Women in the real world are also very different from college women. This may be based on a whole range of factors and I’m probably biased, so before anyone goes on some rant about how wrong I am remember that these are just my opinions and experiences. Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, we can get it in.

Real world women are very different. In college there was a filter. This filter served as the safety net for us. It guaranteed that women at school were at least sort of safe because any woman who could get into college and stay in college had to have her stuff together to some degree. Granted, there were exceptions but the rule was pretty sound. In the real world there is no filter. People are who they say they are until you can verify the veracity of their statements. A woman could be a 2 month pregnant of four with 6 sexually transmitted diseases and the swine flu and you wouldn’t know until…well you get the idea.

Example # 1, also known as the “get into jail free card”

I went to a nightclub/music venue last weekend. This place was pretty legit and the security was cool so I figured that once we were in, we were good, due to the minimal presence of individuals with behavior problems. I was mostly correct and my friends and I enjoyed the experience, in spite of the bland music and stiff crowd. I leaned on the counter in the “vip section” (this just constituted another area with no chairs, bar, or noticeable difference from the rest of the place) and discovered that someone had spilled a drink there. The girl to my left initiated conversation, apologizing for getting me wet with her drink. We flirted for a little while and, though my instincts told me to pull the eject lever, I figured that if something was off I would notice it before anything happened. Something was off. Very, very off. A couple minutes into the conversation she mentioned that she was too young to be in the club. I figured that she was some 19 year old college student who had smooth talked some bouncer into letting her and her friends in. Wrong. She explained that she was 15 and her and her friends were in high school. High school…15…I hadn’t really been interested in the first place, mostly playing the angle out of opportunity and boredom so I figured I could get some more information about the degree of infiltration of 21 plus events by these adolescent types. She went on to explain that she and her friends had managed to get into countless clubs without so much as an ID check because promoters and venue owners had no problems with underage girls frolicking in their establishments as long as they paid cover. Terrifying. That girl you were dancing with and feeling on is headed home to mommy and daddy. It was like that moment from Old School where Luke Wilson realizes that the girl he had had a blackout night with was his boss’ high school age daughter. I had thankfully managed to avoid such a situation but I learned a very poignant lesson. She isn’t who she says she is until you can verify it.

Then there are the straight crazy ones. They are the ones who seem at most times normal and then drop that random hint that becomes a string that unravels a sweater of craziness, revealing her true, possibly psychotic, nature.

Example #2, also known as the “Russian roulette with a grenade”:

My family came to help move me into my apartment a couple weeks into my stay in DC. It was great to see my family and even greater to mooch free meals from them (joking, sorta). We went to my dad’s favorite DC restaurant which has the best Black American food you will ever encounter in life. It took us a while to get there though and when we arrived the place was almost closed. Never one to miss an opportunity to get some bomb ass food, Dad decided to make SURE we got in. I was embroiled in some phone fiasco with an ex-girlfriend so I had left the area to deal with a product of the well oiled, industrial grade Harvard rumor mill (the irony of the situation being that I was accused of trying to get at some girl whom I don’t even remember seeing in the first place, guess Karma is a bitch). When I returned, the hostess had a funny look on her face and my dad had managed to get us a table even though there was only one other group in the place and they had been there for a while. So we sat and ate and my pops instructed me to go talk to this chick. It finally dawned on me what had happened: this girl had been obviously interested and I had just been too distracted by the ex-girlfriend situation to notice. My dad had pimped me out while I was outside, exuberantly explaining my many virtues to this girl in order to ensure that we got a table. I figured it was a win-win because this chick was pretty cute and we had gotten a table so why look a gift horse in the mouth, right? So I number closed and enjoyed my meal. We texted back and forth a couple days later (you gotta wait at least 3) and decided to meet at a happy hour in a local restaurant (she worked on weekends so this made sense). As we talked I realized that she was pretty cool…until she ordered a margarita and loosened up about herself. I won’t bother recounting the conversation but any time piercings in very sensitive places are mentioned in the same sentence as the word “infection”, it’s time to bail. Questions like “if you knew a girl had an STD would you still sleep with her?”, and statements like “I wasn’t necessarily a prostitute, I just hung out with a bunch of them” or “the level of promiscuity at your school is nowhere near the level at mine, we have the highest STD rates in the country” don’t bode well. And this was a girl with two jobs who was successfully finishing her degree in marketing or something. This wasn’t a hood rat (I love hood girls, they were the first girls I had crushes on, but hood rats and girls from the hood are two very different things) or some other form of obviously dysfunctional womanhood, this was a woman who was solid on paper and yet, in every other respect was damn near toxic. I made a clean exit and never called or texted her again (though she hits me up to see what I’m doing from time to time). As far as I can tell, the real world is filled with women like that. Scary.

And then there are those women who aren’t high risk in the same way the other two are, they are just boring wastes of time.

Example #3, also known as “what the hell was I thinking?”

So I was chilling with a couple of my friends one night and I saw a girl walking down the street whom I had met through a friend recently. I invited her to roll with us to a venue we were going to check out and she obliged. I assumed that game would ensue so I adjusted our position in the group so that my homies were walking in front of us and we were free to have our own conversation. Wrong move. This girl had the personality of a door knob and was lame as hell. The strange thing about it was that she was definitely interested in me but her boring nature could barely muster enough of a conversation to keep me from falling asleep on my feet. We arrived at the club and I was hoping that some dancing and a drink or two would loosen her up and that maybe there was someone interesting beneath that personality burka. Wrong again. We got into the club and the girl could sorta dance but was not from the school of thought that involved human contact in dancing. I mean this girl was leaving room for Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey they rode in on when we danced. I eventually got to the point where I had given up on her and just waited for her to leave so I could move on to other targets. Mercifully, she did and the rest of the night was pretty solid, though I did also learn that trying to holler at a girl in a club as like trying to catch fish with your hands: they can’t hear what you’re saying, can’t really see you in the dark atmosphere and arrive with their guards up automatically (not a good look).

Example #4, also known as “googlemaps”

This is illustrative of a general theme in all social interaction in the real world: spacing. Most of my friends live at least 4 or 5 stops away on the metro (20 minute or half hour trips). This makes dealing with womenfolk considerably more difficult because logistically, making it from point A to point B is more time consuming, making you (and her) less likely to make that move. It makes everything a pain because having a low key chill night with a girl is way less likely. As much as I love trekking for an hour just to meet a girl halfway at a restaurant in which I’m paying for her company by buying the meal (food that I most likely don’t want), I think I’d rather find another way. I won’t even bother giving a specific example for this one as the idea is very, very boring and in point of fact I opted out of all such situations because they are wastes of time.

Example #5, also known as “can you pay the bills?”

This is the woman with whom you are casually interacting who expects to be repeatedly taken out and/or bought stuff. I’ll be completely honest; this is probably the second most irritating change from college to the real world in terms of women. I always heard about college girls whining about not getting taken out but Harvard culture was such that no one ever really cared so the girls would whine, get ignored and still get with dudes anyway. I, personally, found this system to be great. It minimized money wasted and ensured that shawty was not dealing with you for the free food. Moreover, when you go out you’re on your best behavior, trying to look and sound your best. Your façade remains up because not only are you in public, you’re with someone in public. Such a situation creates BS interactions, much less of a legit connection (for the emotionally oriented folk) and much less likelihood of hooking up easily (for the physically oriented folk). I don’t have an example for this one either because I’m sticking to my guns: unless I’m actually in a relationship, we can hang out but I’m not buying anything or taking her anywhere that we both weren’t already going. To hell with that buy her heart business, save that for some other sucker. This is not just based on being cheap (believe it or not, teaching pays pretty well, especially for single people with low rent) it’s based on all of the stories my female friends told me about going out with guys and stringing them along for the ego boost of being taken out, for the status symbol or just for the free food. Best of luck to those (read: lames) who do that but it’s not for me.

