty B,” as he is known – plays for the Dallas Cowboys; Mike plays for the Seattle Seahawks.

The brothers decided to make a video called, the “Black Olympics.” The events consist of who can eat a piece of chicken fastest, who can drink the most Kool-Aid, and who can eat the most watermelon. For four minutes and four seconds the brothers partook in the usual inane You Tube fair.

One problem, though.

These guys play in the National Football League. Which means they are wholly owned and are quite literally, property of the owners for whom they play.

Just kidding. Well not really, They are the property of Jerry Jones in Dallas and Paul Allen in Seattle.

But the real problem are the Black sports columnists throughout the country lying in wait for an opportunity to bury Black athletes. It is an age-old practice. Ed-u-ma-cated nigras have used other Black people, field slaves, railroad builders, docksmen, warehouse workers, construction workers, and the like, to exhibit their ed-u-ma-cation and tell anyone who will listen that those people “over there” are the real nigras. While the writer-types are the N-E-G-R-O-E-S.

And N-E-G-R-O-E-S, unlike the majority of “dem damn nigras,” have always loved to think they can assimilate to the culture of the flag that accosted them. Today’s sports columnist N-E-G-R-O-E-S, the one that have fallen for the trick of Western culture’s light, are the same as their Man-Tan, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima-ass ancestors…..  ”You wants me ta go shufflin’ fo’ a column-piece massa? I gots many of dem damn nigra af-a-leets’ numbas on my celly, massa. I can hit up dey baby mamas an’ have dem give up the low-down on dey mens. Da angry  baby mamas can be da “source” fo’ my column and I writes up all da dirt on any nigra ya wants ——- my main massa!”

All the while these Black men and women are under the delusion that they have personal access to the same sense of privilege and set of privileges as their White newsroom cohorts (maybe they really do believe in human osmosis?).

The real problem is mainstream Black columnists are also owned by white men and women.

Now, as the Dallas Morning News‘ columnist with the swashbuckling name of, Jean-Jacque Taylor, wrote in an effort to gain some  ”street cred” – I gather – with “dem damn nigras“:

“Don’t get it twisted”…

Get what twisted? That psychological deadweight of a U.S. flag he carries around in his head? Oh oh, it’s his subject matter’s intelligence; that’s what J-JT’s talking about.

And his subject matter? Dat damn nigra, Martellus Bennett. Or, “Marty B.” 

Let’s take a gander at some of J-JT’s other observations about dat damn nigra, Marty B.:

Bennett should have more respect for the sacrifices that tens of thousands of African-Americans have made so that he can do and say whatever foolish things he wants on MartyB TV.

Not just the sacrifices by people we hear about all of the time, such as Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Chaney, but the anonymous folks who held sit-ins and organized marches and protests so that my kids can splash around freely at Cedar Hill’s Uptown Village on a muggy Sunday afternoon with a kaleidoscope of races.

Clearly, Bennett lacks this respect.

Oh merde (with a name like “Jean-Jacque” merde should be right up his alley), J hyphen J did not conjure up the names of Rosa Parks, MLK, Malcolm, and James Chaney and use them to contextualize the actions of 22-year old in 2009 Martellus Bennett, did he?

He did.

But J hyphen J’s logic is faulty; it’s fallacious; it is fugazi logic.

Those people marched and orated and organized so Martellus Bennett could do precisely what he did, which is act a fool right along with millions of White, Black, and more races of people who bloviate on You Tube (there are many valuable videos posted on You Tube, but the inane far outweighs the substantive at You Tube.com).

So why the show of angst by J hyphen J and T? Well, it turns out the angst, anger, and ire toward den nigras named Bennett is not confined to Jean Jacque Taylor.

Mike Freeman of CBS Sports.com it the culprit behind the most recent “set us back” statement:

If you want to see something that sets back a group of people 50 years, please, watch this video. 

Click on the link and you will see dem damn nigras who set us back a half century.

But Freeman didn’t stop there. Of course he didn’t, he had a column to write. And he also needed to make sure his bossmen at CBS know they never have to worry about him losing his mind and playing the fool like dem damn nigra Bennetts. Nor will Freeman’s bossmen have to worry about Freeman remembering the meaning of his last name:

Somewhere W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ralph Ellison and Dr. Huxtable are rolling over in their graves.

We all sometimes make mistakes and public fools of ourselves (I do it three times a week with this column). But Bennett is making a habit of using his own people as racial cannon fodder. 

