What's The Deal Bill? The War Between The Others And The Others Pt. 1

This is the first of a series of sad but true stories of what happens when those who represent the minorities of America feel that they've made some accomplishments, which results in them blaming the majority of those who've suffered from structural racism and White supremacy in America as "inept" and "inferior".

I begin this series with Bill Cosby, or Dr. William H. Cosby, sorry for my blatant disrespect. Somehow this man keeps popping up in the media, beit corporate or the Black media, with the usual rant about how poor Blacks(note his rants are against one section of people) are not holding up their end of the bargain, or selling short on the Civil Rights movement. It's gotten to a point where I cringe everytime I hear or see this man's name, because I know it's not going to be good, because it's obvious that Bill, or Dr. Bill has a serious connection problem with lower class Black people.

Growing up I watched Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids religiously, as well as The Cosby Show and A Different World in my later years. Like most people, I didn't know then what I know now, which is the fact Dr. Bill is participating in a sinister war of various implications, not just on race relations, but a class war as well. How is that you ask? By not honing in on society's ills which affect its constituency, and ranting on and on about personal behavior issues, Dr. Bill, like others who feel that Blacks have progressed, places the blame solely on the individual, or in this sense, since we're talking about Black people we have to discuss the "group collective" or the double-standard that we place on each other that the actions of one or even a few Blacks represent THE WHOLE RACE.

 I didn't know the hidden subtleties that were inserted inside these shows, such as the lack of racial identity or the lack of approaching social issues that affected Blacks. Bill, oh sorry, I mean Dr. Bill, did not want to have a show which reflected the usual racial stereotypes as he put it, meaning The Cosby Show was not to reflect the realities of America then and now, which is why we never saw an episode where neither Theo or Elvin were profiled by the police, nor any of the kids being ridiculed about their hair, race, nor in any instance did we see any poor Blacks on his show, except the time when Elvin and Sondra leaves school and try their hand at owning a wilderness shop. Eventually Elvin comes to his senses and decides to re enter college...Ho hum...

That was another subtle theme that was inserted in these shows, this need to go to college in order to guarantee oneself a job in the mainstream. We were pummeled with these scenarios from Elvin and Sondra leaving school, only to come to their senses to Denise leaving school, going to Africa and getting married, only to come back to school in the end. The series ended with Theo graduating from college, overcoming his dyslexia and his slackness in his youth. To this day this idea is still being pushed into the minds of Black youth as the salvation of the race, although White students are growing more and more frustrated with the rising costs of tuition, the never ending student loan issue, which is now in the billion dollar range, and the lack of jobs one discovers after they've graduated. But Bill, I mean Dr. Bill and others in the Black middle class swears by this notion that a college degree will guarantee you a slot somewhere in the American Dream.  Even if his doctorate degree was the result of  simply submitting a thesis about the importance of using Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids as a learning tool...whoopee...

 Is this a subtle hint that being poor and uneducated is attributed to attitude or drive? Of being of inferior stock? So poor people are not dignified in any sense? This was the ultimate exhibition of Black middle class fantasy, in which the cries of the poor, downtrodden and destitute are completely ignored, as well as propagating the notion that the Civil Rights movement was the right course for African Americans to take, to not rock the boat and ask for justice and independence, but to ask to be included in a system that became rich from theft,  exploitation and oppression. As usual with these assimilationists, a  tribute was given to Dr. King, which symbolized assimilation and intergration and so called nonviolence, but not to Malcolm X or any of the Black Power movement participants.

 All of this was being broadcast during the height of Reaganomics and the Bush era, when social programs were cut, Black women were being targeted as welfare queens, drugs all of a sudden started appearing in the hood, wrecking families and communities, sending families scurrying in different directions, most of them having a negative end with either death or prison being the end result.  Then you had the Iran/Contra scandal, with Reagan disavowing any knowledge of the issue, jobs were cut, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. You will be hard pressed to find a Black Democrat who will disagree with this notion, so how is it now easy to believe this man's tirades about people who were the victims of these dilemnas?