Example #6, also known as “she got the hottest body but her attitude is snotty”

This is the woman who is attractive but in her own mind is Beyonce, Rosa Acosta AND Jada Pinkett (when she was 20) in one. She is the furthest thing from down to earth and a little tough to talk to. That wouldn’t matter normally, if there weren’t so many of her. She is omnipresent. There are 6 at the bar, 4 in the coat room and 5 on the dance floor of every night spot in DC. I’m sure another cynic/smartass/hater/person-who-disagrees-with-me would say that these women would be nicer to someone better looking/cooler/smoother/richer/whatever than me. That’s probably true. And that point would matter if it were not for the fact that I don’t even bother with those women. Their attitudes radiate from them to a degree that makes them easy to spot. I am speaking based mostly on the experiences of folk far more tolerant of female based bulls**t than I. I do have one example though. I met this girl through a friend at a bar. Now this girl wasn’t a good look at all (she was pretty uppity but good looking) but my homie and I made a dollar bet over which of us would get her number first. I can talk to boring, snooty people when I have to (thanks, Harvard!) so I kicked it into gear and chatted her up with some random business about college life and how crazy DC is. I found out that she went to school in Boston so I had an angle with a nice little ice breaker. I made something up about all of us going to this really cool place or something the next weekend and asked, since she had just gotten to town, if she wanted to roll with us and check out a new night spot, she said yes. So I asked her how I should contact her (checkmate) and she said to text her. Blah, blah, blah numbers were exchanged and I won the dollar. I texted her once or twice, actually inviting her to stuff and she didn’t really respond (though ironically she showed up at the events). Now, it’s beyond possible that she just wasn’t into me and had gotten tricked into giving me her number (in a rational world, women know that if we ask for your number there is not a huge variety of reasons why) but her behavior when she was at these events was the basis for my analysis. This chick really acted like her s**t didn’t stink and was standoffish to everyone in the crew (women included) as if her blackberry was the only person she could relate to. I didn’t particularly care because I wanted the dollar more than the number but I did take note of her behavior. I have since seen her a couple more times and my analysis has not changed. She gets basically no attention from the guys there but really feels like she’s a big deal for some strange reason. This is the type of woman I’m talking about and DC (according to my homie from Baltimore) is known for them. It’s the type of girl who comes to bar and legitimately wants to speak to no one outside of the two friends she came with; a woman who actually gets off purely on the idea of being seen, admired and aloof (these people are so strange to me). Those girls existed in college but the environment was contained enough that everyone had a locker room story about one of them, that when laughed about in front of said girl, knocked the precipitation out of the cloud she thought she lived on (what can I say, I’m a jerk). When most people knew those stories, it tended to level the playing field a bit and humble even those with their noses highest in the air.

Though these are not the entirety of my experiences with women in the real world (I’ve had some pretty good experiences too) I will say that they are pretty representative of most of my experiences. College was a shooting gallery. The real world is hunting buffalo with your bare hands. Fellas, enjoy your college career while you can because things get much harder when you leave those bastions of intellectual development and physical debauchery we call colleges (just kidding…sorta). Almost makes me miss Stacy, Lacy, Tracy and them…

“I-I-I-I know you like to think yo’ s**t don’t stink, but lean a lil’ bit closer and see them roses really smell like poo-oo-oo-oo”

-M

A Brave New World

Arriving in DC with my nice big slice of humble pie, I settled into the first phase of Post College life. Me and my two roommates (one of the benefits of TFA is that some of the people are actually really cool, they are just rare and my roommates are two of those rare people) moved into an apartment in the Northeast quadrant of DC with pretty good space, and great rent in a solid location. In those areas life began to improve. I caught a break in employment too; I got a job teaching 4^th grade at an incredible school with a cool co-teacher. Once the first paycheck showed up it was on. The period of humbling (read: utter wackiness) was over but life was still completely different. So I decided to break it down into a couple of categories. 1^st up is socializing.

My Drink and My Two Step

Social life in the real world is very, very different than college socializing. There are no prearranged social networks to tap into, no dining halls, no free parties etc, etc. Real life is, in a word, real. This may seem obvious to many other people but it really is one of those things you have to experience to understand. Even so, I think it’s worthwhile to give people a sense of what these changes are like (or how they were/are for me).Socializing in the real world is a mixed bag. When I started this post a couple of weeks ago I had a much less positive view of real world socializing. I have since figured out a couple of things that have improved the post college social situation considerably. Socializing in real life can be really narrow. Keeping up with multiple groups of friends is much harder because they live far away from each other and from you. So you tend to have a relatively small crew that you roll with along with a couple more people who are not really in your crew but are around sometimes. People have much fewer house parties and the like in real life so the key to actually having fun is to make sure everybody meets up at some place to pregame for an hour or two and then roll to a venue, already nice to avoid paying for drinks. This idea relies on you 1. having a reliable crew and 2. having a decent destination for the squad. Clubs tend to be what you make them, bars too. If you roll up with friends and are already having a good time, they can be tight. If you don’t then they will be the biggest wastes of time and money in real life. Once you’ve got your crew and your location, stuff tends to flow a lot more fluidly and most of the squad has a good time. This means that rolling solo is a mistake, rolling up to a bar/club/venue with the intention of deriving your fun from the venue rather than from your friends or yourself (if you want to have fun by yourself you should probably just stay home)is a mistake, and having a crew that isn’t interested in having fun (like the type of people who are stuck on looking cool or cute or whatever) is a mistake. Thankfully, my crew is pretty solid and I am making progress in finding other groups of cool people to chill with as well. This is partially due to the fact that TFA connects me to hundreds of people who are in similar situations to my situation (much in the same way college does) but even with that, many people can be flaky, homebodies or just flat out boring. Socializing in the real world, more than anything else, requires a plan. You have to have a group of people to roll with, a place to pregame and a place to go. Much of this requires innovation as well if you ever expect to get anything out of it. Though I’m sure there are people out there who can arrive at a bar in pajamas by themselves and have a blast, for the rest of us, these couple of points make real world socializing much more rewarding.

That’s all for now on socializing, next up are the women of the real world…

-M

Welcome Back…

I’ve been slacking on my blogging for a couple of months. It’s mostly because as college ended, life became a nonstop rollercoaster of changes, bills and moves. So now that things have settled a bit, I’ll give the overview.

I turned 22 and graduated the next day from Harvard College. Graduation was, as much of senior year had been, profoundly anticlimactic. I was bored for most of it, though some of the speeches were good. I was filled with a combination of fear of the boring, difficult future; dread at leaving the place that had been so instrumental is my growth as a person; and numbness due to the fact that it was ending with no ceremonial music, no crazy parties or nights to remember. In short, it went out with more of a whimper than a bang. The lameness of graduation was based on several factors: 1^st that ’09 was legitimately not a fun oriented class in the same ways that others were/are, 2^nd that people all had their families there, significantly limiting their impulses to make the last nights of college memorable. And 3^rd because there was no way that the end of college would live up to the beginning or middle.

