What's Going On?

[Sepia]

This afternoon, while listening to a discussion on the radio, I went out on the net to watch the video where a young lady named, Sharkeisha, sucker punched her so-called friend. While watching the video (which was extremely hard to watch), I was instantly reminded of Marvin Gaye's song which asks, "What's Going On?"  I think back to when I was young and used to hear some of the adults around me complain about some of the Looney-Tunes cartoons that I used to watch, arguing that some of them were too violent.  They said then, that those images would make you violent.  Yeah right!  That was my attitude back then.  That was the '70s.  Now, fast forward to the 21st century, some 30 years later and look at us. Today, our youth are taking each other's lives in the blink of an eye and assaulting each other with no remorse.    

The destruction of the family, young mothers, a lack of respect are all of the arguments as to why our young have seemingly gone astray.  Yes, that's true, but how did we get here?  Black women have been young mothers for centuries, but our families still remained in tact. So, what happened?    

In my opinion, crack and cable TV have done the most damage to us as a people. Crack brought the violence into our communities.  During the '80s is when we started seeing our neighborhoods decline.  Stick up kids, turf wars, dope fiends robbing and stealing right from their own mommas.  Daddies have always been MIA's since slavery.  What crack did was destroy that head of the household we call "momma."  When our mommas got strung out, that's when the family unit took a drastic turn for the worse. That's where the "disrespect" that we see today started to seek in. Siblings being forced to raise each other the best way possible is what led to the partial decline in morals and values. The anger and frustration created from abandonment and neglect is what hardened our youth.  

Crack opened the door to tailor-made legislation that led to the high rates of incarceration that we see today.  It helped to cut entitlements that are continuing to be cut because of the few ghetto superstars and welfare queens that it created (and played up in the media). It gave a false sense that those of us living in the ghetto were doing well, thus abusing the system that was caring for many of us. Because of this new racialized legislation, Blacks became disenfranchised even more.  It affected voting rights, housing, education, etc.  Crack provided the basis for the destruction of the family, figuratively and literally.

And, thanks to the good ole' media programming, i.e., cable TV, we started living out those images put before us.  A people without an identity will latch onto anything.  The black community became a marketer's wet dream. Back to those cartoons I mentioned earlier, they are nothing in comparison to what are young are exposed to today.  Violence and sex is being sold by the boatloads.  Since Scarface, Hollywood has been on a constant trek glamorizing homicide, not to mention what the mental is taking in subliminally. Committing murder is seen as "cool."  We see a slew high-powered automatic weapons angled, up close and personal, the flight of the bullets, its entry and exit into human bodies AND the blood and the gore. Hollywood makes killing the next man look sexy.  Most of the top-selling video games help to accomplish this mission. Therefore, what should we expect from our young when they are being feed a steady diet of violence.

Finally, with the introduction of reality TV, drama, constant bickering and fighting amongst us women (especially among us black women) has been added to the menu. If the black man thinks that he has problems, the attack on the black woman is sickening.  That black power, afro-wearing soul sista of the '60s and '70s has now evolved into an Afro-European.  Her kinky hair has been replaced by long, flowing synthetic hair weaves or crimpy hair of the Euro-centric type where the sista is usually light, bright and almost white.  Everything is lightening gradually.  You don't see too many of us dark sistas in the forefront.  If so, she's usually loud, angry and arguing (usually with another sista). As a result of the denigrated image, our men find us the least appealing.  Hell, many of them have abandoned us altogether.  Instead, he is now dating any and everything other than black.  Caucasians, Asians and Latinas have now become the women of choice, thanks to those images put before us. Black women are being erased right out of American culture.  Well, maybe not.  She still enjoys her place as the "harlot" or "whore".  You can still find that dark sista scantily clad with a thong up the crack of her big, round black ass enticing the masses, but that's it.

It is those images that we are force-fed via the media that have had a detrimental impact on us.  So, to see the Sharkeisha's out there beating up on their girlfriends is totally in line with what we see everyday, anyway.  Those images have degraded us as a people, globally.  They are dictating our way of life.  Our biggest fault is that we are mimicking those images.  They tell us what to wear, how to style our hair, have created an entire homosexual revolution, and have created a Willie Lynch effect by separating us from our men.  Even our behaviors and interactions have changed.  We are much more materialistic (thanks to the crack), self-centered and vain.  

So, what happened?  What's going on?  We started believing the hype.  

One!

Sepia