Now A Different World was different in that it somewhat spoke of the issues facing a so called Black college, but it was not really a different world when you look at it more closely,  Dwayne Wayne, a homeboy from the streets of New York falls in love with a light-skinned, gentille southern Belle name Whitley Gilbert, who was materialistic to say the least, yet in the end she gets her way,  anyone who represented the counterculture was mocked, whether it was Freddie the hippie, Shaza Zulu, the pseudo Afrocentric who can't seem to graduate, to Terrence Taylor, who becomes Muslim, but you don't really know what he believes, due of the ambiguous way the teachings of Islam were handled by the show. It gave you the impression that to be a Muslim was all about freeing oneself from the oppression of the White man, ala the Nation of Islam, but I won't get into specifics with this right now. In the final season, Freddie gets rid of the hippie look, straightens out her hair, and joins the system and tells Lena(played by Jada Pinkett Smith) that she's going to assimilate into the system with the hopes of changing the system....Such delusion...Again this show gives a tribute to Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement, and pushes the constant barrage of vote, vote, vote, even with Rev. Jesse Jackson making an appearance on one episode.

So while The Cosby Show stayed away from racial politics of any sort, A Different World grazed those issues, but in an assimilationist fashion.

So in reality both shows were just as much propagandist in nature as any other show on television. This time it was for middle class Blacks. And in many cases it worked, due to the lack of approaching racial politics among everyday life for Blacks, especially the ones who don't make it to college for whatever reasons. But in tap dancing around those issues, it created the sense in White people that White supremacy and privilege doesn't really exist, and Blacks are just victimizing themselves, asking for handouts.

 Then there's the issue of Dr. Alvin Poussaint, who acted as the consultant for the two latter of Dr. Bill's shows, as well as co-written a book with Dr. Bill entitled C'mon On People...aimed at who? Poor Blacks of course. But just who is Dr. Alvin Poussaint? Well he's a psychiatrist from....

Hold up...Hold up...HOOOOOLD UPPP!

Dost thou not smelleth something fishy in thy nostrils?

What's the relationship between a psychiatrist and a sitcom? There shouldn't be any, at least until you read the book The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard, and begin to make the connection.

The symbol manipulators and their research advisers have developed their depth views of us by sitting at the feet of psychiatrists and social scientists (particularly psychologists and sociologists) who have been hiring themselves out as "practical" consultants or setting up their own research firms. Pg 34

 Dr. Poussaint's take on the working relationship was that he was commisioned to go through the scripts, because the majority of the writers were WHITE, and make sure that there were no nuances or hints of racial stereotyping in the script. Sounds pretty decent right? Dr. Poussaint has openly admitted that many of the Whites in Hollywood are racist, but he only says that within the confines of other cohorts who make that claim as well. I don't recall any real discussion on any major network, including Dr. Bill's favorite network, NBC, about the racism in Hollywood. In a discussion entitled Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power, he had this to say:

I worked in media and often I was surprised. Sometimes very intelligent, mostly white writers, college graduates, held stereotypes about a lot of people. When they wrote them into stories they would write it in a stereotypic point of view. It's like they didn't know any other way to write it. Because frequently they were not involved in a social personal way with Blacks, Latinos or Asian-Americans. And so when they had to write something about them, they had to draw on what they knew and frequently what they knew was what they picked up from the media and frequently that was stereotypical.

Regarding the Disney cartoon moive Tarzan: ...Kids in Africa see it. They see a white man in African who is superior, swinging from trees to trees, they see no Africans. They see gorillas being the ones they relate to. What does it mean to an African child? Is it promoting white supremacy to these Black African children who watch Tarzan in a movie theater in Africa? Of course it will, and it might be promoting it around the world.

 So basically you have this actor who realizes the power of the media in brainwashing and mind manipulation, so much so that he would employ a Black psychiatrist to check the scripts and red flag any nuances that may refer to racial stereotyping, but yet his books and public tirades are hurled against the Black victims? Why do the both of them continue to work together and write books together slamming the actions of the victim, but not notate in public the actions of the aggressor? Do you see my point?