The End of the Beginning: “Man, I love college”

My college career was an incredible experience. Incredible is the only word for it. I have had the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life in college. I’ve seen tragedy, triumph and everything in between. I’ve been the most successful that I’ve ever been in college in every area of life and have also failed miserably. In short, college became my identity, I was a Harvard kid, and everything I enjoyed was connected to it. My parents were Harvard grads/students/speakers. My sister was a Harvard freshman. Most of my friends were in college with me, along with the overwhelming majority of the women I dealt with at the time. I had Harvard sewn up. By the end I had figured out how to get pretty good grades with minimal effort, get women without so much as a compliment (and damn sure not a date) and achieve all of this while going to class 6 hours a week and sleeping until 3 pm most days. To be completely honest, I was the man. I had the respect of most of the real cats on campus, held weight in several squads on other campuses with minimal effort and had at least 6 different networks of friends to chill/party with around campus. I never paid more than 20$ for liquor/parties throughout my 4 years and indulged in enough of both for a lifetime. I managed to still stay in contact with my people in the hood (many, but not all of them) and keep tabs on my family. Money was never an issue, I always had a hustle of some sort whether it was some job, telemarketing (not literally) for 12$ an hour while doing homework or working a desk no one ever visited while gchatting and youtubing. On top of all of this, even the place I lived in was dope. Harvard has a system called the house system where you live with a couple of your friends in the same house for 3 years, while switching rooms. I got to know people in the house and on many nights didn’t even have to leave the building to find 3 cool parties and a range of wonderful young women (haha, shoutouts to d-house women). Life was a breeze.

And then it ended. The parties ended. The yells and music died down. And all that was left was a profound sense that all that time I had spent chasing the cool had been a waste. That was part of what made graduation so hard. All that time I had spent going after and achieving all the stuff I mentioned above had been time wasted. The show was over. All of those things that had been such a part of my identity; my swag, the way I made people wish they had the sack to say what I said, my eye for morally flexible women; all of it was a joke and the joke was on me. I had achieved a lot in college but a large portion of it died the day I got that diploma. All that time building a reputation, taking no shit from people, being the realest cat, etc, etc had all been a waste of time. It was a tough pill to swallow; watching people whom I knew I was smarter than, or cooler than, or more original than, more interesting than or just better than; being recognized for whatever garbage they had produced. I knew that so many had greased the wheels of insecure professors, engaged in sycophantic relationships with lame university personalities and I knew that none of them deserved any of this on any real level. The work they had done frequently amounted to glorified navel investigation, something that would sit and collect dust on some shelf in some Harvard library where anyone with anything relevant to do would walk by it 3,000,000 times and never know it was there. In short, this was how I had seen things go in so many other areas of life where undue attention is given to lames, assholes and other off brand individuals.

After some reflection though, I realized that even if all of what I felt were completely true (which I’m quite sure it wasn’t) it made no difference. While many of my points were valid, that did not change the fact that my priorities had been out of order for the majority of my time in college. I was just seeing what happened to people, deserving or otherwise, who did have their priorities in order. And that, my friends, was the first part of my introduction into the real world: it’s not about what is actually real, it’s about what people think is real and without the ability to convince others of the reality of your ideas, they will add up to nothing at all.

“Welcome to the Real World She Said to Me, Condescendingly, Please Take a Seat…”

Graduation was sorta interesting but it went by pretty quickly. I worked for a couple of weeks to make some extra money and then headed to Philadelphia for Teach for America training. Philly was brutal tutorial in the politics of the real world, this time in the form of hierarchy. I was placed in a boot camp: a situation designed to break those involved in it. We woke up at about 5:30 am every day, trooped out to breakfast, and were on our way to our respective schools after some semi decent food. We taught Philadelphia summer school students for half the day and suffered through never ending professional development sessions until about 5:00 pm when we’d come back, eat some more semi decent grub and proceed to plan lessons AND attend MORE professional development sessions until around 11:00 pm when, if we were lucky and had made all of the necessary copies, we could get some rest. Needless to say, this sucked, but I’ll leave the griping about training for another time.

The hierarchy of Teach for America in training is made up of (for all intents and purposes) maternally challenged single white women. These women are rarely in touch with the communities which they “serve”, and have a tendency of making sweeping generalizations about these communities based on very very shaky “sociological studies” and/or “research”. To some degree all of said dog and pony show is necessary, TFA is sending under qualified, naïve do-gooders into school systems where the realities are frequently devastatingly problematic. No need to rehash the statistics, you get the point. If you don’t convince someone in such a situation of the necessity and possibility of success, they will undoubtedly fail and/or give up. Short version: TFA takes type A personalities who are completely unused to the concept of failure and places them in near impossible situations watching them spin like tops, as they make some progress but never reaching their actual goals.

The endgame is not actually the goals themselves though; it is twofold in its true form. The first element is selling the TFA methodology, as seen in DC, TFA is considered to be at the forefront of education reform and has actually taken over DCPS methodology (more on that stuff later). The second element is placing people who were never meant to be lifetime/career teachers in the field for a couple years so that they leave caring about inner city communities. Let’s face it; most people who apply to TFA have no intention of teaching for more than five years and most are not even educated in the field of education. This program is clearly designed to put TFA indoctrinated folk in the high positions they were always going to end up in.

While this may seem like a tangent, it’s really setting up my next point about the lesson of hierarchy introduced by my time in Philly. Knowing all of the aforementioned facts about TFA, I was forced to sit still and play nice with a lot of people who I knew could give two shits in a bucket about poor Black children. Even if every single one of the TFA folk cared, many were so sold on a safari oriented view of Black communities that they were accidentally racists. They saw these communities and kids as below them; a population to be fixed by the great white hopes that they represented. Even as their intentions were good, they had been sold a classist, racist agenda that was guaranteed to have minimal positive effect on the community (if this is not obvious I’ll explain why later). And knowing all of this I forced myself to sit and listen to these people jabber on for hours on end about how much they cared. I had to reflect. I had to share. I had be happy to be stuck in some room with a woman who knew jack diddily shit about urban poverty telling me that any child in their right mind could ignore seeing their friends beat by police and focus on schoolwork in a room with no heat and a leaking ceiling. In short, I had to eat shit…consistently and with as large a smile as I could muster. At one point I had to sit in a meeting with two of these women (one of whom I actually respected because she was genuine and caring, just naïve as the day is long) and explain why they were right and I was wrong and how my being “late” to something was of devastating importance, even as I saw others late to multiple events in one day without so much as an offhand remark. I had to eat a lot of shit, mostly from people I was actually smarter than and I had to silence my impulse to point out the obvious questions and holes in their arguments.

Even within the actual (TFA) corps members I had to learn humility. I was stuck in a cold dorm in North Philadelphia of all places (believe me, North Philly is as hood as life in the US gets) filled to the brim with women. You’d think life would suddenly seem to improve drastically, wouldn’t you? No, my friend, my lesson in humility was not finished just yet. Not only were the overwhelming majority of the attractive women in that frost bitten prison in serious long distance relationships, the rest of them were: A) white (we’ll talk about that a little later), B) unacceptably unattractive, C) lame as fuck, or D) all of the above. Now, I’m sure some smart aleck individual is either thinking to themselves or typing in the comment box as we speak: “well maybe they just weren’t feeling you”. That is perfectly within the realm of possibility. And honestly I could not care less. I saw my standards drop so low during training; I didn’t even recognize them anymore. I had to accept the fact that I was stuck in a cold box, in a bad neighborhood of a shitty city (I love Philly but it’s the dirtiest place I’ve ever been in the 1^st world) with a bunch of women with whom, for whatever reason, I had no sexual tension. That. Shit. Sucked. The worst part about all of it was that my long distance girlfriend, who had been nagging me for God knows how long, decided she had had enough. So I not only saw myself stuck in a building with no prospects, I had my one guaranteed girl dip out. I had been looking to better deal her for a good while so it wasn’t a big deal (something else I’ll get back to later) but it was kinda wack. All of this added up to some real humble pie. I hadn’t been prospectless in about 5 years. Add the stress, the long days, the ridiculous hierarchy, the crazy indoctrination, the lack of enjoyment (Philly nightlife adds up to a couple lame bars, girls with high top fades and unshaved armpits, and weird dudes running around in capris) to the first drought of my adult life and you have a recipe for ego deflation. I arrived in DC, with the hell humbled out of me.

