http://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/straight-black-men-are-the-white-people-of-black-people-1814157214


Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People


Damon Young
Tuesday 4:11pmFiled to: BLACK WOMEN
727.9K
1.6K
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David Jacobs via YouTube screenshot
It feels counterintuitive to suggest that straight black men as a whole possess any sort of privilege—particularly the type of privilege created for and protected by whiteness. In America, we are near or at the bottom in every relevant metric determining quality of life. Our arrest and incarceration rates, our likelihood of dying a violent death, our likelihood of graduating high school and attending college, our employment rates, our average net worth, our likelihood of surviving past 70—I could continue, but the point is clear.

But assessing our privilege (or lack thereof) on these facts considers only our relationship with whiteness and with America. Intraracially, however, our relationship to and with black women is not unlike whiteness’s relationship to us. In fact, it’s eerily similar.

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We’re the ones for whom the first black president created an entire initiative to assist and uplift. We’re the ones whose beatings and deaths at the hands of the police galvanize the community in a way that the beatings and sexual assaults and deaths that those same police inflict upon black women do not. We’re the ones whose mistreatment inspired a boycott of the NFL despite the NFL’s long history of mishandling and outright ignoring far worse crimes against black women. We are the ones who get the biggest seat at the table and the biggest piece of chicken at the table despite making the smallest contribution to the meal.

And nowhere is this more evident than when considering the collective danger we pose to black women and our collective lack of willingness to accept and make amends for that truth. It’s a damning and depressing paradox. When speaking about race and racism, we want our concerns and our worries and our fears to be acknowledged. We want white people to at least make an effort to understand that our reality is different from theirs and that white supremacy is a vital and inextricable part of America’s foundation, and we grow frustrated when they refuse to acknowledge their role—historically and presently—in propagating it.

When the racism isn’t blatant or doesn’t appear to exist at all, we want them to give us the benefit of the doubt. Because we’ve trained ourselves to be able to sense it—even in minute and barely perceptible amounts—because our safety depends on our recognition of it. We share how it feels to be stopped by a police officer, or perhaps to walk into an all-white bar and have each eye trained on us, or perhaps to jaunt down a street in an all-white neighborhood, and we want them to understand how words and gestures they consider to be innocuous can be threatening, even if there’s no intention of malice.

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Although we recognize that not all white people are actively racist, we want them to accept that all benefit from racism, and we become annoyed when individual whites take personal exception and center themselves in any conversation about race, claiming to be one of the “good ones” and wishing for us to stop and acknowledge their goodness.

But when black women share that we pose the same existential and literal danger to them that whiteness does to us; and when black women ask us to give them the benefit of the doubt about street harassment and sexual assault and other forms of harassment and violence we might not personally witness; and when black women tell us that allowing our cousins and brothers and co-workers and niggas to use misogynistic language propagates that culture of danger; and when black women admit how scary it can be to get followed and approached by a man while waiting for a bus or walking home from work; and when black women articulate how hurtful it is for our reactions to domestic abuse and their rapes and murders to be “what women need to do differently to prevent this from happening to them” instead of “what we (men) need to do differently to prevent us from doing this to them,” their words are met with resistance and outright pushback. After demanding from white people that we’re listened to and believed and that our livelihoods are considered, our ears shut off and hearts shut down when black women are pleading with us.

Making things worse is that black women and girls are also black people in America—a fact we seem to forget whenever possessing a bad memory is convenient. The effects of racism—metaphysical and literal—and the existential dread and dangers felt when existing while black are not exclusive to black men and boys. They face the same racisms we do and the same doubts from whites about whether the racism actually exists that we do, and then they’re forced to attempt to convince their brothers and partners and friends and fathers and cousins and lovers of the dangers of existing as black women, and they’re met with the same doubts. The same resistance. The same questions. They are not believed in the (predominantly white) world or in their (predominantly black) communities. And we (black men) remain either uninterested in sincerely addressing and destructing this culture of danger and pervasive doubt or refuse to admit it even exists.


I’m not quite sure where I first heard “straight black men are the white people of black people.” I know I read a version of it recently in Saki Benibo’s “The 4:44 Effect.” Mela Machinko tweeted, “Cishet black men are the white people of black people” over a year ago and apparently received so much criticism for it that she temporarily locked her account. But in a conversation we had earlier today, she shared that her tweet was actually a revision of another tweet she’d read. (A month after Mela’s tweet, it was revised again by @rodimusprime.) I also know that I’ve read pieces and been a part of conversations connecting our (black men’s) relationships with black women to the relationships we have with white people but never quite heard it articulated this way.

Either way, that statement, that phrasing and what they suggest are shocking and succinct: simple, subtle and fucking scary.

And it’s true.

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xc4K5UDDZs

I strongly urge everyone who read the article to
watch this video. There are so many gems that
it's difficult to summarize.
It's the weekend, enjoy it.

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA67gSFeuH8&t=770s

but anyone with half a sense and research could do that.

<----

Soundcloud.com/aquil84

(HIP HOP)
http://aquil.bandcamp.com

I love that Boogie and Denny are the same person. I would contribute money for y'all to meet up in real life and hang out exchanging shitty youtube links about stuff.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

Made me re-evaluate some of my feminist perspectives.

>Made me re-evaluate some of my feminist perspectives.


That's wassup.

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

cause he made some valid points

No one is ever able to dispute it

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

don't even know why I asked.