Fake self-depreciating statement aside, Mike “Not So” Freeman added the names W.E.B. DuBois and Ralph Ellison to the “Black Leaders Through Time” monolith. But there’s a name that makes the reader of his column think that Freeman might actually be serious about his comment about making afool of himself ———– Dr. Huxtable?

Really? Dr. H-U-X-T-A-B-L-E?! 

Mike F. (it is becoming more difficult by the second to type his last name) added Bill Cosby’s television character to the hackneyed list of Black leaders.

Hell, Mike. Why not go ahead and add a hyphen to Huxtable and type “Fat Albert” afterward? Wait Mike, are you sure you’re not one of dem damn nigras in disguise?

Scroll down a few paragraphs, though, and F – - – man reminds us there is no damn nigra in him:

But it’s time for older, more mature players and coaches on the Cowboys and throughout football — black and white — to get in this guy’s ear. Make him understand the awesome power he has in his hands as a high-profile NFL player; that’s it’s a power which can do tremendous good or tremendous harm.

Maybe it’s time for even the commissioner to get involved. I’m serious.

The commissioner can ask a small group of former NFL players like James Harris, Jim Brown and Warren Moon to discuss how difficult it was for African-Americans historically in the sport. They can meet with Bennett, cobble together what’s left of Bennett’s pride, and give Bennett, you know, history books. Books that describe the era when blacks weren’t allowed to play professional football and stereotypes like the ones Bennett publicly embraces were used as ammunition.

Ahhhh, yes. That’s the answer. Let Roger the White King Bwana Overlord  Goodell to lead these damn nigras to personal salvation and teach them a thing or two about self worth while he’s at it.

But if J hyphen J T and Mike F—man’s works weren’t enough, the dastardly Mr. Whitlock and the miseducated Ms. Hill had to add their pennies to the tale of Martellus Bennett. Their responses to Bennett’s video were ——— predictable. As usual, Whitlock’s contribution to Bennett’s folly was convoluted while Hill’s was milquetoast.

“Big Sexy,” Whitlock’s self-proclaimed nickname, explained to his readers that athletes should avoid attempts at comedy and claimed that there was no response to Bennett’s actions by – I’m gathering – the NAACP because:

I assumed that Bennett’s “Black Olympics” would cause an uproar among the groups that claim to stand against just this kind of racial exploitation.

Instead, I’m again reminded that we hold white people to a higher standard of behavior than we hold ourselves.

I say that because you know damn well if Jason Witten had recorded and televised the “Black Olympics,” CNN would’ve aborted coverage of Michael Jackson’s month-long death to perform a thorough analysis of Witten’s entire life.

Witten, a Pro Bowler, would likely be looking for another job.

I suppose the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization that has failed to update from “Colored” since its inception one century ago, should give Martellus a good talkin’ to? Or maybe he meant Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson? Are they to arrange for press conferences, elicit the aid of our first “Black” president, Bill Clinton, and hold hands at the podium and roundly denounce Bennett, while apologizing again for the millions of African people killed or brought to this country against their will through the Middle Passage trade route?

And this man is serious? And because there was no outrage by our leaders, we have failed – and further, hold White people to a higher standard than we do other Black people?

If Whitlock really held Black people to a high standard he wouldn’t waste a sentence on Bennett or any of the legion of Black sports figures he has pilloried over time. He would, instead hold his greatest criticisms for the Black people responsible for most furthering the stereotypes that hang like nooses around the Black Diaspora in America: those in his profession who write stupid house slave-ass commentaries fo’ dey bossmens; the Black people who write, “Don’t get it twisted” in the middle of what is alleged to be a serious commentary about the actions of a Black athlete; the Black people who tell dey bossmens – that is, all White people – that every time a Black athlete engages in some sort of questionable behavior, tell the world Black people have been set back 50 years by the actions of a single human who happens to be playing – P-L-A-Y-I-N-G –  a game – G-A-M-E.

Instead, though writers like Whitlock, it is us he games. 

The Kansas City Star and Fox Sports columnist goes on to inform us that if a White athlete recorded the “Black Olympics” as did Bennett, CNN would get involved in the excoriating of Witten.

Sadly, Whitlock seeks to make a point about us by jumbling the racial context of Bennett’s act with the same act performed by a White man. If Jason Witten made the same video he would be a racist – period.

Is Martellus Bennett a racist? To answer that question another must be asked; is Martellus Bennett in a position of power where he can make meaningful choices based on race?

The answer is no. And so Bennett cannot be a racist, as to commit an or the act of racism, a person must have the ability to wield the aforementioned power described.

But let’s play on Whitlock’s Dali-esque contextual checkerboard and imagine Witten making Bennett’s video. Then he question becomes: would Jason Whitlock explain why the talking heads at CNN would be compelled to mention Witten?