To Be Continued…

-M

This one may be slightly offensive but its all in and love and in jest (sorta) and ladies don’t pretend like you don’t know what i’m saying is true…

After four years of college, I’ve seen and learned a whole lot. Yeah I learned in class and all that but what I learned more than anything else is how to reason through all sorts of problems. Some of these problems were more important than others but one particularly fun puzzle was “the game”. Now most of those who know bout this game right here know its to be sold and not to be told but I’ve seen enough of my homies fall prey to female game that I feel like I must drop some science for their benefits. There are several kinds of women (aside from the more general “silly nigga” categories) which I’ve seen that have been particularly problematic for my comrades. And now, I present my study guide to a couple examples of these types of ladies.

Example A: Let’s just call her Stacy. Now Stacy is dumb and kind of a hoe. Problems 1 and 2 are right before us but it gets worse. Stacy also has identity problems. She believes that her intense love for Black people (Black men in particular) makes her half Black. I won’t even get into how idiotic that is but I will explain the dumb hoe accusation. Now if this isn’t some ol’ hoe s**t, I don’t know what is: she arrived at a party, was approached by a young man, left with this young man and did who-knows-what for the next couple hours and came back to the party, having left her friends frantically looking for her. More than that she believed that this man was capable of respecting her after such a night and was surprised when he left the party without telling her. Now I’m not the smartest guy in the world but something is wrong with this picture. But wait, it gets worse. As I’m walking down the street i notice Stacy’s friend sitting in a car outside the young man’s dorm looking as if she’s waiting for someone. Why? Because Stacy was back, not more that 36 hours later doing who-knows-what again with this young man. This girl is what I call a “firebird” which means a bird (young woman) who is most likely on fire (if you can’t figure that one out…). Guys this one is very dangerous. Usually very direct and to the point, firebirds make you feel like you’re the most interesting, best looking, coolest, most blah blah blah guy on earth. For those of you who have fallen prey to these women, let me explain why all of the above are problematic. 1. she is lying, you are not special and if she did it for you she did it for your friend and his friend and his friend and his friend and his cousin. More than likely she is carrying some very nasty virus or infection which she would love to share with you. Most importantly this firebird will never go away. Though she’ll chase every Tom, Dick and Harry in the general vicinity, she will no doubt come back to you like you didn’t just see her all up on your best friend. Firebirds are different from the hoes of the first fun post because they are completely indiscriminate. It doesnt matter what you look like or who you are, the firebird will convince you that you are a young iceberg slim. Then she’ll convince all your homies of the same thing. Girls like this have started more fights than Don King so BEWARE!

Example B is very different but lets call her Tracy. Tracy is a bit of a spaceshot, but very cute and likeable. The problem is that Tracy is a virtual venus fly trap. Her game is no game, its just her personality. She has the superb ability to make dudes like her, even though they know her flaky proclivities and that she regularly keeps a whole cabinet’s worth of files on the fools who have fallen prey to her wiles. She seems very innocent and then one day you realize that she isn’t your kid sister and that she’s hot and suddenly the chick who you thought you had figured out looks very different…don’t worry its happened to em all. She has left miles long trails of bloodied egos with her signature shrug and smile. She’s the type of girl that all your female friends warn you about…and then laugh at you about for having gotten tricked by. She very rarely has sinister intentions and this makes her even more dangerous, why? Because even she believes her own game. She has convinced herself that living with no regrets means making irresponsible decisions, leading people on and then smiling and shrugging when guys react…well, the way we tend to react. This one is tough to actually be mad at because she’s like a kid, she doesnt know that the way she acts around these guys is inconsiderate and or just plain batsh*t crazy, she just assumes that other people are too uptight. This girl is probably more dangerous than the firebird because the way she acts is impossible to distinguish from general harmless flirtation but be warned my friends she may take her time and it may not be intentional but even the best have been smote by her power.

Example C is Lacy: Lacy is what I like to call the “iron maiden”. Also known as the “arctic nun” or the “queen of the damned”, Lacy is iron clad. No, she doesn’t like you and probably never will. She shows no signs of human warmth and is generally characterized by modest dress and sarcastic wit. The problem, gentlemen, is that she’s kinda hot to begin with and her refusal to give you the time of day makes her even hotter. The main problem with these types is not so much the complete lack of possibility of success (there are billions of women on planet earth, you can survive without her), its the fact that when she does show signs of normal flirtatious behavior, it is instantly inflated in your mind. You suddenly believe that there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel and that the whole arctic nun attitude is designed to disguise the freak that she is on the inside. I have news, gentlemen, she isn’t a freak on the inside. She is not trying to get your attention and no she isn’t being nice to you. As a matter of fact, its likely that she’s trying to shed her arctic nunnery momentarily just to get the attention of some guy near you. I know your ego is bruised, but believe me, you’ll live.

Example D is the last but certainly not the least: Macy. Macy is a drunk…well sort of a drunk. She doesn’t actually have any serious alcoholic symptoms but for your intents and purposes she may as well be a drunk. Why? Because you only exist when she’s drunk. She is hell to date as she generally shares more than she should with people she doesn’t know very well, making her a easy target for predators when drunk. This drunken libido is indeed her achilles heel. And you have no idea when she’s drunk because the only difference between her blackout drunk and her sober is whether or not she remembers your name (she forgets when she’s sober). One particularly savage individual might ask what the problem is with such a thing: “well why not just wait till she gets drunk, do what you do and then roll out?” Well my good sir, unless you are a huge fan of women passing out in the midst of hooking up or vomiting on your bed, this type of behavior is a problem. Girls like this make promises when stone to the bone drunk (and you thought she was sober) and the re-nig on the promises when sober, making for a very frustrating set of interactions. More importantly if you’re cool with getting girls completely smashed before trying to get with them, you probably have much bigger problems than this chick (like that upcoming court date for the last time you tried such tactics).

All of these problematic young ladies have blueprints for ways to win, the only catch is winning isn’t always what you want it to be. First let me just get this out there: there is NO FOOLPROOF WAY to win with any or all of these women. Moreover, there is a decent chance that winning (hitting, hooking up with, whatever) will still be losing in the larger scheme of things. With the disclaimer out of the way, I present the solutions.

The easiest way to deal with Stacy is…to avoid her. Yes, she’s hot and yes condoms are extremely effective at protecting your valuables but the fact of the matter my friends is that even if she’s safe (physically) she is clingy, crazy and stupid. She is most likely at some point dealing with some young man who just got outta jail, thinks he loves her and is angry at you for messing with “his girl”. Now she is obviously community property but there’s just no telling some folks about such things. Obviously I’m half joking about her jail bound boyfriend but on a serious tip there is no upside to this girl. There are thousands of hot women in every city and if you have any type of game you shouldn’t need to resort to using the company of bustdowns (chickenheads, tricks, you get the idea) to find a hot woman.

