One Hundred Percent Haterproof

The Internet is an interesting place.

The BlogWorld is an even MORE interesting place.

All kinds of people blog.

And Bloggers tend to read other bloggers, bond with each other and become a sort of Blog clique.

Some Bloggers on the other hand, find ways to engage in verbal fisticuffs with other Bloggers, based on some sort of difference in opinion or personal ideology.

And then...there are the eternal arguments.


Men and Women, Black Men and Black Women(yes, there is definitely a difference), Gay and Straight, North and South, Black and White, Conservative and Liberal, Religious and Atheists...

Some arguments apparently never get old.

As a person who spent hours, which turned into days, which turned into weeks and months, hanging out in chat rooms (still do at times), people love drama. They thrive off it. They troll the earth, seeking whom they will catch beef with.

I tend to steer clear of such firefights. I am a diplomat by nature. A consensus builder. I am a uniter, not a divider.

OK, THAT one was over the top, but you see my point.

I have always found people who create drama for the sake of drama annoying in ways that are difficult to explain.

After watching another firefight that was laid in the lap of IndigoNikki, served by another blogger named, cutely enough, Miss Ann Thrope, I arrived at a conclusion.

That conclusion is, There is HATE...and there are HATERS.

Haters don't hate, they are just jealous.

Miss A.T. is a hater.

She is not alone.

It is my ferverent belief that many whites who harrumph about the fact that African-Americans can alternately discuss the slings and arrows of outrageous insensitivity and still maintain the colorfulness, that popular culture takes such glee in pilfering for itself.

They are bitchy or self-deprecating; they can elevate sarcasm to heights that would inspire nosebleeds in those with a substandard equilibrium. They can even get poetic and wax eloquently about this or that.

But they can't get gangsta with it.

The reality is that even those black people, like myself, who make a point of speaking in a more verbose than thou tone, can easily get gangsta if so inclined.

You can call it another weapon in the arsenal.

You can call it a cultural phenomenon.

If you are like me, you call it a part of your upbringing and your personality.

I am the first to admit you would not believe me to be one who approves of ebonics, and I believe my typical syntax and writing style bears this out.

The reality is, as a writer, I use all tools at my disposal to make my point, and sometimes ebonics plays a part in that.

I be DAMN if I'ma let muffuccas who don't know me tell me how I'ma talk in my own damn house.

And make no mistake, THIS is the house of DaveyWayne.

We are in an intriguing point in our history as African-Americans. We have arrived at the point where some of us can actually step outside of our racial identity and exist.

Or at least we THINK we can.

Where we have arrived is a point where white folk can conveniently put aside our Blackness installing a bland, transparent see, they-can-be-just-like-us identity that then puts us in the position where we have to defend the indefensible, not because it is inherently Black, but because the people who did it look like us.

This is the kind of thing that happens when Louis Farrakhan says something anti-Semetic and then people run to Barak Obama to have him condemn what he said.

I wish a muffucca would come to me about some shit another cat says. I aint his damn daddy. GTFOHWTBS

I am all for integration.

Well no, actually I am all for living wherever the hell I want. I am not particularly interested in choosing the ethnicity of my neighbors; I am interested in the ability of my neighbors to enhance my living experience and not detract from it.

Keep a nice house
Don't set YOUR shit or mine on fire
Keep your children under control and away from my wrath, for I can assure you that you will have NO trouble from my children.

Good neighborliness knows no color.

I am destined to keep an inherently Black existence. I love my HipHop, I love my family and I love my Black Women, one Black woman in particular.

You cannot make me apologize for who I am. I will not blame whatever YOU do not feel is appropriate behavior on slavery or Jim Crow, I will only say it is what it is, and my people, yes MY people reap the whirlwind as a result of their thoughts and actions. But they will always be MY people, from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to Clarence the Black Panther down the road, to Clarence the old man who shines my shoes at the barber shop, to Thomas my favorite male New Yorker, to Uncle Thomas, whomever he might be.

I do not tell them how to act, although I do have certain hopes and wishes for them.
I do not allow them to tell ME how to act, because while I love them, I will not let ANYONE define me.

SO YOU KNOW MUFFUGGIN WELL I AIN'T GONNA LET NO OFAYS DEFINE ME.
And that's on my granny.

Please understand, I cannot and do not wish to speak for my fellow Black folk, I only speak for my own experiences. Anyone who portends to speak for ALL Black folk is fooling both YOU and themselves. You should walk away from them forthwith.

What I DO say, is that the idea of a Colorblind society is and always will be fiercely limited, Especially for the lives of African-Americans. From the time we arrived on these shores, whether in shackles or NOT, our distinctions have distinguished us from everyone else.

NO ONE shares the experience that we have in our admittance to American Culture.

The vast majority of our immigration stories bear no resemblence to the traditional stories that emerge from the shadow of Ellis Island.

The select few of them that do cannot possibly counteract the effect of the millions of other stories. Our story is unique, and how someone with no connection to it can even form their fingers to type in rebuke to how we choose to play this out is proof positive of the very condescending nature Nikki illuminated in the first place.

At the end of the day, I get sick of bloggers and cultural critics who sit there and pontificate about how retarded we are for wearing our Blackness the way we do when they don't have to wear it.


P.S. And for the love of GOD....stop PICKING AND CHOOSING WHICH BLACK PEOPLE I AM SUPPOSED TO EMULATE.