June 7, 2005

Four people executed and one little girl wounded recently in Buffalo by two men, another man and his girlfriend are apprehended in the midwest after a long search, after he beats to death her daughter (Erica Michelle Marie Green AKA Precious Doe), and later finds it in himself to dismember her head and bury it. A single mother (Livvette Moore) described as a "homebody" goes out for the first time in years to a birthday party held at a club in Toronto and is caught in the middle of a shoot-out, and dies. A young father in Rochester NY has just been sentenced to 20 years to life because one day he wanted to show off his newborn son to his family and friends, so he goes to the mother's home to pick the infant up and the baby's mother wants to wait a few weeks (which of course is understandable to even the average Orangutan). Homeboy becomes angry at this refusal, a heated exchange follows, after which he grabs his newborn son and slams him against the wall. Perhaps I'm going! out on a limb with this question, but */what in the hell is wrong with these boys?

I-like many-have tried my best to explain and give excuses for these clowns. Others say "they don't have jobs," "it's racism," "the White man," etc. In truth we don't want to call a spade a spade and admit that *many of our boys are actually as brazenly stupid as they appear to be*, anymore than Whites find it easy to identify racist among themselves. Maybe to do so means we see too much of ourselves in them. Any kid who tries to shoot an entire family including a little girl in the finger doesn't need a job, or a better education, he needs a lead pipe slammed over his skull, arrested, put on trial, sent to Singapore to be caned just prior to sentencing, and returned to the states in time to be topped off with George W. Bush's new Gang-Banger Death Penalty. If it seems to you that I'm taking a rare moment to actually agree with W on a policy, *if it is used accurately*, then you are correct sir. Normally I disdain Capital Punishment, but on this one, let the ! good times roll. Then again that's a subject for another essay.

Does it seem to you that these boys are acting like it's the in-thing /to kill each other, and other Blacks? Do they really believe that killing a fellow Black from the projects is as fashionable as purchasing that new pair of Jordans? Is street credibility-which is notorious for it's low expectations-at any cost worth it? The point of self-hatred among Black boys has long been discussed and is very valid. What is being too little addressed is /exactly what /is replacing that low race-based esteem in their minds. This is important because the reality of multiple funerals and prison sentences actually begins with little more than fantasy. The avenues of entertainment they are exposed to today encourage hostility and grudges against one another. Hard-core rap music lyrics are dumber than ever before, they can no longer dismiss it as "just entertainment." It's only entertainment to the majority of the White youths who buy the CDs, listen to them, and then get back! to their lives when they finish hearing them. Too many Black boys take the songs deadly serious, and find validity, legitimacy and comfort in the words that seem to support their warped view of themselves, other Blacks, and the decisions they make to survive and earn money and gain a sense of belonging.

This twisted outlook on reality has lead them to develop a pretend culture-what I called years ago a *culture of dumbness*-producing in them a false conscience that spits at basic human behavior. The result, everyday situations to you and I become a life and death matter to them. They say to themselves 'what would "Scarface" or "Capone" do.' Or What would DMX or Snoop Dogg do? When in reality the only thing Al Pacino, DMX, Robert DeNiro, and Snoop are doing, is sitting by the pool reading the /Wall Street Journal/. Couple this with the growing number of air-headed, long on legs and low on talent girl-groups who sing songs praising thugs, and roughnecks and bad-boys, bring back the Supremes I say.

I know that the educational and economic situation in the cities is bad, but that argument is lost when you consider that the majority of brothers out of work or dropping out of school are not out there killing and doing the unforgivable things these self-styled "thugs" are doing. That's why it's hard for me to have understanding for them, in fact I'm proud of my failure to understand them, the day I do, is the day to start worrying. The boys at the Toronto Club are particularly galling to me because they tried repeatedly to get in with their guns and were turned away until they ran upon a new security man at the door who didn't know them. My cousin the Rev. Wilmer Brown Jr. calls it "stupidity with confidence."

Truth be told, if these low-level dealers, and gang-members, and studio-gangster rappers knew what a real gangster does, they would back down from using the word. All ethnic groups have their street gangs, and have gone from just beating people up, to killing. European American gangs have gone from the blood-baths of Sicily, Ireland, and Chicago and New York, to war based on less killing and more political, economic and community power. Black gangs have been around now for several decades, but they're still on the corner. What's up with that? Old White gangsters have sons and daughters on the top floors of Corporate America, City Hall, the White House, the sons of old school Black gang members are still on the corner. Where's the progression? Do White gangsters only know construction, while Black gangs are only about destruction?

African Americans seem to know the least about their own resources in their own communities. There are brothers out there crossing their money over into legal business ventures such as financing beauty salons for their women, or opening auto custom and detail shops etc., but we have the highly resented college brothers who design cars for the big three auto makers without receiving any credit for it. Black auto makers go all the way back to Frederick Douglass Patterson (not to be confused with the Frederick Douglass Patterson who first came up with the concept of the Black fighter pilot to serve in warfare)who designed the Patterson during the early part of the 20th Century. With all the money earned from illegal street hustling what's to prevent the Black drug dealers from pooling their resources together and form multi-million dollar auto manufacturing plants? Initiatives such as this would take simple-minded Tyrone into the realm of Al Capone, it's gangsterism that separates men from boys.