Tracy is more complicated. She isn’t nearly as dangerous as our “firebird” friends and has a less obvious downside. The best strategy depends on your intention. Dating Tracy is just a bad idea, she will most likely cheat on you and if she doesn’t she’ll at the very least have you looking stupid as she flirts with other dudes in a very obvious fashion (of course the sad part is she wouldn’t even know she was doing it). Being friends with Tracy can be complicated as well, so make sure in your mind that you associate her with something completely unattractive so that you don’t get accidentally caught in her web (this is not a joke, believe me). Sadly, the easiest way to deal with Tracy is ye olde shoot-n-scoot technique. Now I am not endorsing the morality of such a thing but the shoot-n-scoot (or hit and quit as it is also known) is the best way to keep perspective. In dating and friendship your better judgment is clouded by actually caring about the young lady whereas the shoot-n-scoot is completely results based. If one were to take such a tactic it would still be difficult as tracy’s spaciness makes a frontal assault (regular smooth talk) completely fruitless. The best way is to go in what i call the side door: the fake friendship angle. Become friends, get her guard down, and use small jokes to gauge how down she’d be and if the light is green, get it cracking, if not, just keep her on the back burner. This is pretty ruthless (hence the moral disclaimer) but still somewhat difficult because if you’re not careful you may actually become friends and lose your results-based perspective, eventually falling into the web.

Lacy is probably the most complicated. Like any armored apparatus, she has holes in her armor and is soft as puppy sh*t on the inside. The problem is that those holes (no pun intended) are completely subjective in terms of access, making standard game, side door game and pretty much all other game useless unless she has deemed you worthy. Even then, her armored attitude tends to produce strange taste, making her tough to predict. If you are deemed worthy, game may not even be necessary (as her armor takes so much energy to maintain that she has none left for those who make it past the armor) and one can take advantage of the spoils. Bottom line its a crap shoot, either she likes you or she doesn’t and given her demeanor the answer is probably no, so just keep it moving.

Macy isn’t terribly complicated and resembles Tracy to some degree, with her very variable attitudes and her drunken logic. Much like Tracy, the easiest way to deal with Macy is to pick a track. Being friends with Macy is easy enough, though you may on occasions get the wrong (or right, at least at the time) impression from her lack of discretion while drunk. Dating Macy is probably the worst idea of all of the possibilities for all of the examples as she is guaranteed to cheat on you, most likely with someone you know because of her weakness for alcohol and the tendency of less upstanding young men to prey upon it (very successfully i would guess). The shoot-n-scoot method works with Macy as well, though she probably wont remember it and may fall asleep on you, so your best bet is to try to catch her tipsy before she makes it to blackout levels.

Let me say this in closing: none of these girls are a good look for the general population. Only those who have reckless abandon, superb game and resilient egos should bother dealing with any of these women as they tend to wreak havoc on us. Though I don’t endorse the morality represented here, I have (I think) demonstrated the most tactically effective ways of dealing with these women.

Happy hunting,

-M

Women can be very confusing. Let me step back, women can be very confusing to me. Several of my homies and I were discussing the issues around dating different types of women in college and we came to the conclusion that the eligible candidates were very limited. My female friend and I talked about this as well and she expressed a similar sentiment; explaining to me that she had trouble finding suitors in college for her affections. Where is the disconnect here? How are so many looking for people who fit certain criteria when those who should fit their stated criteria live in plain sight? It’s simple: both sides have problematic standards. Now before I get into it, I will say that I know that I may be among the population of guys with crazy standards but for the sake of the argument I’m stepping outside myself and trying to be a impartial as possible. Here we go…

As dudes we’re looking for a complicated set of things. When I say dudes I mean Black guys  because though race is a social construct, it has cultural ramifications, so pretending that these tastes will be culturally uniform is just stupid. Those of us who aren’t just savagely slaying every girl who’s down to get it poppin’ are looking for good girls. The only problem is we want them to be unrealistically good. We want girls who might drink but not too much. We want girls who look good but don’t dress provocatively and we want them to ignore all the attentions that come from other males. We want girls who are down for Black people but open to the idea of focusing on personal profit (just in case our tastes are adjusted by some baller summer internship). We want girls who love us, only us and don’t even know other guys exist. Moreover, we want girls who haven’t been getting with many guys in college and who haven’t been corrupted by dealing with some dusty ass dude or sketchy individual. These criteria aren’t particularly unfair but the problem is that most of us don’t fit those criteria ourselves. Many of us have had a bad night drinking or have messed with some girl that we shouldn’t have. Many of us don’t stay on point with our line-ups or keep our kicks clean. We’re looking for sexy, conservative virgins (or close to virgins) who only have eyes for us and keep their shit on point all day every day. If we’re honest with ourselves we’ll realize that compromise is necessary.

Here’s the kick though; we don’t want to compromise and feel like we shouldn’t have to.

It’s the same thing for women. Many women want to fix guys. They want dudes who used to be hoes (safe, disease free hoes) but were miraculously saved by their love. They want guys who’re 6′4 and 250 pounds of semi-professional athletic muscle with prominent jawlines and pearly white smiles (even though these same women haven’t been to a gym in years and usually ain’t that fine). Many Black women want guys who fit into one of two (what I like to call) “silly nigga categories”.

The first is what I call the hard roq. He’s got tattoos, wears white tees and has a “questionable” past. He carries himself like a tough guy and usually rolls with a crew of equally fraudulent negros with fitted caps and bandannas. This dude used to be an athlete but since he messed up and got kicked off the team for some idiot offense (smokin weed in the locker room or some equally dumb shit) what he’s got now is a whole bunch of muscles, gold teeth and zero job prospects or deep thoughts. The reason he’s a hard “roq” and not a hardrock (a legitimate street dude who is actually involved in criminal activity) is because he’s fake. Black women don’t want dudes who are actually hard, they want guys who dress like extras from a bad music video and just look hard (well, in the mirror anyway). Real tough guys aren’t usually clean, enjoyable people with whom a successful Black woman can form a relationship, I’ve known many of these dudes and they usually don’t look like they do on TV.

The other “silly nigga” subcategory is the pretty boy. The pretty boy is so fresh that he makes his woman look bad. He regularly applies and reapplies his chap stick (read: lip gloss) in order to “maintain his sexy”. He may have long hair and some effeminate piercings and most likely wears colored contacts lenses even though his vision is 20/20. His comprehension of fashion is laughably profound and he usually tells his girl what to wear and may go shopping more than she does. For some strange reason, Black women are attracted to these foolish individuals and then wonder where the concept of the down low brother comes from.

Don’t think I’m gonna pretend that only guys fall into the “silly nigga” categories because they are, in fact, unisex. The two (trust me, there are more than two) that I’ll look at in this post are the “fine chicken head” and the “uppity broad”.

The “fine chicken head” is exactly what she sounds like. For those who don’t know what a chicken head is I’ll give a simple definition of what I mean. A chicken head is a hoe. Not a garden tool or an actual prostitute but a girl who too easily allows young men to take advantage of her sexual faculties. She will probably give you chlamydia (I think that’s how you spell it) but there is one problem: she’s fine as fuck. She’s fine and she knows she’s fine and , more importantly, she knows that you know she’s fine. She is everything your mama warned you (or should have warned you) about when she mentioned those “fast girls”. She’s the type of girl who will holler at your best friend while you’re in the bathroom or call you the wrong name while y’all are…well you get the idea.

The other “silly nigga” category for women is the “uppity broad”. This is the girl who will not date you unless you have a certain bank balance and wear boat shoes. Your family name had better come from some lineage of light skinned, reasonably rich negroes or else she will not give you the time of day. She’s the type who is so concerned about how she looks on the social scale that she’ll spend money on 700$ jeans and not be able to buy dinner. She’s constantly climbing the social ladder and as soon as she finds someone with a more prestigious lineage, she’s gonna dip out on you. The problem is that this chick is fine as fuck too. She keeps her appearance tight (in a different way than the “fine chicken head”)  but she doesn’t advertise the goods, making her even finer because you figure she won’t embarrass you. You can take her home to mama but if mama doesn’t live up to her standards then she’s out like a thief in the night.

Both of these categories are troubling (just as troubling as the other “silly nigga” categories) and none of them provide sensible mating choices.