Of course not.

He is too busy attempting to further his position as “National Black Voice-Speaker for the Monolithic Black American” to act so responsibly as to actually contextualize this statement. He is too busy pulling down multiple paychecks off the backs of people like you and me, no matter your color, but especially if you are Black.

Whitlock hasn’t the balls to tell the truth of why a gatekeeper for the White corporate power structure would have its employees mention a hypothetical Jason Witten Black Olympics video.

Whitlock cannot tell us that in order to so publicly exempt Black people from its programming – and therefore program the whole of everyone to Whiteness as a standard of being – a file of allegedly selfless behavioral acts must exist to “prove” that diversity of being is unnecessary as an extant to the human condition.

Whitlock, because his game is so exposed to the sun, has proven himself to be seen, ultimately, as a buffoon by peoples of all races and ethnicities.

And yet. 

Not even with his combined audiences does Jason Whitlock have the platform of ESPN’s and ESPN.com’s Jemele Hill. And because of the platform it is paramount that anyone writing within the confines of the corporation that is ESPN choose their words with an eye to the weight those words carry and the message they portend. 

So for Hill to confine Bennett’s acts to bad comedy – as did Whitlock – and to his owner, “The Dallas Cowboys” which is another name for, Jerry Jones, is to say that if Martellus Bennett created this video as “Marty B.,” 22-year old Black student, or Black construction worker, the content would be just another inconsequential You Tube offering:

Nothing Bennett did in the video made me want to call the NAACP, but he wasn’t attacking stereotypes as much as he was feeding them. Before posting his video, Bennett should have looked at the scene from the satirical film “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” in which inner-city hoodlums compete in criminal-themed Olympics. Now that was funny. Bennett wasn’t.

The bigger issue here is that Bennett is embarrassing himself and the Cowboys with these videos and showing he has little respect for his position as a member of arguably the most popular professional sports team in America. Bennett isn’t mature enough to understand the only thing these videos are doing is making him look like a clown.

The racial comedy should be left to professionals. There have just been too many instances when people in the wrong position stupidly try to channel their inner Chappelle.

Did Marty B.’s video add to the discussion of racial stereotypes? Did he break out allegedly stereotypical ground?

No.

Then he did not feed racial stereotypes. The stereotypes Bennett and his brother portrayed are pre-existing and firmly planted in the collective conscious of White America. Hill’s statement of “feeding stereotypes” is as hackneyed, or stereotypical as those to which she seeks to ascribe term as stereotypical.

And Bennett’s position as a member of the Cowboys? He is a slave; a man without a face in an organization full of men without faces, in a league that is constantly conspiring to find ways to make already mostly anonymous men widely deemed to be little more than interchangeable parts, more so. To ascribe importance to Martellus Bennett is to say that he was a known commodity before his previous profanity-laced diatribe of a video, the prelude to thismost recent, fleeting You Tube moment.

But the insidious side of Hill’s otherwise better left unwritten column is that she attempted to compare Bennett’s position with Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele who, had he a better understanding of his place within his political party, might actually wield power, at least over the consciousnesses of some Black Americans:

The racial comedy should be left to professionals. There have just been too many instances when people in the wrong position stupidly try to channel their inner Chappelle.

Recently, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele met with a group of bloggers, and when he was asked about the party’s efforts to attract more minorities, someone blurted out, “I’ll bring the collard greens.” Steele quickly responded, “I got the fried chicken and potato salad.”

Steele was trying too hard to blend in with a group of college students, and like Bennett, he didn’t understand that he and a comedian hold a different microphone and reach a different audience.

Martellus Bennett = Michael Steele?

In a dark humor way, yes.

But in reality, absolutely not. For Michael Steele to exist in his present position, he must want, each passing second, to care about how he is perceived. He must care, as the public’s perception of him – and this goes for all of his peers and cohorts – is how he gained national prominence. If anything, Martellus Bennett wants his friends to laugh.

Then Hill writes:

Bennett’s case also shows that unfiltered access to athletes through social networking can be both good and bad. The positive for fans and media is that they have an insider’s view and more direct access to athletes. But the downside is that athletes don’t always know how to edit themselves and sometimes aren’t the best judge of what’s appropriate. 

What is Hill assuming here? Unfiltered access to Michael Steele rendered a moment Hill equated with that of Martellus Bennett, but she confined her criticism of the ability to self-edit to athletes? Is Hill then also is assuming she and all her fellow sports columnists do know how to edit themselves and are the best judge of what is appropriate. If this was true, the positions of copy and managing editor would cease to exist, though through the content released in too many columns these days, it is apparent that cutbacks to sports news outlets have hit hardest at the position of editor.

