Talk about out of Left Field…
Yesterday our favorite race baiter – the Reverend with no church, the activist better coiffed than your well coifed Scribe – spoke at Michael Brown’s funeral. You can call him Al.
Brown, as you know, is the 18 year old black man shot by the Ferguson, Mo cop.
Here in good ole KC, we’ve got Blolonzo Washington, our local junior race baiter wannabe, who doesn’t compare with master baiters, Jesse, Al and their ilk. And while I’m ultra quick to slap them around, I have to mention when they do something right as well.
And Al had a few words of wisdom worth hearing…
The Rev. Al Sharpton said the “bad apples” must be taken care of within police departments, which they should be. That good cops need to go bad cop on bad cops. More importantly, he went on to admonish the black community saying they must also be “straight up” about their own issues.
Did I hear that right? Al telling blacks they owned any responsibility? Color me impressed!
He went on to say, “Some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go…Blackness has never been about being a gangster or thug. Blackness was, no matter how low we were pushed down, we rose up anyhow!
“Now you want to be a nigga and call your woman a ho — you’ve lost where you come from!”
And the audience actually burst in applause.
“We’ve got to clean up our community so we can clean up the United States of America,” Sharpton continued. “Blackness was never surrendering…When it was against the law to go to some schools, we built black colleges and learned anyhow. When we couldn’t go downtown to church, we built our own. … We never surrendered! We never gave up.”
Then Sharpton took on the Uncle Tom excuses head on.
He said that now that black people had attained positions of power, some act like “it ain’t black no more to be successful.”
Sharpton even touched on the topic of black on black crime, “Our killing and shooting and running around gun-toting each other…Nobody going to help us if we don’t help ourselves. Sitting around, feeling sorry for ourselves won’t solve the problems.”
To the looters and rioters Sharpton said, “This is not about you! This is about justice. This is about sadness. And America is going to have to come to terms with, there’s something wrong! That we have money to give military equipment to police forces, but we don’t have money for training and money for public education and money to train our children!”
My question is, what’s happened to Rev Al and his black theology?
Is he really blaming blacks in part of total for their actions? If so, I can only come up with a few possible reasons.
One, Bill Cosby jerked a knot in his ass. Bill’s gotten terribly unpopular of late, speaking the truth.
Two, the Reverand’s suffered a traumatic head injury and can now only speak the truth.
Or third, perhaps he actually found Jesus.
And last and most likely, he’s run out of revenue stream telling the same worn out lies to his interest group and their sponsors. Have the days of Tawana Brawley have passed us by?
Who knows, maybe the old shtick isn’t paying the bills anymore so he has to change his theology to match where the money comes from. It’s all a bit surprising to hear these words coming from Sharpton’s mouth, but it’s a welcome change.
Whether we can believe it or not isn’t really clear, but I promise you this; at the root of his words is one and only one motivation.
He’s saying what’s best for Al!
Looks like working for MSNBC has mainstreamed some of his wackier views on race issues.
Dude, I can’t tell, as I said, what the motivation is…. but he’s definately made a change. He’s always big on excuses, slavery, being held down by the MAN, etc..
Glad he finally said those things but he should have said them the day the rioting and looting started.
I totally agree, Hot, but point being, WHY has he changed his message? Thats the million dollar question.
Whenever I see Al, my mind always flashes to his appearances on the Morton Downey Jr. Show (remember that?) back in 1988 or 1989. (His head actually fit his body back then.)
There was one episode in particular when the other guest was none other than David Dukes, the grand wizard of the KKK.
Al spewed his Al-isms, and Dukes spewed his. It was truly a turning point in my opinion of race baiters, having grown up in a very racist household and all. By the end of that episode, I figured out racism existed in black folk too, or at least in the one sitting next to Dukes.
Several years went by before I heard of Al again, largely due to the fact the internet didnt exsist in the average dudes life, and my reach for news didnt go beyond the nightly news broadcasts.
Never the less, I could never shake that image of a short, pudgy guy doing his best to keep from having a snot blowing session with the grand poobah of the klan, who, was wearing so much make up he looked like a pumpkin.
Every now and then, I have noticed that SOME folks change their hearts and temperments as they age, myself included.
Whether it be social graces or politics, habits and beliefs can change, for better or worse.
We’ll just have to wait and see whether or not the real Al Sharpton is doing the talking.
Paul, your closing remarks are spot on-but I still see Al fanning those flames, maybe not so vigorously though.