The interesting thing is that the friends that I was talking about having these conversations with were looking for similar things; someone cool, down to earth, funny and reasonably attractive. Now this is partially because I hang out with some real cool people and partially because the “silly niggas” and the people that they attract are not quite the crowd I spend my time with. These cool people though, suffer from similarly unreasonable standards but here the standards are based on self perception issues.

Now look, beauty is in the eye of the beholder but let’s be serious. If you LOOK like you’re 8 months pregnant and AREN’T having a baby you need to be reasonable about your standards. If you’re ashy as hell or have no game, you aren’t going pick up a dime. The solution is finding chill people and thinking less about looks. Ironically, the girls that I’ve dated with whom I had the best chemistry weren’t girls who I was overwhelmingly initially attracted to. These girls just ended up being “sleepers”; girls who I hadn’t really noticed at first but who I discovered cleaned up incredibly well. Women can follow the same tactic; find someone you get along with who is cool and maybe you’ll find that with a suit and a haircut that cat looks like denzel in ‘93 or something. I’m far from perfect and I’m sure my analysis is biased but I’m just offering an idea of how we might be able to improve the relationship situation for single folk. Many of my friends have been single for extended periods of time and I offer this post to try and help ‘em avoid dangerously stupid “silly niggas” (and the women that love them). Oh yeah and shoutout to the lil’ mama that holds me down and helps me avoid the difficulties of being single (you didn’t think I’d forget did you?)

-M

Ok, this is a rant. To be fair, what I’m saying is true and actually has some relevance, but it is very much tied up in my sincere love for Hip-Hop, so just bear with me.

The speech I posted is from the Boondocks TV show. In the episode (if you read my blog and don’t watch the Boondocks I’m not really sure what kind of person you are) Huey dreams that MLK was not actually killed and that he woke from a coma, 4 decades after his “death” to see that his image had been pimped to sell fast food and that Black people had taken for granted his struggle and pain, becoming shells of their predecessors. While I’m not one for waxing poetic about the past or as Family Guy put it our “two decades of dignity” I do think that McGruder and company (the people who made the Boondocks) have a pretty legitimate point. We have experienced a level of cultural decay that is devastating. Look at Hip-Hop! These days what passes for an emcee is some loser with a jail record (pun intended) and a bunch of tattoos, rhyming about things that he never did. And to be clear even if had done the things he rhymed about he’d just be sociopath loser but no less a loser. It seems like we take everything that is wrong, backward, stupid or self destructive and make it a trend.

Garbage Hip-Hop: “Hey would you like to wear a shirt so long that it looks like a nightgown?”

Hapless dummy consumer: “Sure, why not?”

Garbage Hip-Hop: “Hey, wanna rock a FAKE bullet proof vest so that when you are hit with those REAL bullets over some petty dispute you pass away looking like the world’s silliest thug?”

Hapless dummy consumer: “Aw heck, I’d love to!”

Garbage Hip-Hop: “How’d you like to put a bunch of metal on your teeth so that when you go for that job interview they’ll KNOW not to hire you?”

Hapless dummy consumer: “Well, I don’t really want that job in the first place, I’m down.”

The regular counterarguments used against my point read as such: “Well the white mainstream buys most of the records, why are you coming after us?”, “It’s just entertainment”, or my personal favorite: “We’re just reporting, the hood is the problem.” Look all of these are somewhat true but given how self destructive some of our behavior is, why should we continue to take these chances? I mean when Plies has a song complaining about people getting sentenced disproportionately for crimes that seem to be more common in the Black community he may actually have a point. For example he suggested in one song (I think it was the “100 years” joint but who knows?) that Black males get more years for selling crack than others might get for committing murders. Crack being more prevalent in the Black community, such a trend could indicate a bias against Black people in the justice system. This, my friends, may be a pretty salient argument (though it is a bit simple, it’s still salient). The problem is his point is completely contradicted by the rest of the absolutely mindless music that he makes! It’s tough for anyone with any sense to take someone with that type of complaint seriously when the person making the complaint encourages their probation officer to come catch them after smoking weed or whatever other random, barely intelligible quotes he comes up with. The worst part is Plies has a college degree and not much in the way of actual street history. So what he’s doing is 1. making us look stupid and ridiculous to the rest of the world, 2. selling young impressionable Black people a set of dangerous lies about street life, 3. lying all the while and making ATROCIOUS music.

Is it a wonder that the majority of these Hip-Hop dudes sample from older songs and jack each other for rhymes? It’s because they have saturated the market and have very few emcees with actual talent still able to get attention. Its become a shock jock fest with people trying to one up each others’ craziness. The problem is that though these white mainstream kids are consuming it, they aren’t internalizing it. They rarely live near these blocks, never see these hustlers as role models and won’t have the opportunities to get into the lifestyles they may or may not idolize. For them its just a phase that they’ll outgrow soon enough. For young Black males it’s all too real.

The part that makes this a rant is that the most anti-intellectual, irreverent, happily ignorant music comes from southern Hip-Hop. Yeah I said it. I’m sorry but outside of Outkast and a couple of others, southern Hip-Hop is a creative graveyard full of violent tales of hood life and strip club songs. Its like an ongoing love affair…between niggas and dysfunction. The problem is that when you say anything negative about the south in terms of music or culture people feel like you’re attacking the people who live there. The overwhelming majority of people in the south are pretty much like people in the north, I would imagine and they aren’t responsible for the music. Moreover, there are problematic elements of the culture in any city, state or country and blindly accepting the good with the bad prevents one from making sensible decisions about what is worthwhile and what should be discarded. So, to all my southern people, (all 2 of you who will read this haha) I have no beef with the south in particular, I am an enemy of ignorant, corny shit everywhere. Let’s avoid acting like Jermaine Dupri and calling ourselves “the MLK of Atlanta” and take a moment to seriously consider the message we’re sending the world. Because as far as this generation goes it looks like we’re really telling the world that we don’t respect King’s legacy when The Game calls himself “MLK with 2 guns on me” while reciting lyrics about gang banging (something he did for about 2 years before becoming a rapper, sorry Game you don’t start gangbanging in your 20’s). It’s time for this generation to acknowledge that though the President is Black that still won’t keep your Black ass from going to jail and that no amount of claiming that someone’s album or record label is a “movement” will make it particularly relevant if the music doesn’t show some amount of social responsibility.

-M

…for myself and others…ok while Jay-Z lines have nothing to do with my topic on this one I do think it was a cool title (don’t you?) Anyway, time to get down to business.

Yesterday some dude posted a link to a blog post by Sister Toldja over an email list I’m on. This was my first time coming across Sister’s blog and I have to say I thought her post was pretty tight: http://thebeautifulstruggler.blogspot.com/2009/01/call-for-peace.html

For those of you too lazy to read, Sister made a couple of basic points about why white people should stay home from the inauguration. She was clearly at least three quarters joking but the response she received was tremendous and the responses over the email list seemed a bit troubling too. People really seemed to have bought this idea that race is dead and get angry whenever people (read: Black people) feel like it isn’t. Let me say this before I go any further; I do not advocate beating a dead horse. What I mean to say is that I don’t think that we can blame everything on racism or allow paranoia to control our social interactions or political rhetoric. Not everyone is racist and even if they are, bitching ceaselessly will not make a difference (just to clarify I don’t think Sister was bitching or any of the above). While assuming that everyone is racist is not productive, pretending that race doesn’t exist is like putting a band-aid on brain cancer. It seems that some people have bought Obama’s rhetoric a little too whole heartedly and are eager to put race behind them. If one pays attention they would notice that the majority of the people who would like to do this are whites who feel that they aren’t racist and are loath to be forced to see their contributions to the society’s more subtle racism. It’s the same set of people who would call most Black people sensitive because they view racial differences as salient socially and politically. It’s garbage, no ifs ands or buts. If we as Black people allow anyone to convince us that race has no place on America’s political stage then we deserve whatever we get. America was created on the backs of competing immigrant workers and has thrived based on the level of cultural competition it has created. The very concept of a special interest group is based on this conflict between different social groups and race is just another form of that special interest group conflict mentality. I don’t think special interest groups are leaving anytime soon and if you have any sense you won’t either.