The only time I heard him rail against any actors were against the likes of Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx for their impersonations of Shenehneh and Ugly Wanda, but now I don't even hear that against the likes of Tyler Perry and his Madea impersonations, and Tyler CONTINUES to use this schtick, which has helped make him into arguably the most successful Black male actor/producer in history, but yet there's no tirade against him? What's the deal, Bill? Why not speak against the actors of today? Why not speak against Lupita's role in 12 Years A Slave, or any of these other roles that were meant to demean and stereotype Blacks, like you did Lisa Bonet when she did Angel Heart?

Surely they are educated enough to know the sordid history of Hollywood and the Academy Awards. http://realquwwa.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-baloney-has-first-nameits-o-s-c-r.html Isn't it obvious that these two men, who strut around wearing their doctor titles and claim to be educated, should know that the actions of the poor Blacks are no different than those of Whites during the Depression.? Were they not fighting over alcohol? Were there not White gangsters during that time?  I mean Al Capone wasn't Black to my recollection. And the likes of him were ABOVE THE LAW. Where is it written that the actions of Whites during the Depression were any different? Was crime lesser with them? Where is their evidence which points to the discrepancies among poor Blacks as opposed to poor Whites? Were domestic abuse and prostitution any less with them? Didn't they use dance marathons, drugs, movies and gambling as a means of escape as well? Were the spending habits of poor Whites any different? If so, then why would an executive make this statement, also contained in the book The Hidden Persuaders:

"We can sell these people refrigerators. They may not have room for them, and they will put them on the front porch. They will buy a big automobile and all the luxuries, but they never move up the scale."
—Chicago ad executive, at a forum on lower-class buying habits

 Surely both men should know these things, unless their degrees are only symbolic,  or they are playing the role of "not biting the hand that feeds them", or they are willingly playing a game with people's minds, and engaging in engineering consent of genocide and elimination of the poor and downtrodden masses of Black people.

Now there's word of a new sitcom starring this man slated for possibly the 2014 fall season. One only knows what type of tricks this man has up his sleeves now. My best suggestion is that he quits while he thinks he's ahead.

UN warns of potential genocide in C.A.R.

Funny how nobody notices when Muslims are attacked, especially in Africa, but when they're accused of doing something, the whole world hears about it. 



UN warns of potential genocide in C.A.R.

My Baloney Has A First Name...It's O-S-C-A-R!

Why Halle have to let a white man pop her to get a Oscar? Why Denzel have to be crooked before he took it?

 


These are the words from a popular rap song entitled "Why?" performed by Jadakiss, asking the question why do Blacks have to play the most demeaning roles in order to be recognized by the Academy Awards. The song raised important questions that still resonate among some Blacks in regards to the stereotypical nature of Hollywood, yet in today's so-called Colorblind Society, this is propagated as "haterism" or "jealous", which people throw aside quickly, seeing that Blacks seem to have made progress in America.

Now the latest PBG(Pretty Black Girl) Lupita Nyong'o is all the rave among Hollywood and social media, and with the "achievement" of her Academy Award for her role as a slave and constant rape victim named Patsey in the Academy Award winning film "12 Years A Slave", her brand is now brighter than ever before. I can't seem to go a day or even an hour without checking my FB page and seeing all of the posts and images of how beautiful she is, look at her, you go girl comments from Black women, pictures of her walking alongside White actors and actresses up and down Hollywood, which gives Black women the feeling of accomplishments, progress and intergration, and the idea of not having to deny your Blackness in order to accomplish goals in America.

But is that what we're really seeing here, especially when we take a look at the latest winners and nominees in the last few years, or are we seeing a disturbing pattern that very few are willing to recognize?

This gentlemen here seems to think otherwise. I captured this tweet from one of my FB friends, which started a brief discussion( at least on her post), but others commented on a another post with the usual claims of "steady bitchin" and probably threw in some hater quotes in there too. But let's take a close look at what this gentleman is alleging and let's see if there is some merit to his post.

