@stanleybmanly The one thing certain is that there are as many disparities in the views of individuals in any collection of black folks as there will be among their white counterparts.
Even the usage of Black folk can incite some people. It is as if there is an unwritten rule that certain phrases or words cannot ever be used, and some that can be used, but only if you are Black or considered Black. For instance, the ”N” word, at least around here, is used by young people to depict themselves, with impunity. The only way you can say it even among friends you know if you are not Black but Hispanic, Asian and the likes you have to be so “in” that you can see the pink pucker of their sphincter .
That lusting for blondes thing always fascinated me. Let’s suppose for a moment that it’s true. Should anyone be surprised that a stereotype universally hyped as THE benchmark for beauty and perfection should somehow leak into the consciousness of a black man born and reared in the midst of the propaganda
As I got older I found myself having the desire to land a Blonde. The media (controlled by white people) plied me with ads, movies, etc. that made Bo Derek, Ursula Andress (even though she was more a “”dirty Blond “ than platinum), Erika Eleniak (Baywatch babe), and the likes, the crème de la cream of women; the gold standard. I bought into it, for a while, if I drank this beer, drove that car, had those sunglasses, I can get the gold standard of women. If the media wanted me to not desire Blondes I would think they would have had other options, but they did not. If you chum the water expecting a Great White to show up, Mako, Thresher, and other sharks will not know that, chum is chum.
The overall view of blacks in this country that their road is paved less smoothly than their white peers, and the UNIVERSAL complaint from ALL black folks regardless of educational, social or financial status when it comes treatment at the hands of the police.
It might have been at some time, and maybe in a few small pockets, but as long as you say it is systemic, Black people are made victims. When I tell people I am against affirmative action, you need a flame retardant suit to beat back the napalm hurled. I think if I am qualified, give me the job, don’t give me the job because you have to have some “color” in the office and I was not qualified to do the work, or there were more qualified people.
How the cops treat you can or won’t make a difference. I have known Black people who one would call professional, who got pulled over and when they had all of their ducks in a row, the cop allowed them on their way with some weak explanation why they got stopped. There are cops who have the mindset that a Black person in a nice car is a dealer or the car is not his. This is not ALL cops, but there are enough, just as depending where you are if a cop hears a Hispanic person that doesn’t know English they think “illegal” first.
@CWOTUS Specifically, I have wondered what defect must exist in a lot of black culture (not all blacks, obviously; I don’t generalize to that extent) that punishes a child for “talking white”.
Talk white, act white, listen to white people music, I never really got that, but I somewhat understand that. Let me see if I can shed light from my experiences. Black people here have no native tongue, no matter where your ancestors came from (if you were lucky enough to find out or know) through slavery was lost. Proper English was the language of the ”oppressor”, or ”them”, regardless it was the proper usage. So I believe to counter that, as the cultural revolution of the 60s sought to break away from mom and dad’s rule, traditions, and beliefs, Black people (for lack of a better word) bastardize the English language to make a language out of it that supposedly represented us as a people, independent of white people. Take that further into gangs and cliques that used further code to speak of things in the open but in secret, and many, many dialects spawned. To embrace what white people embraced was kind of a tacit admission that what you had, or was left with, was not good enough; at least that is what was thought by many, at least around here. I did not make friends listening to Queen, Yes, Lead Zeppelin, Uriah Heap, The Who, etc. back in high school when everyone else (who were Black-) seemed to only want to listen to R&B, disco, blues or Funk.—When I discovered Luciano Pavarotti and got into opera I really blew some minds.
@Espiritus_Corvus Most of the American black people with whom I came in contact, mostly people of the lowest economic strata, came off as rude, aggressive and behaved as if they were angry all the time.
I will catch flax for this, some are angry all of the time because they feel entitled, and because it is not wrapped up and handed to them, they have to blame someone for their hard life. They won’t blame their absentee father or their mother strung out on drugs, because those are byproducts of them not being handed the American Way. Can it be any income level? Yes, but those at the bottom enjoy less of what the American Dream is supposed to be than the Black attorney pulling in a upper 6 to 7 figure income. They can’t get to the ”Man” of the power brokers, but they can get to you, so you become the convenient whipping boy.