So since race is so deeply ingrained in the American mindset, why do people want it to go away so badly? Well, frankly many people don’t. The interesting thing is that many other cultural groups give as much gravity to their cultures and their continuity as Black people do but for some reason they aren’t considered as sensitive and are rarely accused of being divisive. When colleges all over the country have hillels and schools that are exclusively designed to teach Jewish children no one says anything. Rightfully so, people have the right to concern themselves with cultural continuity. When the Italian American Civil Rights League campaigned to have the word Mafia omitted in movies and made other attempts to prevent their misrepresentation in media no one batted an eye. Why should Black people have to ignore the social stigma, the stereotyping, the ridiculous almost coonish board games like ghetto-opoly (an actual game by the way) and pretend that everything is honky dory? It’s simple, we shouldn’t.

The responses of some of these walking, talking cliches that I go to school with is that Obama himself doesn’t feel like any of this is specific to Black people and that it’s everyone’s victory equally. Two things in response to that: first, I have the utmost respect and admiration for President-elect Obama but he is not perfect. His opinion on something is not always gospel truth. Moreover, he may just not realize the significance of this win for Black Americans, it really is far bigger than he is. This win is more than the sum of its parts and though I’m glad such a reasonable, articulate man was the first to make it to the White House for us, the symbol of a Black President is far more important than the individual candidate. The idea of the leader of the free world being a Black man has global implications and I believe it will have a very positive effect on foreign policy. This effect may be intangible (I don’t think Obama is trying to revolutionize America’s foreign policy) but the fact of the matter is that 80% of the globe wanted Obama to win according to the Metro (hey it isn’t the NY Times but it has the largest circulation of any newspaper) and that speaks pretty highly of global opinion of a Black President, at least in theory.

The other element that makes his significance overshadow his actual opinion is the fact that it may not actually be his opinion. I’m not sure how many people realize that the majority of politicians’ speeches are written FOR them not BY them and many of their topical opinions are based on polls and not necessarily on their own actual beliefs. Hell, Obama might agree with me wholeheartedly (I’d like to think anyone who would marry Michelle I’m-havin’-a-white-house-bbq Obama would agree with me) and maybe he’s just tossing up that “we are the world rhetoric” to keep white people happy. Who knows? The fact is it doesn’t really matter because regardless of how he feels about it he is far more important than his opinions or beliefs. I’m sure people like Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks didn’t see the full value of their actions but it doesn’t matter because they did what needed to be done. Same thing here.

So what does any of this have to do with Sister Toldja? Well very simply put, I think that she is right in several ways. 1. Black people have something special to celebrate with Obama’s inauguration that is unique and exclusive to Black people (white liberal college kids need to stop swagger jacking, give Hip-Hop and Obama back!) 2. Ignoring racial differences, in the form of cultural differences is ignoring history and reality. That doesn’t mean we have to harp on them but they do exist (and in Sister’s case they’re pretty funny). Hence the title, though I am piggy backing her point of view, I wanna give credit where it is due and a shoutout to a cool blog post. She also wrote a response to her critics (there were many and they tended to be corny or ignorant) which was pretty funny too if you wanna check it out: http://thebeautifulstruggler.blogspot.com/

-M

The gay marriage movement is not the Civil Rights movement. They are not the same thing. They are barely comparable actually. In the purely legal sense of the word “right” gay people have the same literal legal rights as anyone else (straight people can’t marry other straight people of the same sex either). The problem with discussing this idea is that this debate is so philosophically and personally loaded that i feel that its extremely difficult to have a rational conversation about it. In the minds of many gay marriage supporters, anyone who disagrees with gay marriage is a bigot who hates gay people and rejects the concept of fairness. That viewpoint, like any other one, is not quite so simple. But that isn’t what this post is about. I want to put to bed this whole concept of a direct connection between the Civil Rights movement and gay marriage movement.

The Civil Rights movement was based on the rejection of Black American’s basic civil rights, including their rights to vote, hold office, get educated, live, eat, drink or hang out in various places. This rejection denied them equal opportunity to most everything that made life worthwhile and prevented them in participating in the American legal and political systems in order to fight these injustices. But you should, if you studied the CR movement in high school, already know all this. This is in no way comparable with telling gay people that they can’t marry each other. They can still vote, go to the same bars and eateries and do everything but marry each other (which gives them the exact same rights as straight people). To put it very simply: there is really no legitimate comparison.

“Marriage is a privilege and not a right” said one of my pro-gay marriage friends. I agree wholeheartedly. Marriage is not even a state institution, its more cultural and religious though the state does recognize it. But it is not a right by any means. More importantly, we live in a democratic republic where the people are the source of the power. What that means is, without the support of the people, the government has no right to make moves. People assumed that California was one of the most progressive states on this issue and when it came down to actually voting on it, the people of California crushed it. Case closed. Nothing else to say really.

The reason I say this is to clarify my position. These two movements are far from similar and moreover people aren’t with it. So the answer is clear: get support or kill all the noise. To tell the truth gay marriage activists could learn something from the CR movement: bring it to the homes of the people and make them care. Then again, there aren’t children being trampeled by horses, beaten by police, bitten by dogs or rocked by fire hose spray, so I guess the gay marriage movement really has much less to work with. Moreover, the death toll to date of this movement is 1 as far as I know and even in that case, it was not quite a lynching (cold and insensitive? maybe, but still accurate).

The point of all this is simple: the CR movement was hundreds of years in the making and was the culmination of resistance of oppression stemming from the deepest hatred and the most degrading treatment ever given to human beings. People were murdered. People were hurt. People were disenfranchised in some completely inarguably devastating ways. A people, who had gone from chattel property and being considered 3/5’s of human beings, were fighting for their rights to exist in a society that had been built on their backs and bought with their blood. To compare such a struggle, a concept of such magnitude to something that reflects literally only one someone’s ability to manage their romantic interactions is frankly disrespectful and ridiculous. I hate to sound harsh but in the words of my father: it is what it is. So lets stop trying to hijack King’s legacy and the deaths of hundreds, thousands and even millions going back through the triangular trade for the profit of a group that has suffered no such struggle and hasn’t paid nearly as much for their goals. Its not the same thing, point blank.

-M

I’ll be honest, I didn’t think he could do it. Well, thats actually not the case, I didn’t think America could do it. I didn’t think they could elect a Black president. While I’d love to sit here and wax poetic about how sweet it was to see realized the the unspoken wishes on the lips of slaves, not sure what they were even dreaming of but aspiring nonetheless, we frankly don’t have time for that.

