Doing It Wrong

Doing It Wrong: Joel Ward’s Goal Nets Hate

by dre of onustees.com on 26 April 2012

*enter Classic Cash Money rap line about Ice*

Initially, I was going to use “tell me what kinda, nigga got ice that’ll BLING!, blind ya…” and then “got so much ice you can skate on a nigga…” popped in my head… both lines from B.G.’s classic “Bling Bling” coined by one, Mr. Lil Wayne…

However, I realized that it would cloud the following text with the use of the word “nigga”… and almost thought of excluding it from the post…

Yet, it wouldn’t be true… solely to harp on the racist rants of bitter Boston fans… who have chosen to take to Twitter, Facebook and other social mediums to express discontent of a Black hockey player winning Game 7 of a 1st round match in the NHL playoffs…

Tale of Two Cities…

On the eve of the return of Redskin’s Glory (we hope with the drafting of Robert Griffin, III…) I was out celebrating a close friend’s birthday… the chosen place for the party is much like the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston, commonly known as Cheers… Everyone there pretty much knows each other… and it’s expected that everyone will return each Wednesday from 6pm until… to throw back libations, catch up, plan for the weekend, shit talk, laugh, etc…

I wouldn’t be considered a regular on Wednesdays… but what makes this place great is that once you step in… after the initial… “Hey! it’s YOU!!!” “Wow, you’re out with us tonight?” “Glad to see you here, been awhile…” is done… you pretty much feel like a regular… to use a colloquialism… One feels like they’re with “ya niggas…” Keyword: in that phrase isn’t “niggas”… it’s “ya” or “your”… Those folks who smiled when you stepped in the bar… are YOUR people… your kinship… you have history, culture and just as important a common vernacular…

Which is one reason why… I love my niggas.

Like most bars, this one has HDTVs plastered along the walls… on every other TV was Game 7 of the Bruins/Caps series… normally, hockey doesn’t get much play in this bar… but it’s DC… it’s the Caps… it’s the playoffs… it gets play that night… So, imagine the surprise of the predominantly Black attendees when Joel Ward scored the winning goal! His 1st goal… defeating the defending champions in THEIR home… for those who were clued in… excitement was all about… not Barack Obama wins the presidency excitement… but a sense of pride nonetheless… It was our brother… our reflection… our culture… our nigga… getting mobbed by teammates on the ice…

It’s not too often a group of Whites jumping on a Black man is a good thing…

Sadly, whenever something grand & Black happens in a mainstream (majority) genre the original strain of the term “nigga” is spewed… Primarily, from ignorant individuals too cowardly to profess their true feelings consistently… Only revealing when something near and dear to them is “threatened”… Baseball, Voting, Education, White Women, Stand Your Ground, etc…

This time it was hockey… the last frontier for Black exploration in America’s Top Four sports… Basketball has long been conquered… Football, is all but complete… once the new QB Type takes over… (see: Vick, Newton, Griffin III) that sport will be Black… Baseball, once on our trajectory… has been gifted to the good brothers of Cuba, Dominican Republic and other Latin American nations…

Hockey… has yet to be infiltrated… but once that puck went into the back of the net during OT of the Caps/ Bruins game… those watching the gate (yes, gate… not game…) knew what was coming… “them”… and whenever “them” gets too close to what they hold dear… “them” goes from “Black” to their red alert term “Nigger”…

“Nigger” the Paul Revere of the Standard American English… It’s the bullhorn that rounds the troops… It alerts them of pending “danger”… Encroachment of territory… The audacity of being equal and threat of being greater… It’s their Nuke… The end-all, be-all… The word that strikes fear in the souls of the Negro… the word that leads us to march for it’s abolishment… and have debates with media frontman and dance around with the term “N-Word”… as if magically, “N-word” doesn’t automatically render NIGGER in your mind…

I, however, love the term… it’s a beacon of ignorance… the smoke from fires within enemy camps… readily identifying themselves and location… and most importantly, let’s me know…

They’re not my niggas.

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Knowlin’s Moment: Inferior Design

by dre of onustees.com on 11 April 2012

My great-grand mother, Martha, celebrated her 95th birthday. Unfortunately, we don’t know her exact age due to where and when she was born. We think she was born in North Carolina, 52 years after the abolishment of slavery.

She has lived to witness a number atrocities committed against people due to their differences from the majority. She has also lived to see the will of the minority push for change. At some point she, like many others accepted what the majority was telling them about themselves. She accepted that she was inferior.

She accepted that she was inferior even though she and her husband worked hard to be able to move into a house in Southeast Washington DC when it was a predominantly white neighborhood.  She accepted she was inferior even though she raised 3 sons and helped raise grand children, and great-grand children. Martha’s acceptance of her inferiority was poured into how she raised and taught her children, grand children, and great-grand children about the world she knew.

