The World In Black & Yellow
What Gangsta Culture Says About Black America
The Relevance of Physical Signs
There’s a lot we can do in private, in quiet, in silence, in our
prayer closet, our secret room. But inner convictions manifest
themselves as outward, physical signs. Just as God required a
physical sign of obedience for His judgment to pass over the
children of Israel (Exodus 12), Satan requires an outward
expression of an inner conviction. The man difference being an
inner conviction to God requires a conscious acknowledgement of
and submission to Him and His righteousness. Loyalty to Satan
can be achieved even if the loyalist scoffs at or denies Satan’s
very existence. In other words, you don’t need to believe in the
devil to be owned, lock stock and boxer drawers by him. Dismiss
this teaching as reactionary or extreme, the truth is you are
either with God or not with God, and your choice will manifest
itself outwardly in physical signs.
Just as God protected the Hebrews living amongst the Egyptians
during the devastation of the first 9 plagues, the physical sign
of obedience written in blood caused the destroyer to pass over
His People. Every first born in Egypt died that night, both man
and beast, including Pharaoh’s son.
Why Sons are So Important
Despite modern attempts at gender neutrality, the bible indeed
teaches that man (and, by extension, mankind) was created in
God’s image. The male of the species was created first. This is
not intended as sexist argument or rationale to oppress women,
but to make the point of the enemy’s pure hatred for God’s
creation. Biblical scholars as well as secular scientists point
toward the African continent as the likely origin of human
beings. Like my point about the male creation, this statement is
not about race or even racism, but to make this supposition:
what if the black male was, in fact, the first of God’s
creation? How much moreso would Satan hate and despise the black
male? How would that hate manifest itself over the course of
history?
If the black male represents the origin of God’s creation, in
God’s image, on earth, then Satan would stop at nothing to
deceive, mislead and demean the black male; to break him,
humiliate him, and, worse, to have him actually defending his
own demeaning, shuffling around with his buttocks exposed, as a
“social expression.” I submit that, from the dawn of creation,
the black male has been a special and favorite target of the
enemy of God. That we should suffer in every way imaginable, and
that God’s divine purpose for mankind would be corrupted and
profaned.
In that view, taking on this rebellious (and ridiculous) look is
tantamount to taking the sign of the beast. God does not inspire
His people to behave or dress in unseemly ways. Much as I hate
to sound like the extremist, reactionary preachers I grew up
under, there really is a stark difference between rebellious
teens growing afros (which was erroneously preached against back
in the day) and teens blaspheming God by layering themselves
with occult piercings and symbols and wandering the streets with
their buttocks exposed. The only reason we don’t call this what
it is—witchcraft—is we’re either too uninformed, too lazy, too
selfish, or too weak in Christ to acknowledge the satanic
indoctrination of our children—particularly the young black
male—that’s going on in plain sight, right before our eyes.
No, this is not a joke. But it should be. A garter belt for ignorant black men, created by an enterprising white man.
Macy's is considering carrying them
For me, when I was a kid, it was simple: no secular music. Period.
And, mind you, the secular music of the day was The Jackson
Five—five Jehovah’s Witness boys singing G-rated pop tunes about
alphabet letters. The raunchiest lyrics of the day flew well
above my radar, interpolations of Otis Redding’s Respect
or the Rolling Stones’ (Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.
Nothing even remotely like the degrading filth that routinely
passes for entertainment today. I realize that makes me sound
old or out of touch, and perhaps I am guilty of both. But even a
child can see music—specifically music targeted to youth (as
most pop music is)—has become increasingly depraved over the
past decades. I used to scoff at the Footloose mentality
of 60’s church folk, railing on against wonderful art like
Aretha’s Natural Woman because of its sensuality or
taking James Brown to task for his Cold Sweat hedonism.
But the sheer unadulterated profaneness of music streaming 24/7
to today’s youth cannot be described any other way. It is
occult. This stuff, by any reasonably objective standard, is
filth. Evil.
“Wide receiver weezy throw da p-ssy at me. Ya p-ssy lips
smilin' I make da p-ssy happy. Take your panties off, the p-ssy
lookin at me.” —Lil’ Wayne
“Shut up slut, you're causing too much chaos. Just bend over
and take it like a slut, OK Ma? 'Oh, now he's raping his own
mother, abusing a whore, snorting coke, and we gave him the
Rolling Stone cover?'” —Eminem "Kill You"
“Skeet skeet all up your in your face girl now open your
mouth and tell me how I taste, girl. Peaches and cream drippin
down our waste girl. Now give it to me. I don't like fake girls
she'll be my f--k affairrrrr skeet skeet up in her hairrrrrr.
Babyyyy don't be so scaredddd I got a 12 incherrrrr” —Lil
Jon & The East Side Boyz "Get Low"
It's not funny. This stuff is satanic. Antichrist. And
Chrysler’s got
Eminem selling cars
for Pete’s sake. This is the general quality of the sexual and
violent imagery regularly invoked by “mainstream” music artists.
This is the stuff your kid is listening to, the imagery they are
seeing. These are the values they are learning.