My president is black and still there is progress to be made. While Barack Obama is certainly not the world’s greatest example of tokenism, his presidency does represent an interesting concept. He represents a post-racial politics for everyone who isn’t affected by racism. White mainstream America used to think of racism as the boogeyman, a horrific figure who existed in their imaginations but very rarely appeared in their daily lives. Moreover, they felt very little connection to it and saw it as a problem of ignorance, restricted to their poorer trailer park dwelling counterparts. It is (and was) indeed a problem of ignorance but not one so completely separated from mainstream America as people would like to think. Barack Obama represents the end of the logical connection between racial insensitivity, racism, stereotypes and themselves for the white mainstream. As far as they are concerned, they just paid whatever debt they may have owed to Black people (though I’m quite sure many of them felt no such debt and even felt oppressed by the very concept, sigh its so rough for middle class white people). The ridiculous nature of the “white man’s burden” aside, as Black people its time to start thinking about what our next move is. White liberals who very regularly funded and supported programs in inner city black communities may be turning their philanthropic tourism in another direction (apparently gay is the new black) and Barack might not be able to help as much as we’d like to think. The patronizing knee-jerk anti-racism and anti-classicism that we may smile internally at the silliness of but have come to count on from these liberals might be replaced by adoration of Barack without substantive support for those dying in Black ghettoes all over America. And Barack himself will be too busy dealing with the economy (rightfully so) and trying to keep white people from realizing that he’s not nearly as post racial as they thought and that their imagination of his pseudo noble savage nature is misplaced. He’s the president of the whole US and in order to keep the nation from collapsing into divisive identity politics he HAS to ignore us to some degree and keep being the color of water, palatable to everyone (theoretically).

As previously stated I rock with Michelle (and I’m quite sure she rocks with me too) but even in her case she’ll have some political considerations to take into account before she opens the floodgates and hits us off with some money and support. I think that we have something pretty important to learn from Barack and Michelle though that should allow us to help ourselves. Barack raised more money than anyone else in the history of the US Presidential elections and he did it by going from door to door and using volunteers to create a grassroots movement. In effect he made himself and his candidacy cool and sexy to a group who are known for their idealism, naivete and limitless energy: college kids.

College kids throw their proverbial weight behind the flavor of the week as long as its presented well and tend to be fearless (read: stupidly idealistic) in their pursuit of the goals of their chosen “charity”. Now its kind of tough to get past the patronizing nature of said idealism and the ridiculous assumptions that many of these kids bring to community service projects in inner cities can induce violent vomiting. But I have three words for you: suck it up. These kids bring money, attention, manpower and popularity to whatever they choose to do and though it might feel like we’re ho’ing ourselves out, when you weigh it against the deal tolls seen in some of these ‘hoods these days it becomes clear how crucial it is to do as much as possible to combat the violence and devastation. Obama’s campaign had a clear goal though and was well organized how do we imitate that? Simple: market it on these campuses and choose an infrastructure that already exists to build this new movement upon. My recommendation is the Black Church.

Look I know i regularly sound like a Black Church superfan (and for those who know me, I am slightly biased based on my dad’s job haha) but what people need to realize is that the only relevant and permanent infrastructure that exists in most low income black communities is the Black Church. Why reinvent the wheel, creating a new infrastructure and trying to implant it into ‘hoods across America? Churches have all kinds of issues but the great thing about them is there are so many that creating a network connecting the community service oriented ones to this project, using the the raw energy of college students, is entirely feasible. We can even give it a cool name and make posters with bright colors and create on campus social events to make it seem even cooler and then get some celebrities to endorse it (the sad thing is i’m only sort of joking). The point is lets learn from Barack and get through to the more idealistic and impressionable kids of these white liberals so that if their parents jump off the bandwagon we can just replace them with a more hands on approach to dealing with this problem. I think Barack has shown us that rock stars can win too.

-M

One of my favorite movies (especially in my freshman year) was School Daze. In the movie Spike Lee plays a freshman who pledges a fraternity “G Phi G thats what we wanna be!” as his older cousin, Dap Dunlap, beefs with the head of the frat.

The specifics of the movie aren’t important but what they reflect definitely is. The concept of frat life portrayed in the movie is all too often accurate in Black fraternities and sororities. Let me paint the picture: hazing (bordering on torture in some cases), psychological deconstruction and then reconstruction (the mind is not a set of legos, don’t play with that shit), a sense of dependency and community (read: cult mentality) and the pretense of serving the community (y’all are joking right?).

Let me make a brief statement before I go in, though. I don’t hold anything that isn’t divine as sacred. I don’t care about who says what, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck I’m gonna call it a duck. So when I see my people running around in these outdated unhealthy organizations I really have to wonder. The problem is that these organizations MAY have started out as useful but they have far outlived their use. Let’s be honest, these organizations are supposed to be based on community activism and, ya know, something other than jackets, hand signs (read: gang signs) and stomping around. And yet they are absent from most inner city black communities and when they are present they very rarely add anything useful to the community. It seems that we’re willing to give credit to an organization just for being in the hood even if they make little to no difference.

Beyond their inefficacy in their stated missions, they are dangerous. Yes, I said dangerous. College students generally are a pretty impressionable group, it just comes with the territory. Its their first time living outside of the house with lots of freedom, thousands of new people to meet, raging horomones and the sincere desire to be accepted. This is the crucible in which the temptations of “brotherhood” and “sisterhood” can easily trip these kids up. But this stuff isn’t brotherhood. I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t beat, humiliate, isolate, haze or intimidate my brothers (or anyone else actually). They take impressionable kids, convince them that without the frat they’re nothing and create robotic automatons, loyal to the idiot empire that controls them. Its funny because after talking to people about these groups, the best explanation that I’ve heard is that they have really serious alumni networks. So do all sorts of organizations and they don’t require someone to bend over and prepare to be spanked with a paddle by another grown man. But we’ve all heard about the deaths in fraternity and sorority hazing rituals, the paddles, the social isolation and all of the above so why do we continue to condone it? Its because we as a people are in love with historical organizations just because they’re historical organizations. We justify all types of shit because its Black and its old.

Take the example of HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), some of Black Americans’ oldest institutions, and probably considered our most sacred. Several of them are academically abhorrent.  I mean purely statistically some of these schools are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of SAT scores, attrition rates and most other measurements of collegiate achievement. But we continue to pretend that none of this is the case because their bands are dope or because grandpa went there. Honestly chances are grandpa went there because grandpa had way less options that you do in terms of college opportunities, so I don’t think grandpa’s struggle is honored by you doing the exact same thing. One of the other justifications is that we as Black people are more comfortable around each other and that the loving atmosphere of these colleges is conducive to success. Ok, maybe it would be more fun to go to school with nothing but Black people but doesn’t that sort of defeat the purposes of the whole college concept? If everyone went to college based on where they would have fun, no one would get anything done. Besides how will we compete with anyone else globally or domestically if we’re busy worrying about whether or not we feel welcome everywhere we go? Welcome to planet earth y’all, we can’t afford to spend so much time worried about petty stuff like where we would LIKE to go with the economy in the toilet and the statistics constantly against us. Its time to pull the plug and put “Do not recussitate” on our veneration of formerly relevant/helpful/legitimate institutions of irrelevance.

I don’t write this to shit on people who decided to go to one of the less academically rigorous HBCU’s or to shit on the concept of fraternities and sororities. But I refuse to lie and pretend to respect things that I simply do not. One of the reasons that we have been able to achieve as a people is because we tended to be brutally honest with each other and ourselves. The Apollo was venerated because if you weren’t at the top of your game the audience would let you know promptly. Our athletic prowess was partially based on our trash talking culture: if you sucked at something we would let you know. Almost everything we have excelled in was because of honest self reflection and a culture of brutal (and sometimes ignorant) honesty. We need to get that back. There’s no point pretending that frats and sorors are focused on community service because if they were it would be much more evident. We just need to stop lying for the sake of perpetuating myths about ourselves because the only people it negatively affects is us. Maybe if we tell the truth about these issues some of these problems can be addressed but we can’t fight what we won’t admit is there. Some of y’all may disagree but if you are honest with yourself about it you know I have a point. Don’t let our people be brainwashed by our own B.S.

-M