Ultimately, Jemele Hill commits the exact faux pas as does Whitlock by mixing racism and foolishness, except Hill coalesces the acts into “not having a personal firewall,” and, as she has done in past writings, acts to excuse racism:

And as we’ve seen, not having a personal firewall can cause serious problems. Former University of Texas lineman Buck Burnette was kicked off the Longhorns team for a racist Facebook status post about Barack Obama after the November election. And point guard phenom Brandon Jennings’ NBA career is off to a rough start because Jennings trashed his teammates and dropped the N-word more than Gucci Mane during a live Web interview with rapper Joe Budden. Though there has been some debate about whether Jennings knew his conversation with Budden was being broadcast live, he has apologized for his off-color comments. Still, that probably wasn’t the first impression Jennings wanted to make.

Off-color comments by Brandon Jennings and racist comments by Buck Burnette should not be thrown into the same food processor of context -ever. Not, at least, by a Black person. Those are acts usually left to White people hoping to explain away acts of racism by other White people. 

Or. White people perform the act when a Black person does so first, giving them an excuse to also mix racism with a lesser offense. Which is, unfortunately, where Jemele Hill’s oil and water mix of racism and off-color comments fits. 

But you know what? George Wallace, the comedian, has made a five decade comedic career off this exact perceived way of Black people. And Wallace tells his audience that Black people love our chicken and watermelon and Kool-aid. And his name was never mentioned once by any of these sports columnists as a way of contextualizing Bennett’s video (and no Whitlock saying he understands the economic impact of outlawing our self-hate does not pass muster).

Martellus Bennett did not set us back 50 years. Bennett’s video has no bearing on my life, anything I do,or anyone’s perception of me or any other Black person I know. No white person dare tell me about how to conduct myself as a Black man. And no white white person better dare tell me how to navigate my way through this white, Western, male-dominated society in which I live. There are far more constructive ways to be inclusive of White people in speech, writings, and actions rather than include them in pulling my, or any other Black person’s coattail when it comes to “how to be a Black person.”

And there is never, ever cause, reason, or excuse to mix in racism with any other act, as racism is a form of genocide which, as of date, has never been adequately quantified, biologically, or psychologically (or bio-psychologically, for that matter). And until the impact of acts of racism – because it starts early, like a five-year old boy at a playground saying to my daughter, “Ha ha I’m White and you’re Black and I’m better than you.” – are quantified, no White person had better dare attempt to tell me how I, or any other Black person is affected by racism.

In other words, when you say, “Just get over it,” and I beat your ass, verbally or otherwise, understand why.

Afterwords you can tell a negro who is sympathetic to your plight what occurred. and you know what they’ll say? ”Oh not another of dem damn nigras. We just got set back another 50 years. I am so sorry.”

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To the Black columnists and writers who would want to think that, generally, White people in the business today see you as peers…

Friday morning on the Mike and Mike in the Morning radio-television simulcast, Erik Kuselias and Buster Olney sat in for Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic. Early on in the simulcast Kuselias was handed a piece of paper and announced:

“I was just handed a list of the 10 top sports writers in America. They are: Buster Olney, Bob Ryan, Jerry Krasnick, Ken Rosenthal, Dan Shaugnessy, Tim Kurkjian, Peter King, Peter Gammons, Rob Nyer, and Pedro Gomez.”

That’s what too many of them think of you.

—————————————————

And finally…

At ESPN’s “ESPY” award affair, Nelson Mandela’s daughter Zindzi and his grandson Zondwa made the following pronouncement abut their famous father and grandfather: “I want to thank ESPN for honoring him with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage.”

I nearly threw up. And I certainly changed the channel.

But I also wondered if any Black sports columnist would ever dare to explain why  ESPN could so smoothly mix sports and politics just for a story about South Africa’s Springbok team’s 1995 World Cup Rugby winning run.

Was it because, as the all-White team made its way through the tournament the politicos of the country took up the phrase, “One country One team” and Black South Africans celebrated Springbok’s tournament run with White South Africans and it made for a tear-jerker of a story? Was it because at that moment all the racism in South Africa ended? Because at that moment all Black South African became ideological and economic equals? 

And in the ultimate irony, about 15 minutes later guess who walked to the microphone to present an award? None other than former National Security Advisor and former Secretary of State for the most corrupt, unethical, inhumane, racist, corporatist executive branch of a governing body in modern history, Condoleeza Rice.