All of what you say makes sense, but it focuses mainly on white media. You can’t control, as you say, what other people say. You can’t control how other people view you. You can’t control racism.
But you can control what you say to yourself. And I would ask: what message does hip hop send? Is it a positive message of hard work, self empowerment, self respect, love and happiness? Some of it, maybe. But most of it? No, not at all. It is misogynistic, power hungry, and violent.
And what message do Democrat politicians–the ones you support, the ones who claim they are on your side–send when they speak continually of the ubiquity of racism, but never speak of opportunities which actually DO exist, such as performing well in school, and the institution of charter schools in inner cities to improve performance?
If you say: “hey, if you graduate high school, don’t get anyone pregnant out of marriage, and show up to work on time, things will get better”, you get called “racist”. Why? This makes no sense, unless the goal is keep things exactly the way they are. My grandparents were poor. So were those of many white people.
There is nothing inherently wrong with pointing to real problems. But there is something profoundly wrong with, in one moment, blaming others for how they treat you, then in the next ignoring all you CAN do to empower yourself. The last 50 years of political history in the black community amounts to demanding fixes of white politicians–and black politicians who in effect report to them–who never deliver them.
Their excuses vary, but amount to “it’s a tough world, kid. Racists everywhere. I did what I could. Vote for me next time, and I’m sure something good will happen.”
When will you wake up? I’m not saying the world is fair, or that racism is a fiction. Clearly, real problems exist, racism is in many cases quite real, and examples of unfairness abound. But ALL OF US deal at times with unfair situations. All of us can honestly say that some parts of our lives suck. PARTICULARLY if all that is claimed to be true is in fact true–if you do as a community face all the objective challenges you say you do–then you need to find your own way, and not depend on people who let you down continually, and have for 5 decades.
To say you want something better, then to demand it of everyone but yourself, is a failure of responsibility, and a de facto plea of helplessness which is undignified, and which will never lead to better outcome of any sort.
I know I’m not supposed to write things like this [this is presumably why it was removed, since somebody’s head would have exploded], but it angers me to see the entirety of the rhetoric involving this issue oriented around, on the one hand, moral sanctimony ,and on the other relentless language of defeat, and defeatism.
Your friends are the ones who demand more of you, not less. They are the ones who see potential, not victimhood. They are the ones who believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself. Your enemies are the ones who tell you, in a thousand ways, that you can’t make it on your own, and there is no use trying, and who, in the process, personally enrich themselves beyond the imagining of most. The wealth of a typical career politician is hard to believe, but the cynicism needed for such a career path–one based on keeping the downtrodden downtrodden, while claiming continually across decades to be their savior–is truly mind-boggling.