Chewing on Ridley
Run, Jesse! Run! No really, run, John Ridley's coming for you.
Ridley's at it again. Blogs are still spinning over the Manifesto, and here comes this bad boy:
Friday, December 01, 2006
Run, Jesse! Run! No really, run, John Ridley's coming for you.
Ridley's at it again. Blogs are still spinning over the Manifesto, and here comes this bad boy:
About Me
- Name: Mat Johnson
- Location: New York, United States
The man in the picture is the author of Drop, Hunting in Harlem, The Great Negro Plot, Incognegro, and Pym. At times he has been known as The Mullah of Mulattos. He is seven feet tall, conks his facial hair with lye, and wears a belt buckle made from the skull of Iceberg Slim.
Previous Posts
- How Bush Failed
- The Funniest Man Ever
- Beyond Slavery
- N vs BP
- Lesson #7: The DIY MFA
- Lesson #6: In Praise of Black Pop Fiction
- Lesson #5: The Difference Between Commercial and L...
- Lesson #4: Black Lit is for White People
- Go to My Wife's Site
- "Move On, Black Man Move On"
5 Comments:
LOL. I may not agree with all of John's politics but I'm with him on this one. How are you going to ban a word? In America we have freedom of speech. If I don't like what a rapper is saying, I don't buy his CDs.
Also this is after the whole Richards incident. Jesse wants to ban the word now so closet racists will not say it in public? No, I'd rather someone come out with it so I know how do deal with them.
These issues are so much deeper than banning a word. Let's get to the root causes as to why young men (and some women) think it's okay to refer to themselves and their friends this way, all the time and in public.
Operation N-word Freedom? wow, this is kinda silly. I'm not down with Ridley's politics, but Jesse is out of touch... ~jbb
I've (almost) gone radical on the N issue. Maybe everyone should be able to say it so that it is diminished in power to the level of "coon" or "darkie." Black people should be able to say it, and white people should be able to say it so I can see exactly which ones to avoid.
This is what I do like about Ridley: he points out the absurdity of these self-proclaimed black leaders. If they are going to pretend to speak for us, we are totally within reason to announce publicly that they don't.
The Civil Rights era is over, and instead of gearing up to fight the new challenges we face, building new weapons, we are still using the outmoded ways of the past. And it's not just Jackson or Sharpton, there is also the whole school of public intellectuals who do the same, more concerned with pandering than actually coming up with new ideas and strategies.
It is a new era. We have a new wave which is breaking with the rut that many of the Baby Boomers are in. It's not about right or left anymore, or about blue or red. We are drawing new lines. I look at Corey Booker, Barack Obama, Harold Ford, John Ridley, John McWhorter, Debra Dickerson, Aaron McGruder, Chris Rock, and I see a very different stage has arrived. The old school and their disciples don't want to give up their power, their prestige, but the time has come.
Jesse, sadly, has become a symbol of that. He's a satiric caricature of our once great Civil Rights past. For a good example of that, and this generational struggle in general, go check out the documentary on Corey Booker's 2002 Newark Mayorial race, Street Fight.
Dead on Mat...as I have mentioned numerous times thus far, the survival Of African Americans as a collective depends on accepting a myriad of viewpoints. And this Civil Rights "uni-mind" mentality can not be the standard anymore. Jesse is approx. 15-20 years too late on taking a stand on the "n-word"(the euphemism in some ways is worse than "nigger/nigga")....why does he, Sharpton and the Naacp remain silent on the propagandized Black entertainment that exacerbated its usage in the first place? But Kramer's usage caused you to take a stand? That within itself is embarassing.....WOW....we have to hear from a multitude of voices. And conversely for Richards(can we say Afro-Americans?) to predictably go to Jesse/Sharpton for absolution is equally ludicrous. This is the type of stuff we need to talk about on the show bro. Hope to hear you on the show so we can kick it....somebody has to talk about this stuff!
Claymation Celebrity Deathmatch would be much more amusing (and valuable) than having the real fools pound on each other.
The next match on the card should be Ridley vs. Terri Woods (of Triple Crown "Thug Lit" Publishing fame). I was privy to a sort of pre-fight weigh-in brawl that was truly awesome...
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