wrestlers, other than marginalize them as black wrestlers.

I imagine Vince sitting there, musing, finally snapping after failing to come up with anything, shouting "Fuck it. Just do some black shit. Whatever it is you people like, do that. Hey, you, Coffee, you have dreadlocks. Jim, get him some reggae music. Coffee, get an accent. And smile, dammit."

Now, I’ve got no beef with using cultural elements in these characters, however WWE seems to have this notion that being black is inherently a gimmick in itself and when they actually find something that works that’s outside the box, they fucking drop it like a bad habit.

R-Truth, by NO means whatsoever, had any business being in the main event scene when he was. But ‘Little Jimmy’ was gold. That shit worked like a charm. He got over with something clever, fresh, and entertaining. The crowd could actually engage with him in an interesting way instead of simply shouting “what’s up!” to that awful entrance theme of his.

Remember how Kofi was starting to develop during that feud with Orton? Remember how that just went away? Yeah. I don’t even like Kofi like that but he looked legit for a minute.

Big E is a fucking beast who can literally run people over. He can actually be entertaining on the mic in the right situations. Instead we get him tapping to the Camel Clutch to PPV’s in a row. He needs a new finish, but that’s beside the point. Being big & black is basically his angle. Him in the red, white, & blue getup and waving the flag worked. Dude’s got that All-American look and feel anyways. Nope, ho his ass out to the Rusky two months running. They had Big E do the job, but they’re going to let Swagger get the job done at SS.

Xavier Woods has a fresh character and I’ll be interested to see how they play this, but I’ve got little faith that this will actually be respectfully done in a way that doesn’t end with their stable being cast as The Uppity Negroes. Hell, I’d bet my paycheck Vince would fucking love that name.

Prime Time Players also come to mind. They had momentum, they got over. They had that black frat thing going and Darren Young fucking KILLED with that pick. They were developing little mannerisms that started to click with the crowd and then they split the team.