We got a poast tho so whatever I guess.

But I keep getting dissapointed

bell hooks don't support these dumb ass twitter chicks and simps

frances beal don't support this shit

julianne malveaux?

murray?

I mean, really, who other than some bum bitches on twitter with NO BONFIDES and their simps supports this idea?

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Steph: I was just fooling about

Kyrie: I wasn't.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OWNspU_yE

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=13051965&mesg_id=13051965&listing_type=search#13052388


And look how reply 75 in that post sarcastically
denies what I'm saying, but Mr. Young here gets
straight to the point about who this contingent
wants to attack in service of their white masters...
STRAIGHT Black men.
It may take years to prove me right. But I keep
telling yall it'll happen sooner or later.

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

The title of the article isn't exactly wrong. Straight black men have one out of the three facets of intersectional theory. They're black....but they're also male and straight. So they don't carry very much currency in the intersectional world. They're 2/3irds the oppressor in that world. So it's really not that far off to say they will be treated pretty similarly to white men by intersectional theorists. Even though it's absolutely ridiculous to assert that black females come anywhere CLOSE to experiencing the same treatment by police that black men do (or white men for that matter). But these movements don't value statistical evidence. In fact...they claim statistical evidence is just a manifestation of their oppression.

the bus in favor of the state being the protector and provider.

Rest In Peace, Bad News Brown

Allegorically speaking

in a purely emotional context: the idea that white people and Black men both suck. That's the gist of the article and of any co-signs it gets.

The actual logic is tortured and doesn't really work (what real control do Black men have vis-a-vis Black women in 2017? Lol).

Another thing Damon is misstepping on here is that he's taking Black women complaining about Black men as 100% sincere. It's not. Women of all races complain about their men as a passtime. It's often a bonding thing women do amongst themselves and they're often not completely serious about it.

Damon's livelihood for the last 6 or 7 years has depended on writing for and interacting with the women of VSB. In that time it's reasonable to think that he's absorbed alot of what they throw at him and now he's regurgitating it.

>
>The actual logic is tortured and doesn't really work (what
>real control do Black men have vis-a-vis Black women in 2017?
>Lol).
>


Black neighborhoods have a male culture where certain male things "dominate"

If gay males say the way straight males act in a culture "oppresses" them, people would not be quick to say that straight culture is NOT "controlling" gay males when the cultural things go down that gay males don't like.

so....

when cultural things go down in Black neighborhoods of a Black male culture that Black women don't like (and they speak of these things a lot - almost every month at my church I hear talk of high domestic violence is in the Black community), Black women can say these things are "oppressing" them without Black men supposedly having "real control" over them.

And that happens alot and it's an ugly problem.

I guess the question is, does the prevalence of widespread Black male wrongdoing imply that men are being "allowed" to do these things? I don't think so. I think we all have agency, and that no one and nothing is "permitting" all these bad things to happen.

white supremacy and racism.

Economic.

Legal.

Educational.

Media.

Military.

White people control all of that stuff. Black men control none of it. THAT is why the analogy is silly.

The analogy works within the context of how you referenced it: Black men do terrible, shitty things to Black women, just like white people do to us.

>The analogy works within the context of how you referenced it:
>Black men do terrible, shitty things to Black women, just like
>white people do to us.

It doesn't even work within that context, because
Black women do "terrible, shitty things" to Black
men and boys as well, as Black PEOPLE are victims
who live in close proximity.

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

>Black neighborhoods have a male culture where certain male
>things "dominate"

Even the utterly ridiculous black male privilege
checklist admitted that the Black community is
matriarchal, so where have you gotten the idea
that we have a "male culture" in Black neighborhoods?

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Days like this I miss Sha Mecca

come from somewhere


Those things are not "matriarchal" - they are very male-dominating things.

It's been explored over and over how the hip-hop culture shapes how men act, esp. towards women.


To ignore this Black male culture is false.

The full argument includes what you just mentioned, plus that Black people are:

- Too sexual/ having too many babies
- Too unconcerned with education
- Generally violent
- Given to stealing
- Lazy

etc.

It's a very conservative argument, one you often used to hear from right-wingers and old 90's style Family Values conservatives.

conservatives talk about it.

Hip-hop shapes how young men act - to say that hasn't been explored and examined is false

Just because right-wing people like to explore it and label it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

is backwards.

but cultures get examined - warts and all

If people examine how white culture leads to all the negative stuff white people have done historically, or how police culture leads to what police have done historically, Black male culture can be examined too, no matter how much negative stuff is examined in the process.

Because there are negative things to be found doesn't mean it is wrong to explore Black male culture.

You can't hold the perspective you're talking about and deny that Black culture is backwards at the same time. Either both ideas are true or neither of them are.

"the prevalence of widespread Black male wrongdoing"

to say that aspect has no connection to Black male culture, esp. seeing how pervasive hip-hop is in the Black community - we just had a recent post talking about the glamorization of pimping - where drug dealing, another big item of hip-hop as well, was brought up:

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=13193840&mesg_id=13193840&listing_type=search


you and a lot of other people here have no problem examining other cultures for negatives things (white, police, there was even 2 recent posts exploring why latinos/hispanics seem to support President Trump)


so....

the people who don't want to admit there is a Black male culture with negative things, yet all these other cultures can be looked at, want to have it "both ways."

it all.

Black male hip-hop

yep


they all will