So today we're doing "Tuesday's Top Ten" on a Wednesday but it's the same great taste now in a different bottle I assure you. With all the commotion of Barack Obama distancing himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright I figure it's high time the black community publicly distances itself from a couple people so in that theme, today's "Top Ten" will be a referendum on the top ten most terrible black people that the black population must distance itself from so as not to be at fault for anything the following ranting lunatics say or do and be attributed with any shame for these people's antics and rhetoric.
10.) Kobe Bryant- A lot will shake their heads and groan in disagreement but this is long overdue. He's not the worst problem black America is facing and I admit a lot of him
being on this list is because I hate him. I'll own that much but Kobe is the antithesis of what blacks ought to be on a personal level. Professionally he is of the elite in the game. No question but Kobe conjures up so much divisiveness in the black community. We need to unite. We don't need to several factions of the black community at odds with itself.9.) Karl Malone. He's never really been one of us but to the casual NBA fan who seldom
watched a game probably confused this country redneck with a negro. He walks among us but he is not one of us. He's a dead beat father so conservative that he refused to even modestly give a stipend of aid to his children who he frequently denied. He walks around in Cowboy boots and hats and votes Republican and embodies Utah better than any black person ever has or should.I'm no Kobe supporter but the man, dressed in cowboy attire, once hit on Kobe's wife, a close friend at the time. Malone was asked by Vanessa Bryant, "Hey, cowboy, what are you hunting?" in reference to Malone wearing a cowboy hat and boots. and Karl answered, 'I'm hunting for little Mexican girls.'
Disgraceful. He's as shitty a human as he is great a basketball player.
8.) Reverend Jesse Jackson. Perhaps there are no people in the history of the African-American community that've had more power at their disposal, more credence with the media, more of a soapbox from which to act as a mouthpiece for an entire people, who so selfishly misused their pull more and sought individual acclaim more than him. There aren't many higher
honors than to be looked at as a chief over a group of indians to the outside world looking in, constantly looked toward for responses and feelings on a multitude of subjects. You would think if you were as lucky to be chosen to do so you might conduct yourself in the manner of a Dr. King or a William Wallace or a Jesus of Nazareth but not the 'good' Reverend. I've never seen him care about any issue that didn't directly benefit himself. I'm 24 and I haven't once seen him act in the good of a larger context that didn't benefit him or people that looked, lived or acted like him. I've never heard him rally or call into question any topics that diverted to politics outside of race.Do you know his thoughts on the Death Penalty? Abortion? Gun Control? Middle East Disputes? Global Warming? Of course not. But without a shadow of a doubt you know without even hearing from him what his thoughts would be on the recent Police beating in Philadelphia. His usefulness has expired a long time ago. Any headlines that he grabs for any cause works to undercut the credibility of said cause and almost always works to the detriment in the end. If I ever find myself the victim of any crime where I legitimately have been wronged by the system I pray I have the faculties to speak out and at least give the disclaimer that this man does not speak for me and anything that he says on my behalf don't accurately reflect my positions or capture my thoughts.
7.) Reverend Jerermiah Wright - You can't have a list like this without including this guy. I mean here's a person sent by God and anointed by other worldly forces to council lost flocks and give comfort to the neediest among us without prejudice and somehow, somewhere along the
way proves to be more mortal and peevish than the people he sermons. Not even so much in his Sunday massages from the pulpit between 2001-2003, I'm not knocking what he said or did then. It was a confusing time for us all. It shook up a lot of people. Many of people were forever changed by those years and wouldn't even be recognizable if you compared who they were before then and after then. What I'm calling the man out on is joining that long list of people who let greed and arrogance come before God; People for whom their job title and duties demands a selflessness, a willing to keep their nose to the ground amidst all the madness around them, who in the middle of testiest times chose to stand up and exercise a defiant attitude as if it's all about them and what they have to say.I say this as a black man and not as an Obama supporter.
Jeremiah Wright made an utter buffoon of himself. In his time I'm sure he encountered a lot of racism and condescending slurs and putdowns. I have no doubt that he's been called 'boy' before even as a grown man meant as a way to belittle him. Well he's in his late 60's and age-wise he probably couldn't be more removed from a boy physiologically but mentally he is one. If he couldn't stay away from the spotlight and attention long enough for something greater than even himself to conclude than he's a boy. It's a joke that he leads men in religion. He's just another minister not fit for the robe he dawns every Sunday.
