Tag: Afrocentrism

The Entertainment Dilemma: Black Success in White Markets

Black America has become white America’s source of entertainment. At a glance, a list of the richest African Americans, I noticed an alarming trend. Here is a link to the list so you can see for yourself: “http://www.ranker.com/list/the-20-richest-african-americans/worlds-richest-people-lists”

Have you figured it out? Basically, with the exception of a few, nearly everyone on the list are entertainer of some sort. Whether it be sport, music, or film.

Now look at a list of the richest Americans in general, “http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/top20/#3df0ffc3d8d5”, not one person is an entertainer; the list is made primarily of tech entrepreneurs, energy tycoons, and media moguls.

Black people have been “chucking and jiving” for white America since the minstrels of the 19th century. The only difference today is the market reach and the profitability. Many African Americans take great pride that black people have an influence on pop culture, but at what cost? Have black people become so ghettoized in how they aspire to be successful in this country?

Go to any urban school in this country and ask the typical black child what he or she aspires to be, and the most popular answer is either a sports athlete or a rapper. You will be hard-pressed to hear a child aspire to be a tech entrepreneur or business mogul. Why do young black people have such a limited scope of career choices? The answer lies in what black youth see in the media. The media is very important in how people view themselves. Films, music, television, etc., inform us on how to think, how to behave, and how to view life. When you’re black, you are particularly sensitive to media influence. This is because, as a minority, you have limited exposure to representation that you can relate to, and when you do get that representation, it holds a lot of sway on your thought process.

The worst of this is that black Americans don’t even fully profit from their talents; behind every multimillionaire black entertainer, there is a much richer white person in the background profiting handsomely from black ingenuity. Yes, Michael Jordan became a billionaire from his signature sneaker, but Nike, in return, became a multi-billion-dollar sportswear company with a near-monopolistic hold in their industry. Yeah, rappers make millions of dollars from tours and single sales, but record companies make billions of dollars every year in licensing royalties.

Black America epitomizes cool in this country, and corporations gladly use us as marketing tools, finding an athlete to petals their sneakers, rappers to wear their clothing, or appear in their soda commercials. I’m not at all angry at anybody for profiting off their marketability, but I do just want to fully analyze the situation in terms of race in this country.

We, as black people, need to do better for ourselves; we need to teach our children to have a diversity of aspirations. You have a lot better chance of becoming an oral surgeon or an electrical engineer than a rapper or an athlete. It is vital for the future of Black America that our youth have realistic aspirations.

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Why Black America need a conservative revolution!!!

I know many black people took the victory of Donald Trump very hard, but I would like to suggest that maybe such a victory isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Black people in this country(certainly not all) are content with receiving government handouts. A Trump victory was seen as a sign of a reduction in public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid. My issue with this is how so many black people become so reliant on the government for self-sufficiency.

The bottom line is that the government is not going to help black people with their issues, which are (but not limited to) high rates of violent crime in black communities, low educational achievement, a high incarceration rate, high illegitimate births, and high instances of poverty. All these can neither be solved by either Democratic nor the Republican party.

In the case of inadequate education, is it a system of bad funding in the school systems or a culture that prompts anti-intellectualism in the black community? What is a school but not just bricks and books? It’s the pupil and the quality of teachers that truly set the educational standard. The chief reason Asians do so exceptionally well in school is because of their collective attitude towards education.

In the case of black crime, when will individual accountability be taken into account? The same sob story that has been going on for decades, of black men being forced into a life of crime because of a lack of opportunity. My argument against this is that there was even an attempt by many of these black men to make their own opportunities by investing in themselves through education, setting up their own business, etc. In a predominantly black city of Detroit, where African Americans make up 80% of the population, only 10% of the businesses are black own. Who’s at fault for this? Is it the opportunistic South Asian immigrant or the sluggishness of black entrepreneurs in these communities? Many black people complain about the inability to get loans to set up businesses, but is it racism or lack of creditworthiness that prevents many blacks can attaining loans?

Black Americans are currently caught up in a downward spiral. Black people in this country have one of the lowest median incomes of any racial group, currently standing at about 35,000$. There is absolutely no wealth being generated in swaths of black communities across this country. Constantly, people complain about gentrification, but many times, gentrification is the only way to invigorate these blighted communities with the investment and capital that is needed to improve these areas. Without urban renewal schemes, these communities, Harlem, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx, would remain poor.

Let’s talk about housing projects and how they basically became a way to keep millions of people in concentrated intergenerational poverty. Many of the urban developmental programs can trace their history back to the 1930s as a way to provide low-income citizens access to modern housing. What started out as a progressive housing policy became an urban-policy disaster from Cabrini Green to the South Bronx; thousands of public housing projects became infested with crime, poverty, and almost any case of urban blight one can think of.
The solution for the Black American for his advancement is to, as I proposed in the introductory paragraph is to stop relying on the government and start relying on himself, no more food stamps, no more public housing, no more government welfare. It’s quite simple: get educated(particularly in a marketable skill such as engineering, finance, and medicine), wait until you are married to have children, invest your money in stock and bonds instead of a pair of Air Jordans. Bottom line: take responsibility for your own life!!!

