This mess right here. I knew it would be bad when it started off with the oft heard excuse of wearing the confederate flag as just being a symbol of pride in heritage. I went to high school in the south, and I expected the confederate flag waving, and while it didn’t really get under my skin, it will never make sense to me. What are you proud of? Being part of a section of the country so hell bent on continuing the practice of human subjugation, human trafficking, and legalized rape, that you actually preferred to secede and make your own country rather than grant human rights to millions of people based solely on their skin color? Okay. I guess I can see where you take pride in that. *side eye*
We’re one of the only countries that enacted a massive international human rights violation–the holocaust of African peoples–that still glorifies the “good-ole days” by turning past plantations into country clubs, legalizing terrorist organizations under free speech (the KKK), and waving around a symbol of that tragedy as a point of pride. Wave a Nazi flag, you’ll likely be fined or go to jail; wave a confederate flag and you’ll likely get a rally cry for southern pride.
But that aside, this song is just all sorts of crazy. I literally had to press pause for a minute after LL Cool J came in with his verse so that I could collect myself from the sick feeling that was creeping into my throat.
“If you don’t judge my do-rag, I won’t judge your red flag; if you don’t judge my gold chains, I’ll forget the iron chains”
Right. Because wearing a do-rag and waving a red flag are totally comparable–one, a symbol of maintaining one’s hair, that often gets negatively stereotyped as a symbol of black urbanity and (unrightfully) “thug life;” the other a symbol of maintaining a lifestyle dedicated to the spoils of human trafficking, violence, rape, and torture.
I can totally see how if (white) society would just stop judging certain aspects of black culture, then black people could in turn just let the whole racism thing be in the past. Like Brad Paisley said–just “let bygones be bygones” so that we can just all have southern pride. It could all be so simple. Right guys?
Between 1) this song, 2) Abigail Fisher suing University of Texas because she felt that she didn’t get in because she was white (read: because some brown person took my spot)–even though she got into her second choice and actually has employment post bachelors degree, which most people–white, black, purple or otherwise–can’t even say, and 3) this most recent teenage girl who also felt that not getting into three of the most competitive colleges in the world MUST have been because she was the wrong color, i.e. white—I need a vacation outside of the US. This is just too much foolishness.
I really wish people would pick up a history book (or two, or ten, or twenty), OUTSIDE of our piss poor educational system’s reading list that does it’s best to revise history, and get some perspective. There’s really no excuse for “accidental racism” anymore. Our problem isn’t that we don’t know how to let things be in the past, our problem is that we’ve never dealt with the past. Old dirty wounds don’t heal, they fester; and this wound has been festering for upwards of a century. It’s gangrenous. It’s disgusting.
like black butterflies 