6.) R.Kelly - Now we all love a good R.Kelly record. Key word in that sentence being 'good'. That withstanding, R.Kelly isn't helping black people. There ain't enough "Feeling On Ya Booty"'s in the world to make it okay to overlook a seriously troubled man with a penchant for taking advantage of and exerting power over little girls. Not even, slightly understandable
ambiguously older looking 17 year olds who could be mistaken for twentysomethings, but 14 and 15 year old girls. That is disgusting. It's a failure of the penal system that justice has been delayed this long in getting underway with his trial. That thing has been pending for almost 7 years now and he's been permitted to live unimpeded and altogether unchallenged for a long time while those who he hurt have been forever changed. His recent touring shenanigans and antics really call into question his sanity in the first place. I think Robert Kelly has been a Caligula since the early 90's when he emerged on the scene but since his musical talent was so touched by God, we assumed the rest of his life was as charmed and unfortunately for some that pass was made and put around his neck at the cost and detriment of the most vulnerable amongst us and most needful of our protection -- the children.5.) Larry Elders & Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson - No paragraph needed. Just put their names into Youtube and watch the videos of these self hating negros. They hate us. We hate them. I'll give you two videos of these living breathing Uncle Ruckus'
4.) OJ Simpson. - Black people have never really found much use of this man as he's never really wanted or lobbied for our support much anyway so it's fairly mutual. I admit, 1995, we used him as a greater symbol of our displeasure with the justice system and how uneven the wheels of justice are against us in the court of law so when he was found not guilty we rejoiced.
We openly exercised our jubilee. I remember my 5th grade teacher was visibly pissed in the moments after the verdict was reached as we watched in class. All the black kids celebrated and the white kids' anguished resembled ours as we wore that same look when things happened to us growing up. If only for a day they felt how it was to be us. It was in my opinion a very honest moment that we can't ever take back and America needed a moment like that to give itself a frame of reference to what that kind of injustice felt like so they could relate to other people's pain when horrendous acts of injustice happened to them. Ojay was just the conduit.Too bad that after that moment, in the years that proceeded that landmark OJ's been a complete jackass and has done less with his freedom than he might have done with his incarceration in using it as a teaching moment to the community. Maybe prison could have shaped him into someone who schooled young black men on how to avoid prison and how if someone of his stature could end up behind those cold walls that anyone could. But as we all remember it didn't happen that way, OJ got mo' ig'nant. OJ got more white women. He threatened to write a book wherein in a hypothetical confession he admits to the 1994 deaths that defined his late adulthood.
All OJ does is work to play out all the worst stereotypes of rick black athletes and play to the fears of a white people made bitter by his decade long antics and rightfully so.
3.) Bill Cosby - Bill in more recent times seems to sound more like his last name is O'Reilly than Cosby. I'm all for taking individual responsibility in the black community but the way Cosby
comes at things is all wrong. He does it so publicly and always in front of the cameras as if there's some less than admirable motive behind it. You wanna change the community do it from the ground up. Go into the inner cities. Talk to schools. Travel the country and reach out to them directly. They're not going to accept your words as anything more than criticism and disrespect if you're lecturing them from a podium when you're in front of some flashing bulbs and NBC is recording you. People only hear from you when you're hawking some book or you're on some promotional tour. Change starts from the bottom up. Not the other way around. The sooner you get that the sooner you'll be sounding like something other than a crotchety old man. I don't know what it is about guys named Bill and losing touch of things in only a decade's time.2.) Tyler Perry - I'm putting him on this list
because he makes shitty moves and television shows and gets praised like he re-invented the wheel. plus he does theater too. He's making a run at the triple crown with bad promotions. I've never liked Madea. All it is, is another black comedian that dresses up as an overweight black woman to sell tickets. Is that all you got?1.) Chris Henry - A lot of this has to do with the fact that he's a former Cincinnati Bengals player and that his story hits particularly home seeing that I'm a Cincinnati native. Chris Henry might be the most worthless athlete ever. I'm beginning to think he's got a boyfriend in jail that he loves and cares very deeply about considering he's willing to get himself
involved in some foolishness every other minute. What's wrong with you? You don't like money? You don't like team chemistry and success? You don't like positive black players who do the right thing and the charitable works and contributions they make off the field? Why are you trying to single-handedly undo all their years of being on their best behavior with your antics? You play in Cincinnati. Not exactly a liberal bastion. All that means is you've got to work extra hard to prove yourself and make sure you help heal a city that's on the mend but you come in and put up Bobby Brown infraction numbers and harden any irrational feelings those who live in the suburbs may have already formed from not even knowing you with your dumb and childlike antics. Your story should be made into a made for DVD movie and shown to every knuckle headed kid in Pop Warner so they know what not to be, but more likely, they'll be more prone to imitate you than learn from you. Sad sad story. Maybe if the youth stop looking at you, you'll go away.
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