I suppose what I resent most is the pervasive insistence that
this is black culture, that this is mainstream and people who do
not embrace it are outside the norm, are somehow defective.
In the overall scheme of things, the cleaned-up version of Black & Yellow,
Wiz Khalifa's homage to his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, is
hardly the worst thing in the world. Still, Khalifa--a young,
East Coast Lil' Wayne-esque behind-the-beat stylized performer whom I'd
never heard of before working on this piece--seems to be a
reasonably likeable and almost playful young man. He is
nonetheless immersed in false values as he blithely goes about
the business of making Atlantic Records rich. Black And
Yellow contains the usual litany of braggadocio over
material possessions, girls and of course, rap prowess. Missing
is any violence or threat thereof, and all the girls are (in
this version, at least) fully clothed. Nobody appears to be
drinking or smoking dope in the video, but Khalifa himself has
posed for the ubiquitous (and tired) dope-exhaling headshot for
his much-less positive and less-creative On My Level. He
is likewise heavily tatted up and, despite his great wealth,
seems to prefer wife beater tees and jeans (which, thankfully,
appear to be pulled all the way up). Had Khalifa or his
handlers thought to include even one sequence of this young man
studying for an exam or, say, going to work, taking care of his
home or family or, heck, being responsible in any way at all, I
might grant him some grudging applause for at least not being
heinous. Then again, the explicit "G-Mix" version, which
includes the likewise ubiquitous Snoop Dogg and others, includes
the standard array of demeaning cusses, so maybe not. It amazes
me that record labels or the acts themselves haven't figured
this out: how to rope in parents: just clean up the language and
toss in a few clips of these guys doing positive
things--anything at all positive, raking the yard, walking the
dog--and their sales would likely double. As is, Khalifa
contented himself with the usual partying, huge crowds
celebrating him, showing off his bling (a huge nameplate "T.God"),
and driving recklessly without a seatbelt. Watching the happy
football tailgate song Black And Yellow and the still-born
celebration of drugs, sex and alcohol On My Level, I
can't help but wonder how amazing and powerful this talented
young man might be if he would only turn his gifts over to
God. The emptiness at the center of his creative vision is both stark
and telling.
Now, clearly, the church is partly to blame.
Far too many of our churches have inexcusably
weak and
ineffective youth and young adult
ministries. Parents,
especially busy working single moms, are simply outgunned. Far
too many of our churches are run by the Old Hats because middle
age and young adults are either too busy or too self-absorbed to
measurably involve themselves in the lives of young people. Old
Hats tend to be disconnected from youth, envious of youth,
resentful of youth. Go over there and play. The worship
experience is designed by the Old Hats and run by the Old Hats
with their Old Hat mentality. The new trend is to split
everybody up—send the children down there, send the teens over
to the school auditorium where they can sag and hoop and jump
around. But all that does is divide up a family that’s likely
far too divided already. As Elder Lewis points out, the hippity-hop
youth service does not prepare youth for matriculation into then
main worship experience because, in general, the jump-around
high-voltage hip-hop service demonstrates a level of contempt
for the mainstream service. It, therefore, sets youth on a
separate track from adults, rather than to teach and grow and
move toward reconciliation. What Elder Lewis does not address is
the church’s failure to make their general worship service more
inclusive. The demand seems to be to force youth to conform to
them, to the Old Hats. The Old Hats rarely move toward the youth
and, usually, do so only under protest. This innate selfishness
is what destroys faith and trust, young people recognize
selfishness when they experience it. The main worship service
atmosphere is typically hostile to youth. Therefore, efforts to
point them toward that Old Hat experience are themselves
intrinsically selfish. What needs to happen is a process of
reevaluation and reconciliation: the main worship service
becoming more inclusive and culturally diverse. Not hippity-hoppity but not 24/7 Mahalia Jackson, either. Diversity
is a difficult challenge because most of us like only one kind
of pie. I know of fairly few people whose musical palette
extends much beyond whatever rut they’ve grown up in. Adults
like R&B. Youth like hip-hop. I know fairly few black youth who
enjoy rock music. I know of no white youth who enjoy black
Gospel. This is mainly about exposure and patience. The pastor
needs to teach patience: the Old Hats need to be patient with
youth and vice versa. Over time, this will produce diversity as
our cultural palette expands and we stop turning each other off
whenever the worship activity shifts away from what we like and
are familiar with.
I thought the best part of John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood was
how actor Laurence Fishburne, in his pre-Morbius incarnation,
existed outside of the prism—or should I say prison—of urban
black culture. Fisburnes’s Furious Styles was, as was his
Morbius in The Matrix, his own man, his own invention, walking
in his own revelation from God at his own pace and in his own
direction. Being your own person requires courage, something
many of us lack. We desire friends more than identity, community
more than individuality. The quietness inside our head can be
frightening, even threatening, so we fill every moment of every
day with noise and people and events. We are blindfolded and
deafened by televisions and iPods, drowning in the newest beats,
the latest fashions. Dese dem and doze. Da flava.
Few things drive me to rage quicker than seeing these ignorant
teens walking around with their pants sagging and their
underwear showing. These young men are emulating and glamorizing
prison life, a siege mentality whose social moirés are organized
around violence: Recreation under threat of violence.
