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Culture, healing, politics and bullshit - Not necessarily in that order

The general, socio-political and very personal rantings and ravings of a hip hop head from the hood hustling for change... Of himself.

You all know me and are aware that I am unable to remain silent. At times to be silent is to lie. For silence can be interpreted as acquiescence.
—Miguel de Unamuno



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Monday, December 15, 2008

Who Is Bigger Thomas And Why Does He Run Amok In Our Community?

Just because I haven't been blogging on the regular doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking about things enough to say something.

I always have something to say. I care not if you agree or disagree for that matter, I just care if you've given things a little thought and really took the time to think things through which brings me to my thoughts over this past weekend:

I was listening to Joe Madison last week and a listener called in and blamed our yet to be sworn in, brand new lord and personal savior Barack Hussein Obama for all of the ills in society and for the current state of affairs in the hood and the plight of the black man. He called his highness an 'Uncle Tom'.

That's a lot for a 'Tom' to be responsible for during a presidential transition, huh?

Anyhoo, Joe responded to the caller by asking him if he knew who or what an 'Uncle Tom' is. The caller had no other words. It seems in my humble opinion that all the words this older gentleman had were the ones he had prepared for the phone call because he flowed when it was his turn to speak on a nationally syndicated radio program to about eight million listeners over XM, Sirius and terrestrial radio but stammered when it came to expressing the motivation of his opinion.

And then...

Other folk began calling Obama an 'Uncle Tom' and an elitist.

He hasn't even gained a chance of time to implement programs and policy enough to get a shoe thrown at his ass for seven and a half years of warmongering upon a surprise visit to the place he fucked up yet.

Shame.

The bigger shame is (and no pun intended) the reason people think this way and cannot form enough opinion, nevertheless an idea that could have given leverage to our people over the years causing just a small bit of freedom and equality earlier in our history are the differences between 'Uncle Tom' and 'Bigger Thomas'.

Look that up.

We don't know exactly who or what an 'Uncle Tom' is. Most of us have no earthly idea who 'Bigger Thomas' is either. Even though there have been literally millions of Bigger Thomases that have lived with us, among us and around us, we have defended the thought process, ways, beliefs and actions of this thug nigger (and I meant that in the most dictionary sense I can in calling folks names) because one, we're scare easily and two, we never snitch on our own. I never knew that most of us represent ourselves as Bigger anyway, but we do and ignorantly so.

Plus, Bigger has hooked us up a time or two monetarily, product wise, sexually and in other ways. It seems that we love Bigger Thomas even though he has destroyed our community, raped our women and killed our men and we use the name of a resilient character to describe folks that we have no agreement with in saying 'Uncle Tom' when it was him that did not talk (or snitch for that matter) on the Bigger Thomases of his day while the other 'Biggers' like Sambo tricked off for so-called freedoms. Tom long suffered for that, didn't he?

And you wonder why with over two million US prisoners half of them are black?
And even though the projects have been torn down in most American cities the hood mentality still is relevant and exists.

We preach game, but have not taken the time to learn what exactly game is here in the United States. Other cultures have come over and set up shop and have prospered as a people and we still exist in finger pointing mode after slavery was abolished.

We never took the time to learn the difference between who Bigger Thomas is and what Uncle Tom meant to us and for that we suffer. We're still pointing fingers and that diminishes our leverage amongst each other.

Imagine what other folks think? Yes, that matters in the grand scheme of the affairs we need to be solvent.

It's easy to say no to us because of inner turmoil within a people and the lack of participation of other cultures (except for what some can sell due to our influence) because they don't want turmoil involved in their shit. Racism did not disappear on November 4th.

Self hatred and a lack of understanding who we are didn't go away either.

So who and what is an 'Uncle Tom' in today's culture and why do we defend Bigger Thomas the way we do?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The thing about "Bigger Thomas" is that first of all, there are a lot of people who have no idea who he is. Secondly, they don't recognize the harm he does. See....when you spell it out like you did (and so did Joe Madison during the show) and explain that Bigger is the thug in the hood...the one that no one will snitch on out of fear of retaliation...then we of course can see why he's a problem.

BUT that's not the guy we see in our homes, schools, neighborhoods. We see the dude on the corner, the hook up man, my dude, etc...and of course, his only real problem is that he is "a product of his environment". I hate that statement. Being a product of an environment indicates that you didn't do better because you didn't know better. That's not true. Plenty of people KNOW better. When Michael Vick was on trial, Whoopi was on The View and said that he was a product of his environment cause dog fighting is what you do in the hood. First off, there was never dog fighting in my hood and when they showed offenders on the news they were never black. Secondly, he had moved past that environment enough to get educated. That's proof that he KNEW better.

As for the "common joe", the same theory applies. If "that dude" in his hood (who is actually Bigger Thomas) ends up in jail repeatedly then there is your lesson that if you do what he does, you'll go where he is.

People have to stop making excuses for Bigger Thomas and recognize him for what he is.

Aly Cat 121 said...

Okay so it's been about 20 years since I read "N*gger" by Richard Wright. And I do remember Bigger Thomas however I thought his role was somewhat difference as in "status chasing" and wanting to be like his benefactors. And isn't Uncle Tom somewhat the same?

But frankly I think the real thing is that folks tend to believe that "others" have something we don't. Which frankly is not the case. "The Myth of the Model Minority" runs rampant. We say "why can't we get our sh*t together, like THEM? Cuz it's GAME. Straight up. It's like pitting brother against brother and sister against sister. And we fighting over crumbs while the puppet master is laughing and "inheriting" the earth.

IF you don't know who The Wizard really is, how can you beat him at his game?