Note to the wise:

Sometimes I think that publications intended or targeted mainly at white audiences—both print and broadcast—think to themselves as they go through production and editing and the process of deciding on which stories to include:

Well even though this story could (and will) definitely fall into the category of “touch-and-go,” due to its caustic nature and scathing tone, since the author is black, we’ll let it slide. I mean, it’s not like we’ll get the slack from it. It’ll just be another chance for black people to come up in the world—to address their problems and get their issues with each other out on the table. As a matter of fact, it would be a certain disservice of us to not publish this controversial, and, if we might mention very well-written (and edited), article. Indeed, let’s go to print.*

And you know, sometimes I feel them. I mean we, as black people seldom know how to or where to direct our frustrations, and trust me, they are many. But dayum, it would be nice if every now and then, the media moguls of this here country would step back and perhaps deal the fairer race (I’m talking inner beauty here, guys) one or both of those wonderful gifts God grants us all every day: grace and mercy. It’s not like they (ofays…look it up) have much more than their own persons to worry about or concern themselves with, seeing as how seldom do they even care enough about their less fortunate brethren who are incarcerated, just flat-out crazy or poor, to write degrading articles about them or to deliver tirades on stages across the country (shoutout to the man with the master [show]?) or produce any reaction of the sort. For the more generally termed “fairer race” those less fortunate members are by skin only—hardly acknowledged by blood—and the name they use, quite freely might I add (and usually very uncomfortably for ME), is “white trash”…drop the “poor” for good measure.

When your daddy was rich and your momma looked good for real—not just in a really great song—you really do get to enjoy Summertime in places like the Hamptons and the Catskills, where only the lucky little size 2 friends who happen to be a bit browner, are brought for some extra fun and to show that “see, I have black friends too!”

But truly this is not a rant against my sisters and brothers from very different mothers. This is just a reaction to the beginning of an article, written by a black man for a white magazine (and please don’t say it’s not a white magazine when we have to beg our way onto the pages…or better, when the only articles truly directed at us are against us—think about it), that, perhaps quite accurate in its depiction of some of the race’s problems, may turn several readers away, just because of the not-so-sweet beginnings it speaks and the consciousness previously held by those very readers. Even a highly educated person (yes, just like me) might be offended by the brass nature. But still I rise…and read on. I’m sure there is something great and profound to be extracted from these words. Stay posted.

…and yes I did go on to read the rest, but I’m a reactionary every now and then. Aren’t we all?

p.s. the article, by the way, is unfortunately as closed-minded as the opening paragraph which prompted this piece. Sad…it had such a potential to actually say something. I found only a glimpse of sense in the pages and PAGES of chaff at its very end:

"We came up from slavery to freedom without regard for the Constitution, which gave us nothing, and the plantation masters, who gave us the whip. We came up from oppression to civil rights without regard for hurled bricks and sicced police dogs. Water hoses. The word nigger.
This, then, is my directive: Let us achieve with equal disregard for the limitations of racism…"

This is not a new suggestion, but it’s something remotely useful that the reader, slightly disgusted and very disappointed at having just spent so much time and potential brain power if not eye muscles, may appreciate in the midst of it all.

*Prompted by the first paragraph of “The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger,” Esquire, December 2006, Volume 146, Issue 6. http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/061105_mfe_December_06_Essay_1.html