Socialization under threat of violence. Weakness exploited by
strength. Emotional bonding under duress. Sexual intimacy
contorted by shame, violent sexual exploitation or fear thereof.
This is the culture being glamorized by our young men, by your
son. It’s not cute. It’s not a fad. It is pathetic and
pathological. I Need To Fit In. Validate Me. I Have No Opinion
Of My Own. I am Not An Individual. I Have No Intellectual
Propensity. Don’t Hire Me.
This phenomena is largely fueled and financed by you, the parent. Yes you. Because you keep paying that cable bill. That internet connection fee. That cell phone bill. If your kid has a job or is slinging dope, there’s not much you can do about any of it. But our young boys, your child who has not yet bought into this, you can get in front of some of that simply by stop being a moron. Forget parental controls—DON’T WATCH TV. PERIOD. This is where they learn these things. This is where they see this behavior accepted as reasonable and normal. If they never saw it on TV, they’d be less likely to simply accept it when they ran into it on the street. The world is feeding your children a steady diet of lies, and you yourself are paying for it. It is the most confounding cultural evolution I’ve ever seen: the utter denigration of a race, paid for by the very race that is being denigrated. You want to improve things for your children? Stop signing those checks. The cause and effect is so obvious, so simple, that it simply astounds me that we have all of these symposiums, all of these conventions, all these speeches, all of these sermons, all these books, parents pulling their hair out, wailing,. Crying out to the Lord. IDIOT: TURN YOUR TV OFF. Stop paying that cable bill. Stop allowing that demonic, antichrist mess in your house.
The bottom line is we are simply cowards.
We fret and worry and complain and toss and turn at night, wring
our hands, cry, stomp, fall over—but we are simply unwilling to
do what needs to be done. We are lazy and selfish. We have to
have the idiot box on day and night, while wondering why our
sons and daughters are being so negatively influenced. Mom, Dad,
if that’s your son walking around looking like a gay hooker,
his pants sagging around his thighs and his nasty drawers
exposed to the world, I frankly have no sympathy for you. Every
month you sign that check. Every month you load him up with more
propaganda, more lies. Deze, dem, doze. Your son looks like an
idiot. An idiot selling butt, no less. And you have only
yourself to blame.
I am so put off by what passes for black culture in this
country, that I find myself screaming for a divorce. People who
deal in absolutes assume I want to be white—that this is an
either/or proposition. I reject the premise that this ignorance
is black culture. This is black denigration, funded by ignorant
blacks themselves who create enormous profits for multinational
corporations, none of which—none—are owned by majority black
stockholders. We are lining the pockets of selfish and untimely
evil men and women who, like tobacco pushers, exploit
weak-minded individuals for monetary gain. I reject this dress
code, this vile “music,” this cussing and prostituting of our
sisters. Calling any of that “black culture” offends me because,
if you follow the food chain all the way out, you will discover
this is a largely invented, created culture. Like monkeys, we
see it, we imitate it. The hundreds of billions of dollars this
destructive self-loathing produces does not flow into the black
community. Not one dime of it. It flows into the pockets of
wealthy stockowners many tiers above the “creator-owned” record
labels these rappers boast about. Yes, son, you’re getting rich,
but the corporate owners so far above you you don’t even now
their names are getting far richer. And you’re all making money
off the dead souls of young Black America.
Beyond turning off the idiot box, the very best thing you can do
for your children is to instill within them a sense of
uniqueness. Of singularity. A lot of white churches love to push
these useless and typically fruitless virginity pledges—I will
Not Have Sex Until I Am Married. What our community desperately
needs is an Integrity Pledge. I Will Not Curse. I Will Not Sag
My Pants. I Will Learn To Articulate The Language. Every great
African American hero, from Frederick Douglass to MLK and
Malcolm X to W.E.B. Dubois, Bill Cosby, Maya Angelou to Louis
Farrakhan, Barack Obama (yes, I’m using them both in the same
sentence), Kwasi Mfune, Julian Bond, Tavis Smiley, Steve Harvey,
Jesse Jackson, Michael Eric Dyson, Al Sharpton, Muhammad Ali—the
common thread is their individuality. These are all unique
persons, each gifted in their own way, each seeing the world
their own way. They all have unique style and a command of
language that has propelled them beyond their peers and made
them stand out beyond accepted social norms.
The accepted social norms of Dr. King’s day were bowed, broken,
yassuh Negroes. I can’t begin to imagine the sadness Dr. King
might feel to see what we’ve done with the hard-won freedoms
granted us by the sacrifices of our fathers: to walk around in
public with our underwear showing and call that a “social
statement.” This behavior is an echo of the kind of degradation
whites routinely forced upon us, and now we actually volunteer
for it and defend it as free speech. Municipalities have learned
they really can’t legislate against saggy pants. There really is
no nudity involved, only acrimony and self-loathing. And, if you
look at these knuckleheads, that’s what you see: stooped
shoulders, bowed heads, shuffling. Can’t articulate the language. Yassuh.
Fellas: you look like an idiot.
Christopher J. Priest
13 March 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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