She taught me I failed the “Brown Paper Bag” test. She was the one who taught me that being right didn’t matter cause I was dark skin. Every day she tried to instill in me that I was inferior, in order to protect me from the majority.

She feared losing her family to the majority, because she saw the lack of justice for people like herself that were apart of the minority. She would hear about individuals being lynched, raped, beat, and killed, with the party responsible going unpunished. She saw the news when Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Emmett Louis Till, Willie Edward Jr., Herbert Lee, and many more individuals who died for not accepting the notion of being inferior.

She believed that if you kept your eyes down, did as told, and didn’t make a fuss when you were wronged by the majority, that you had a chance at what she considered “Happiness”. It took me a number of years to understand, accept, and forgive my great-grand mother for trying to teach me that I was inferior but I’m also thankful to her for trying to do so. Due to her lesson, I became fully aware that people would fear, hate, and think less of me. Those same people would treat me a certain way based on their perception of me because I was born with a larger concentration of melanin in my skin.

Her teachings prepared me for the days when I had to interact with individuals who were “White”, especially law enforcement officers. I knew to say, “Yes sir” when responding, to not argue, to do as told, and to make no sudden movements when interacting with them. It didn’t matter to her if your rights were being violated; all that mattered was that you didn’t become a victim of the majority like “Trayvon Martin” and many others.

Since I was born in 1982, well after the Civil Rights Movement, my mother taught me that I wasn’t inferior. I was taught to protect, to provide, and to stand up for what I believe. She taught me I was the master of my fate. She pushed me to find my own path and to walk that path to the best of my abilities.

Many years after standing up to my great-grand mother, and crying to my mother about how she treated me, I would be seen by many as the exception to the rule. I beat the odds and made it pass my 25th birthday, I beat the odds and graduated from college, and I beat the odds and found a job in a profession where individuals like me are rare.

Unfortunately, me beating the odds doesn’t matter because like Martha always pointed out I have dark skin and people will treat me differently for that reason alone. So how do I tell my two children that the world many people have died fighting for doesn’t truly exist? Yes things have progressed from 1865, but one FACT remains the lives of those with dark skin are not valued the same as those who are not.

It’s been 45 days since a child was gunned down for walking down the street in clothing that many people wear on a cool weather day. His murderer has yet to be charged for the crime, simply because of the victims skin color. And yet very few members of the majority are outraged or even care. The majority seems to be annoyed by the fact that the minority is outraged by the incident. Today I read, “Other black folks have died recently that contributed a lot more to society than he did” in response to “Gone but not forgotten RIP Trayvon Martin”, and was yet again shocked by how little value is put on the life of a black child.

Yes, a number of black individuals have died, that have contributed far more than Trayvon Martin, but the fact remains that they got to live their lives in order to contribute. Trayvon Martin had the potential to contribute to society in so many ways. He could have become the first African American to receive a Fields Medal, but that was changed when he was suspected of being a threat by simply walking to and from the store in everyday clothing.

I wish @JohnBudge could explain to me why a black child’s life holds no value until they contribute to society. Explain to me why you are not outraged when an adult male kills a child that he decided to follow while caring a gun to stop them for walking home. Explain to me why you are comfortable with a justice system that would allow such an act to go unpunished. Explain to me how you would feel if it was your son.

I know how I feel and he wasn’t my son. But if he were, I would pray for the strength not to take the law into my own hands; strength the man who took my sons’ life did not have. I would pray for justice, and I would hope that people would acknowledge that my son was a child that never made it home because of a society built on prejudice. I would hope that my great-grand mother’s fears would be put to rest. I would pray it would be the last time the majority ever felt it was OK to not be outraged by a grown man shooting an innocent child and claiming self-defense.

– Michael Knowlin II

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Oh, and one more thing… (c) Steve Jobs…

by dre of onustees.com on 27 March 2012

After watching Anderson Cooper debate (I suppose that’s the word…) Minister Mikhail Muhammad of the New Black Panther party on CNN last night… (face-palm…)

I changed the channel and came across a commercial for… “Wicked Tuna”… a new National Geographic Channel show about hunting tuna, I gather… but what’s odd is what I really saw…

Most see 4 guys on the job… I see 4 thugs on a boat…

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Thanks Internet, I’ve had enough for today… logging off.

by dre of onustees.com on 27 March 2012

I had my share of internet for the day…

I should have known something was up with Tuesday, March 27th, 2012… When I stepped out this morning… the Hawk had made a quick visit back to the District and I immediately thought… “Damn, I should have thrown on a hoodie…” Which has, of course, taking on a whole new meaning in the recent weeks…

During my normal rounds of morning website visits… I came across several articles that are now “shedding light” on Trayvon’s character… Last week, he was shot because he was sporting a hoodie… This week, it’s believed he was shot and killed because he was suspended for possession of trace amounts of marijuana… and we all know nothing says… “I deserve to be shot to death like having experimented with drugs.” Then there’s the growing suspicion that his twitter handle “No Limit Nigga” was the culprit… Surely, a teenager’s timeline filled with words without vowels are the tell-tale signs of a soon-to-be murder victim… It only makes sense… But I have a hunch, once they realize he wore socks AND used shoelaces… Case closed. It wasn’t a grown ass man who shot Trayvon… it was all of the random ass connections the media has made that resulted in his death…

