Sunday, December 07, 2014

Rosa Parks > Ellen DeGeneres + Chris Rock



... And Harriet Tubman, where now the hip-hop people have now put on a pornographic movie about her. And this guy—I forgot his name, [James] McBride or something, The New York Times is in there with this glowing two-page review of his book, talking about Frederick Douglass was a drunk... and isn’t that funny? So, I think now there’s some kind of concerted effort in the cultural environment to make fun of anything that historically would give people any kind of courage or nerve or desire to fight. I don’t think it’s accidental. - Gloria Richardson
The New York Magazine features a lengthy interview with actor, comedian and Victim of Racism, Chris Rock. The Saturday Night Live alumnus and creator of Good Hair (2009) reflected on Ferguson, Bill Cosby, the notion of "progress" as it relates to Racism, and raising black girls while Sasha and Malia Obama reside in The White House.

Rock's profession and body of work inform what one can realistically expect him to say about black people, Racism in general. Mychal Denzel Smith submitted a spectacular assessment of how Whites have enthusiastically rewarded Rock and many other Victims of Racism for disparaging melanin-rich humans. Bring The Pain. Abandon #BlackSelfRespect, mock collective black trauma for White entertainment, and your bank balance will never be niggardly.


This verbose exchange has agendas. Promoting Rock's new film (Top Five) is a key objective, but the primary aim is to appease, reassure and glorify Whites. There is more White flattery than excuses and donations for the White killers of Michael Brown, Jr. and Eric Garner. Joan Rivers is a "great person, underrated comedian." Rock declares his "love" for Bill Maher, and can't deny that Top Five "is almost like an homage to Woody Allen."


The White collective dominates the globe, and a sizable portion of dark folks are required to brown-nose and pay tributes to pale folks for fewer nickles thank Mr. Rock. That's White Power, Racism.


White Power also dictates that two individuals named in this report have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct, but only one is recognized as a suspected predator. Bill Cosby is practically declared deceased alongside Rivers and Robin Williams. Stick a pitchfork in his career. The best we can do is hope the allegations aren't true. The cinema and career of Woody Allen are celebrated with no regard for the lingering allegations of pedophilia.


Fawning aside, Rock slips in profound reflections on Racist White Pathology:

My mother tells stories of growing up in Andrews, South Carolina, and the black people had to go to the vet to get their teeth pulled out. And you still had to go to the back door, because if the white people knew the vet had used his instruments on black people, they wouldn’t take their pets to the vet. This is not some person I read about. This is my mother.
Pause for Dr. Maya Angelou (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings).

"Bony T," Rock's character from Boomerang (1992),  states that "progress" has allowed for "the nicest white people that America has ever produced." Ostensibly, millennial Whites - like his daughters' classmates - have greater immunity to the "disease" of Racism that infected previous eras when "We [WHITES] were hanging black people." [Lennon Lacy? Frederick Jermaine Carter? Khalid Flimban?] However, Rock is still black, and, apparently, justifiably fearful that even Whites raised on Madagascar (2005) might be the new millennium Mistress Epps or Bull Connor.
I almost cry every day. I drop my kids off and watch them in the school with all these mostly white kids, and I got to tell you, I drill them every day: Did anything happen today? Did anybody say anything? They look at me like I am crazy.
Perhaps Mr. Rock and his daughters should peruse Lawrence Otis Graham's recent disclosure that cocooning his black offspring in prestigious White academies did not shield them from White Terrorism and it made them reluctant to discuss or acknowledge the reality - and pain - of Racism.

Truth being that Whites have complete, unadulterated contempt for black people, dead or alive. NPR's Allison Keyes produced a 2013 report on efforts to preserve African American burial grounds:

A lot of other African-American cemeteries in D.C. today are under parking lots. They're under buildings, they're under schools. They'll never be remembered or found. William and Mary anthropology professor Michael Blakey is one of the leading experts on African and African-American burial grounds in the country. He says the ritual treatment of the dead is one of the fundamental definitions of humankind.
Four and a half hours.

Counter-Racist soldier Gloria Richardson charged that there is a concerted, methodical effort to eviscerate black history. Laying waste to black cemeteries and maligning black ancestors is a part of this campaign. Chris Rock's analogy of Rosa Parks is another illustration of this disgraceful barrage.

I always call Ellen DeGeneres the gay Rosa Parks. If Rosa Parks had one of the most popular daytime TV shows, I’m sure the civil-rights movement would’ve moved a little bit faster too.
Rock's commentary is glaringly inconsistent with the proclamations of his Everybody Hates Chris co-star, Tyler James Williams, who recently declared that "the African American community is notoriously homophobic."

But black is gay. That concept and image has been promoted ad nauseam and with tremendous enthusiasm. During the summer of 2014, PBS released The New Black, which sustained the attack on black people as the greatest homophobes to ever breathe, while simultaneously perpetuating the equation of black and gay. Time magazine showcased Laverne Cox to poignantly make LGBT Rights synonymous with black people, Civil Rights. Cox has been the centerpiece of Netflix's juggernaut, Orange Is The New Black - where black people are again connected to crime and incarceration as well as "homosexual" and "transgender" behavior.


This is one aspect of the White Supremacist offensive. Victims of Racism are being used to advance and nurture this objective. Consciously or subconsciously some black people have deduced that Whites will be less hostile and/or more generous with resources if they shill for gay issues. That's White Power, Racism.


But Rosa Parks? Rosa Parks who battled to free the Scottsboro Boys? Rosa Parks who married, lived with, and was part of a black collective committed to armed self defense and the preservation of black life? Rosa Parks who ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott being emulated in Ferguson, Missouri? Rosa Parks who risked her life to defend black females who were raped by White brutes because "she knew [White] sexual violence sat at the core of white supremacy." [Danielle McGuire, At The Dark End Of The Street pg. 56]  Rosa Parks who fought off a White Rapist as a teen? Rosa Parks who was forced to flee Alabama because of White Terrorists' relentless threats to assassinate her?

Rosa Parks, for example, constantly received calls from angry whites who yelled "Die, nigger!" whenever she or her husband picked up the phone. Like other blacks committed to the freedom struggle, Rosa Parks lost her job and was blacklisted in Montgomery, as were her husband and mother. After an especially vicious death threat in the summer of 1957, Parks called her cousin in Detroit sobbing. "Rosie, get the hell out of Montgomery," he urged. "Raymond's right; Whitey is going to kill you." (McGuire, pg. 120)
This legacy is equal to Ellen DeGeneres? The White woman who peeled off $39 million for a California palace? Ellen DeGeneres who was just accused of practicing Racism during the 2014 World Cup? She joked about being ignorant of Ghana's geographic location. All of Africa is "3rd World," so Ghana might not even be on the same planet with Whitefolks.

Rock's comparison is inaccurate, untenable, and should guarantee that he does not have a black patron for the remainder of his Hollywood career. It's likely that Whites encouraged and/or applauded Russell Simmons mocking Harriet Tubman as a whore. James McBride penned Frederick Douglass as a boozehound in The Good Lord Bird, and Whites lionized his effort with the 2013 National Book Award; the bestseller is scheduled to be adapted to the big screen starring Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith's son, Jaden. Whites might have similar laurels for Rock, but nothing Whites offer trumps #BlackSelfRespect.

An audience that’s not laughing is the biggest indictment that something’s too far. No comedian’s ever done a joke that bombs all the time and kept doing it.
Minimizing, obscuring or trivializing the life force of Rosa Parks is a "joke" that bombs eternally. Where is the Sandman when you need him?

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