Obama Has The Birthers and Black Nerds Have The Blackers. Fair or Foul?

When the hash tag #FastTailedGirls hit the blogoshpere, it went viral for many reason's. I imagine that one of them is because it struck a little close to the bone for some.  This topic does for me.

I grew up in a ghetto environment common across our nation in which there is little tolerance for  blacks who act white #blackNerds. What is acting white?  It is a black kid who behaves at school; who finished his food at lunch and gets a certificate for nutrition; who plays in the band and works for the school paper and runs for class office and speaks with proper English too often.  The good part for me was also the bad part. Most black kids who fit this mold will get picked on by many different forms of bully.  I had most of those bullies in my own family.  Oh yeah.  My middle name is Dwight.  (I heard that)

Fortunately, few people outside of my family had the courage to pick on anyone in my very large family.  Most of the neighborhood roughnecks became friends because they would always gravitate to the kind of folks that I come from.  Inside of my family it sucked being me because I often found myself on the wrong side of  those family wide sessions of the dozens.  To adjust, I became like George W. Bush who was easy to love and easy to ridicule because he was fertile for ridicule.  We may not have understood his pain, but it was clear that he could understand our laughter.  Over time, I learned not to take myself too seriously.

Black people are like all people.  We need to feel pride and respect and not absorb an inferiority complex for our shortcomings.  Our spirit of endurance is anchored with a stubborn backbone.  If you mock us for our language we will turn it into common vernacular. As a result of this spirit it is now one thing to be wearing jewelry and another to be blinging.  This spirit also makes it hard on the black kid that doesn't conform to the vernacular.

Jonathan Martin is most likely a victim of this undying reality. The black kids that come from the south are even more likely to perpetuate this mindset because they are the most stubborn of us all with rejecting the Kings English.  The NFL is full of southern brotha's.  The notion that the honorary black man "Richie Incognito" would be assigned to toughen up white boy Martin is well within my realm of understanding.  I would hope that black people would rise up someday and challenge this cultural shortcoming. Who gets to define what is black enough.  The blackers?

We make it so hard on black kids that do not conform that our kids begin to straddle the fence.  They will work hard to get the grade that their parents encourage while pretending not to be very studious in the face of other black kids.  When you straddle a fence you will eventually fall one way or the other.  Even cool white boys have started to call each other white boy to mimic the criticism that blacks began against each other.

The brothers with hood swag probably assigned Incognito to this task because hood swag has power.  Power, however, always demands wisdom.