Speaking of Twitter…

Hunger Games premiered last week… and the crowds went wild… 3rd best domestic debut ever… it is the anti-John Carter… however, when you have that type of mass appeal… You’re bound to snag some of the crazies… loons… numb-skulls… dip-shits… fuck-tards… and assholes of the world… and there’s no better web to catch them than Twitter… Apparently, there’s a character in the novel named “Rue”… in the book her character is described as “has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that’s she’s very like Prim in size and demeanor…” Now, I haven’t read the book… but from what I can gather… “she’s a black girl similar shape and nature to some white girl named Prim… I’m not certain how fans/readers… scratch that… some fans/readers assumed it would be a white girl playing Rue… but once they saw the movie… a la Thor… they raised Hell… and not Hell in the sense of fiery anger… but Hell as in… these idiots need to promptly reside in said locale… here are some of the “Prospects to Hell” tweets… via HungerGameTweets on Tumblr.

At this point… my mind is racing to create a post to speak on a discussion I had with a co-worker last week about “moving forward” from memory of hatred and prejudice… in my co-worker’s opinion the only way to get from it is to simply change your view and “forget yesterday…” …a stance of which I completely shot down and attempted to shed light as to why you can never forget the feeling and outrage that occurred with the murder of Emmett Till and the eerie parallels with the death of Trayvon Martin…

But I didn’t create that post…I googled the actress playing Rue… and discovered Amandla Stenberg… a young Black girl who looks similar to my youngest sister Morre’… much like Kaing Obama spoke about if he had a son… he would look like Trayvon… and imagined how I’d feel if those tweets were directed towards her… it was only 2 levels above what I was feeling for Amandla…

“No Rue for you!!!”

Feeling a little depressed about the “fight” that still persists… I attempted to seek refuge in a message board I frequent affectionately known as #thatsite… however, that only lead me to this clip…

Warning: the clip features child abuse… and was posted on the board seeking translation and to point out the fact the girl (see: victim) in the clip doesn’t appear to shed a single tear…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG-RNhUcd2k]

There’s so much wrong in this video…

Thanks Internet… I’m logging off.

We’ll try it again tomorrow…

– dre’

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“You Can’t Be F#@king Serious!?!” News: #KONY2012 Co-founder arrested for…

16 March 2012

Dammit man! Keep that sh!t in the house!!! *deep sigh* Apparently, the guy that started Invisible Child and filmed the #KONY2012 piece was arrested for public intoxication and getting his wank on… C’mon son… you can’t go from hunting down warlords to yanking your monkey in public… Yeah buddy… keep that hand away from me…

Shit DC Says? Naaaah, joe.

23 January 2012

Rule #1: You can’t say DC Shit and leave out the Godfather… I’ve successfully managed to remain oblivious to the onslaught of the “Shit **** Says” videos… Only saw one in it’s entirety and strongly wanted my time fully refunded… So, I’m pretty much out of the loop of shit folks say… Long as I […]

Do Better Thursday: Hip Hop Is Here to Regulate

17 March 2011

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRwNNLfss2o] Rest In Peace to the Rap Hook King… Brother Nate Dogg. “THE RHYTHM IS THE BASS AND THE BASS IS TREBLE!!!” Yeah, it didn’t make sense to me then… and it still doesn’t make much to me now… but dammit… it’s what Nate Dogg saing… and that’s all the reasoning I needed… So, […]

Do Better Thursday: Winter, WRAP IT UP, B!!!

10 March 2011

“Can someone, please, tell this cat to get the f#@k on???” What it is, good people? I hope you’re having great March thus far… No complaints over here… Hope you enjoyed the “Black Music History: Giving Them Roses” series… featuring living legends that typically don’t get the mainstream attention that they deserve… Also, remember, it’s […]

Do Better Thursday: Wonderful World of Sports

10 February 2011

It’s Do Better time… *does Championship Belt Move* On the heels of the Green Bay Packers victory in the Super Bowl… It’s time for a Do Better Thursday post with a sports slant… Clock’s running out… Let’s get to it… DOING IT RIGHT!!! Wake Forest baseball coach donates kidney to freshman player and becomes MVP… No […]

Do Better Thursday: WAIT!!! Is Hip Hop Back!?!

3 February 2011

Shameless plug… I sell this on a shirt… Is Hip Hop back!?! Ok… I know it’s never left… but admittedly… I did leave it for a period… But it wasn’t my fault… So many of my favorite artists had done the same… Phonte dissolved Little Brother and begun making wonderful music with Foreign Exchange… Outkast […]