Let's start with Hattie McDaniel's role in the 1939 movie Gone With The Wind,  a docile maid who although she scolded some of the characters, did not countermand or go against the mistress, Scarlett O' Hara. The movie doesn't show anything about Tara's life outside of being a plantation maid. The movie also casts Butterfly McQueen as a maid, a role which she herself says she didn't like because it was demeaning, especially with the stereotypical catchphrase "I don't know nothin' bout birthin babies." Hattie tried to take the mammy schtick out on the road after the GWTW success, but Blacks weren't having it. On this discussion on FB, one African American woman replied that she would rather win an award as a maid than to play a Black whore around a bunch of Black men. I quickly replied to her that in essence there is no difference between the two, seeing that the slavemaster would sleep with his maids if he wished, and gave her the example of the double-standard of Josephine Baker, and recollected all of the accolades she was given for the strip tease dances she would perform onstage while White men in safari suits stood back and let her do her thing, yet hip hop video queens are chided and ridiculed for doing the same thing around Black men. I still ask what is the difference? I surely don't see any. The illusion of inclusion truly clouds many minds.

We all know Halle Berry's win for her role in the 2001 movie Monster's Ball, where she plays a woman who sleeps with one of her husband's executioners, played by Billy Bob Thornton. We've all seen in some fashion the teary-eyed, overly emotional acceptance speech she gave at the Academy Awards. One has to ask oneself, what did she do that was so deserving of a Best Actress Award in a movie about a Black woman sleeping with a Southern hick officer who help executes her Black husband? I mean really? Halle, who has also received criticism from the Black community for "abandoning Black men" after she claimed in an Ebony article that she would never again marry, only to be found engaged to two different Europeans, is quite a study in exploitation and stereotypes of the Black woman. All one has to do is factor in this movie, as well the movie Swordfish, which has her stripping down to her undies in front of two White men, which she claims in an interview that she felt that her participation in that movie took Black women's sexuality to a direction where it had never been before...Are you freakin' kidding me? Read the interview right here. http://cinema.com/articles/471/swordfish-interview-with-halle-berry.phtml

Halle also gets the dubious distinction, in my opinion, of portraying the skankiest Catwoman character ever... I'm sorry, but I didn't see Anne Hathaway play Catwoman that way, and her outfit definitely was not as trashy either...call me a hater if you wish.

Let's move on to Mo'Nique and her Academy Award winning role as an abusive ghetto mother in the movie Precious, which was also nominated for Best Picture in 2010 as well. Again I ask, what is so significant and complex about playing an abusive, single Black ghetto drama queen that Mo'Nique is given an award? Isn't this the same woman who a few years earlier played a stereotypical, man-chasing, self-absorbed ignorant mother on the series The Parkers? In 2009 it was alleged that she owned the rights to Hattie McDaniels' story. Somehow she too thinks that portraying slaves and demeaning roles and winning an award for it is an accomplishment...Go figure. The illusion of inclusion truly runs deep.

Then there's Denzel Washington, Mr. Classy himself, who was nominated in his stellar role in Malcolm X(1992), a movie produced by Spike Lee,  but missed out somehow to Al Pacino. Now back in the day I would've blown a gasket for that film not receiving an award, but then again, I didn't know back then what I know now, especially after Denzel wins an award for portraying a demented, crooked cop on the take in the movie Training Day(2001). If you're not seeing a pattern here, something's wrong with you.

But let's go further...

Remember that movie Hustle and Flow, a 2005 movie starring Terrence Howard? He received a nomination for playing a pimp/hustler turned rapper named DJay. Now I want to say something before I go further here. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and did not mind the songs in the film, created by a rap group Three 6 Mafia, because I understood the subject matter and the songs Whoop That Trick and It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp, which the latter won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. In the context of the movie, I have no problem. But taken away from the movie, it could come across as something different, so my question is why is that song nominated and chosen as Best Original Song? Given the hypermasculine roles given to Black men in films and music, and also seeing movies like Coonskin and Fritz The Cat and the HBO series The Wire which were passed off as social commentary depicting Blacks in some of the most demeaning fashions,  one cannot help but sense something fishy here. I mean if a Black organization were to give it accolades because it depicted a real life story of marginalized Black people, cool....But this song is selected by people who probably never ventured into inner cities unless they've experienced trying to pick up prostitutes and drugs in these areas. Especially if the allegations are true, that anywhere between 60-75% of rap audiences are White Males, especially between the ages of 18-34. It should make you think something fishy is going on here.

