Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Posts Tagged ‘Black Dudes’

If you haven’t already heard, Theology expert and ancient historian, Elton John, has declared that Jesus was, in fact, a gay man:

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving.

-Elton John

Now, it’s not a new thing to try to claim Jesus as a member of your own group. Over the years, Jesus has been a black dude, a severely out-of-place European with a blond beard, and even a right-wing Laissez-Faire capitalist. But of all of things that Jesus has been turned into, this is probably the most likely.

Think about it:

• Hung around with only men (so-called “Apostles”) and slutty fag-hags (Mary Magdalene)
• Liked things neat and tidy, as evidenced by his kicking out the money changers from the temple—with a whip, no less
• Drama queen that always talked about “being betrayed” and “fighting temptation”
• Always talking about “his body,” which he eventually “serves” up at the Last Supper
• Well-groomed and stylish for the time: neat beard, long hair, sandals, and two-colored toga
• Obviously kept up his physique, even crash dieting for forty days and forty nights

I once witnessed a scene on a Philadelphia street corner that went something like this:

SEATED MIDDLE-AGED BLACK DUDE

(while looking at a girl over his shoulder and talking to another guy)

That girlfriend of yours, man: She’s. A. Fine. Ass. Woman. Mm. Mm. Mm.

MMMM.

No disrespect.

The crazy part is that I could see the other guy’s rage visibly increase as the black dude carried on like that about his girl and, then, evaporate just as quickly as as soon as he heard the “no disrespect.” It was an incredible sight. And I immediately recognized it for what it was: a powerful incantation for de-balling an angry fist. It was like a thin British girl, in the prime of her fertility, stopping a hoard of horny pirates dead in their tracks by simply saying “parley.” Or like placing a disclaimer at the bottom of your illegal copy of a movie like this:

None taken.

What I didn’t know was whether anyone could use the line, or if it only worked coming out of a middle-aged black dude’s mouth. I also didn’t know if it worked equally as good if you prefaced your potentially offensive statement with it (as in, “no disrespect, but you can’t sing”) or if you had to say it at the end, to clear the air after-the-fact. Worse, there was no way to test it until I got into some hot water—and, by then, it could be too late.

After years of experiments, I’m here to tell you that the line is solid gold—especially with ghetto-ish ladies, hostile ethnic types, and power-tripping authority figures. But it’s all in the delivery.

So use it and abuse it to get yourself out of jams. But if you get a beat down, it’s because you—no disrespect—fucked it up.

Nobody likes being stared at. But ethnic people seem to have a special aversion to it. The more ethnic, the more they don’t like it. I can’t count the number of times–in my younger years–I asked, was asked, or witnessed the asking of whether someone (or I) had a “staring problem.” The staring usually ended right there. If you ever wanted to intentionally provoke a beef with an ethnic person, all you had to do was mad dog them for a little while.¹

¹Mad Dog (verb) To stare fixedly at someone in a hostile manner. Generally used to convey anger or disdain, can be a signal that a fight is about to happen.

[from Urban Dictionary]

So when I heard the story of “racist” malfunctioning in the new HP Deluxe Webcam, I immediately knew what was going on.

Hewlett Packard’s new camera includes innovative face-tracking technology, which follows a user’s face – even if it moves out of frame, or zooms in when the user is farther away.

This technology wasn’t working for one African-American consumer – the webcam didn’t move at all for him. But for his white co-worker, who was right next to him at the time, the face-tracking feature worked perfectly.

And so the man…had a message for one of the largest technology companies in the world: “Hewlett Packard computers are racist,” he says.

[Excerpted from theGrio.com]

This, I’m afraid, is no glitch. But it’s also not clear-cut racism. The device is just making a calculated assessment of the circumstances at hand.

Put yourself in its shoes.

Here you are, a nice deluxe-webcam from Palo Alto, California and, all of a sudden, you got a black dude in your face. The guy may look and sound friendly, but you know that even the friendliest ethnic people are liable to get pissed if you look at them too long, never mind follow them around the room with your “tracking lens.”

So, you play it cool, disregard your programming, and look away–while keeping an eye on him from the corner of your lens.

That’s not racist.

A lot of bad-ass shit that starts on the mean streets of the ethnic world, dies a slow death in the suburban cul-de-sacs of the mainstream. By the time young-ish white girls start doing it, you know the fangs on the tiger have been filed down to rounded nubs. Then, one day, you hear it coming out of a middle-aged lady’s mouth on an idiotic sitcom and you know it’s all over.

I’ve seen this process repeated with Swiss-clockwork precision on tons of urban, ethnic (often black) language and practices including: Snoop Dogg lingo (fo’ shizzle),” talk to the hand,” “no they didn’t,” the raise the roof palms-up gesture, the cabbage patch dance, corn rows, etc.

A recent casualty to this trend has been the distended-lip, kissy face pioneered by Latino men all over the world to discretely point to things without using their hands or, similarly, by black men to express intrigue or curiosity.

Cuba Gooding demonstrates his intrigue and curiosity.

But a deadly cocktail of digital cameras, picture texts, and social networking has rendered the once-useful gesture into the over-abused, default pose for lame self portraits (accompanied by the raised, extended arm toward the camera) or a generic, catch-all “cutesy” face for party-atmosphere group shots.

Aw, djeah, boy-ee. Don't be frontin'. Keep it real, like me.

So, it’s with great regret that I bid goodbye to the mighty kissy face. For decades, you served us well, my old friend.