Lib, he did do some fanning as well, but he took the community on so directly, like Ive never seen him do, I simply took a pass on the couple of questionable things he said. I dont know what he meant by what he said or his motivations, only his hairdresser knows for sure….
Your coiff has him beat, Paul!
I think it is all about context. I have seen Michelle Obama, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson talk to the black community about issues affecting the black community. Bill Cosby always seems to talk down to the black community to, well, white people. Cosby obviously can go deeper than “pull your pants up and stop saying the N word” but he just doesn’t (or, if he does, it doesn’t grab him the headlines). You may think that Sharpton is just a race baiter (and I am not exactly fond of the guy) but he can at the very least act as if he is empathetic to the bad situation many black people find themselves in. Can he say, “stop trying to be a thug and start going to school” and get applause? Yes, because he will also point out that the legacy of Jim Crow can still be found in black people’s day to day lives. Conservatives seem to have this attitude of, “I’m successful so why can’t you be?” Many black people still believe that they see the ill effects of Jim Crow, red lining districts, gentrification, and just run of the mill racism in their day to day lives. Al Sharpton acknowledges this. Conservatives don’t. Who are you going to take advice from? The guy who acknowledges the bad situation you find yourself in but tells you to try and better yourself or the guy who tells you to stop listening to rap music and to pull up your pants?
All good points, Jimmy. I’ve been talking to a figure in the black community helping me with a piece on black on black crime. He attributes it to the sense of ultimate failure, the inability to support yourself or your family, turning into such a culdrun that when a black man accidentally bumps into another coming out of 7-11, the tension boils to the surface, it becomes a matter of “disrespect” and guns come out.
Hard to imagine, but he makes a pretty good case in specific crime cases.
If you don’t mind me asking where does he think the sense of failure comes from?
Breakdown of the family, lack of education, missing fathers in most all homes, drugs, living in deplorable situations….. inability to find a decent job… it all just mounts into an impossible situation, in his mind. The big question is, h0w much is self inflicted?
Looking forward to this piece, Paul. It’s a great topic with lots of moving parts and you always do a good job on researching your efforts. Plenty of blame to go around.
Where do you see the difference between what Sharpton has been saying and what your friend/acquaintance was saying? Do you not think that Sharpton gives enough criticism to individuals?
If you were black you’d be mad at institutionalized white supremacy too.
But, you’re not.
And that – and an utter lack of empathy – is the problem.
Says the man who lives in a city with a black mayor, black police chief in a country with a black president as he turns on MSNBC to watch the aforementioned Al Sharpton.
Brutal….
I got a chuckle out of that, Chuckles…..thank you. You can almost see that comment getting hammered out while waiting for the commercial to be over so he can get back to the Maurey baby daddy results!
The irony is totally missed on this one Chuck.
So because you can pick out four powerful and successful black people you think that systemic racism is no longer an issue?
I look at the picture of Al and his GF hairdresser and I can only think of a romance novel line; their love burned with the fiery intensity of a urinary tract infection…..
Or with the burn of relaxer left in the hair too long…
If only the real Sharpton would walk in front of a speeding semi.
Is that a bad lap band pulled too tight that makes him look like a tiny old man wearing Al Sharpton skin or does he have something more serious?
Man, the head, it is just too big for his lap band body.
Don’t look natural.
“old” guys and views like wislun are fading away.
a new day will come. How can you speak about the “black experience” when it’s
always “I’m talking with” people who can tell me what it’s like.
You know nothing about the black experience wislun….it can’t be explained…
it can’t be noted….just talking with someone about it doesn’t make you an
expert.
another sad chapter in your long string of useless articles about subjects you
know nothing about.
thanks.
your friend
Harley
“no name bloviaters,” guys and views like harleys are fading away.
a new day will come. How can you speak about the “journalism experience” when it’s
always “I’m writing comments no one can read or understand and every single thing I do is moderated because Im such a personal comment disaster?”
You know nothing about writing, journalism or commenting for that matter, harley….ewe can’t be explained…
u got nothin….just talking to yourself about it doesn’t make you an
expert.
another sad chapter in your long string of useless comments about subjects you admit ewe
know nothing about.
Your credibility on KCC blew up like a man with a broken metal detector walking through an active minefield.
thanks.
your friend
Paul
(if you dont get help at Charter, please get help sumwhere)
Google “Tawana Brawley.” I lived in the NYC metro when Al inflamed the entire country over Ms. Brawley.
B.A. – Im not sure there’s anyone who DOESNT know the real story behind that. Dude should never have wanted to show his face in public again, after that and blacks should have wanted to lynch him themselves!
He set the cause back another 20 years.