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The Attraction Divide: Black Men and Interracial Preferences

Black men, more so than any other group of men, hold an ‘aw’ for women outside their ethnic group. Now, some would state I am making a bold statement and that I am generalizing all black men. But I would like to pose crucial points to prove my case and to also acknowledge that not all black men fetishize different ethnic women(I include myself in this acknowledgement).

Let’s examine the media; one needs only to watch the typical hip-hop video and would be hard-pressed to find a black woman who possesses dark skin, typical African features, as well as natural hair. The male protagonists in these videos (the rappers) are, for the most part, black men themselves but yet they surround themselves with fairer-skinned women. Hip hop acts as a form of fantasy; typically, men brag about their access to wealth, power, and women. In the fantasy that hip hop portrays, women who are light-skinned, possess straighter to curly hair, and have racially ambiguous features are seen in high esteem.

As a black man who lives in New York City, I can tell that many women of other ethnicities do not hold the same gaze on black men as we do towards them. One only needs to go on a dating website to find how many advertise how they prefer white and Hispanic men, with some explicitly listing “no black men”. I personally do not mind if some women are not attracted to black men, for I do not seek their validation. But many other black men do. One needs to search countless forums asking the same typical questions: “Do Asian women like black men?”, “Do Middle Eastern women like black men?”, “Do Russian women like black men?”, I would highly doubt if the same question is asked vice versa.

One has to look at the disparities in marriage rates between black men and women; more black men are married than black women, even though there are 1 million more black women to men. This can be(at least partially) explained by the fact that 20% of black men who get married marry women outside their race.

My case in point is that as black men, we need to stop putting these white, Asian, and Hispanic women on these pedestals. The reason I believe we pedestal these women is because the black community still holds a lot of self-hatred, which has been passed on to us through hundreds of years of slavery. That‘s the only reason why, as a collective, so many black men find typical Eurocentric features so attractive, i.e, light skin, straighter hair, etc.

In conclusion, I have nothing against being attracted to women of other races; I myself see the beauty in all races of women. My only objection is the pedestalling of other women while black men undermine our women. We as a people are still, in a sense, an “oppressed class”, particularly in the state of our mental affairs, and should do our best to get out of it, first starting with some self-love as people.

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Is being black ugly?

What is it about black features that supposedly makes them so unattractive to some? Is it the lush lips, High melanin skin complexion, or just the coarse and strong hair? In my personal opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the physical features of the African, which I shall demonstrate

First and foremost, we need to understand why different groups of humans appear so distinctly different from one another. Before I get into this, I also want it to be known that humans share about 99.99% of our genetic code with each other, regardless of “race”. Humanity as a species (anatomically modern) first originated approximately 200,000 years ago in East Africa. Then, around 50,000 years ago, bands of humans left Africa for Europe and Asia (Humans reaching the Americas 15,000 years ago). That being said, the first humans had to survive in the very hot and arid conditions of Africa. The sun provides humans with vitamin D through ultraviolet radiation. Too much UVR and a person can develop skin cancer. A good protection from this is to have a lot of melanin, which translates into darker skin, to protect Humans from skin damage. To project the tops of our heads, coarse and tightly bound hair was needed. To better expatriate sweat, broad facial features with larger surfaces tend to do a better job.

So, why are African features considered unattractive if they offer so many evolutionary advantages? First, it has to do with the legacy of slavery. When one group of physically different humans subjects another group of humans, those attributes that belong to the subjected group are deemed inferior, just as their status in that respected society.

Black people in the United States as well as across Latin America. Embody a sense of inferiority in their appearance. This is why black women in America spend billions of dollars every year on hair straightening product as well as hair extensions(colloquially called weaves). The fact that women who are lighter in skin complexion and possess European physical features are considered more attractive by many black men. And why many black people will ridicule each other for possessing features that deemed to African, such darker skin(being called crispy, darker),thicker lips(bottom lip jocks), or coarser hair(nappy hair, bad hair as opposed to good hair which would be European).

There is a societal delusion in the inferiority appearance of Africans. One common derogatory remark is the comparison of black people to monkeys. I will show how this dis-remark can be reversed on Europeans

First and foremost Monkeys are quit hairy, African tend to have very little in body hair as compared to Europeans. Secondly monkeys tend to coated in hair that is similar to Europeans texture then to Africans. Thirdly monkeys are quite pale if you were to shave them. Fourthly monkeys have extremely thin lips and noses similar to Europeans than to Africans. This is not to compare Europeans to primates but just to demonstrate how nonsensical it is to call Africans monkeys.

There is no reason why black people or any other racial group should be demonized by their appearance. At the end of the day, we are all humans and beauty can be found in every skin hue, hair grad, eye shape, and body size!

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