Then there's Ray(2004), where actor Jamie Foxx won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the late musician Ray Charles. While Ray was commended for overcoming his drug problems, his life was certainly not the one you would want to show as a stand up human being, especially with his extramarital affairs. And what is one of the main complaints that has been typecasted of Black men? The inability to commit, irresponsibility, being disrespectful of women, cheating on their wives. One would ask the question if the person was a rapper, would he garner the same respect?  Some people were even under the impression that all of the accolades were heaped upon him due to his illness, including the Grammy award given for his last album before his death.

BUT WAIT...We have The Last King of Scotland (2006), a British film based on a fictional novel, starring Forest Whitaker, who won the Oscar for playing Idi Amin, a Ugandan dictator. This film, like 12 Years A Slave, was produced by Fox Searchlight, which castes a dubious distinction here as well. So now we have Africans portraying roles of African American slaves and wenches, and African Americans portraying crazed African dictators...All from the same production company, and winning Academy Awards for their roles, and still nobody sees anything wrong with this. Truly the illusion of inclusion runs deep.

What makes LKOS so bad is that it's mixed with fiction and actual events, but in an image based society, nobody reads or reads with comprehension. They watch movies and what does this movie show? White guy goes to Africa, gets laid by the native women, in typical African women fashion, 'cause you know they're nymphos, right? Gets next to crazed dictator, finds out he's not all he's cracked up to be, sleeps with dictator's wife, 'cause you know African women are nymphos, right? Finds out dictator slices up wife, dude gets tortured by dictator, manages to escape with his life,  the end. And you wonder why I'm not eager to even watch 12 Years A Slave. So now people can get away with mixing true events and fiction, and it makes a splash at the movies, and African American actors don't see anything wrong with this.

Then there's Will Smith in The Pursuit Of Happyness....I don't even want to go there with that one, because the title of the film tells you what's missing here. What happened to the right to live, which also means the right to have access to a decent quality of life, which is not what this country lives up to? This "personal achievement" actually came at the cost of his wife, who left him after not being able to live in squalor, which didn't make her come out of this movie on a good note either.

So when we get to this years' winners 12 Years A Slave and Lupita Nyong'o, one should not be amazed at the growing amount of discontent among some Blacks who have seen enough slave movies and movies that put Blacks in a marginalized position as incompetent, criminal, and inferior...It also castes a bad reflection of living in an image based society, where as Dr. Gail Dines puts it,  most people are image illiterate, and do not understand the subliminal messages laid out by Hollywood and corporations. I mean instead of ooooing and aaahing over Lupita, why isn't anyone really looking at the theme behind the movie, which basically means no matter how you may claim yourself as free, a Black person is not truly free in this country? And why could they not make a movie about the Dred Scott case? Is it because they can't concentrate on Black women getting raped in a film like that? Now do a movie about Dred Scott, and I might see it, unless Fox Searchlight produces it....and by the way let's not forget the other nominee Burkhad Abdi, the Somali actor who was nominated for his role as a PIRATE in Captain Phillips. Just looks like Black people really are inferior from Hollywoods' standpoint.

All in all, these awards don't mean anything to me anymore.They're just props and PR gadgets if you ask me.

Oscar really has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.  www.qartworks.com

Black unemployment rises to 12.1 percent

Structural Racism...Two words no one wants to talk about...Not even the Black Middle class...They blame it on rap music, saggy pants, and distinctive names. 




Black unemployment rises to 12.1 percent

Buckshot LeFonque - Breakfast @ Denny's (Uptown Version)

love this lick....hang tight