Back in the days when I was a teenager, Before I had status and before I had a pager, you
could find the Abstract listening to hip hop, my pops used to say it reminded him of Be-Bop,
I said well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles the way that Bobby Brown
is just amping like Michael. It’s all expected, things are for the looking, If you got the
money, Quest is for the booking. Phew! That's exhausting...
So I just engaged in this somewhat ridiculous massacre of everybody’s favorite Tribe Called Quest
Lyric to illustrate a point. All US white people kind of want to be black. Which of
course brings us to Rachel Dolezal. This wasn’t a topic I really wanted to cover, but some
of you suggested it, and I’m here for the viewers, so here we go.
So yeah, white people in the US kind of want to be black. We don’t want the consequences,
but even the most racist americans have spent some time alone in their car singing along
with Chuck Berry, Tupac or one of their imitators. And why wouldn’t we? African American culture
is pretty much the best thing about the United States. The black experience isn’t just
the most compelling American story it’s the most impressive. The ability to not just
endure, but rise above the Middle Passage, hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow and
mass incarceration is extraordinary. All this makes the Babylonian Captivity look like a
brief walk in the park. [sings] By the River of Babylon, where we sat ... I'm sorry I will never do that again. I promise...
And what's more, African Americans gave us pretty much everything that makesthe United States interesting. From Gospel to Rock n’ Roll
Roll to hip hop to the New York City inspired street art that can be found all over the world...
What’s not to envy! If it weren't for the African American contribution to the United States,
we’d just be a bigger Germany. Powerful, homogenous , and super boring.
So when I look at Rachel Dolezal’s story I actually kind of get it. Ms. Dolezal led
a local chapter of the NAACP, and had been presenting herself as a black woman for a
number of years. A couple of weeks back, her white parents outed her as a white person.
I can’t imagine how angry she must make black people, but I can’t speak to that
and I won’t pretend to. From a white person’s perspective though, I kind of get it. The
African American experience is awe-inspiring, who wants to be the bad guy in that story?
Ms. Dolezal obviously took her white envy way too far, but now she’s suffering for it.
What bugs me about this story is the fact that we care about it so much. What makes
us pay more attention to this than we do to police shootings, or the horrific racist murder
that occurred last week in Charleston, South Carolina? My fear is that we’re gravitating
towards Dolezal as a country because it helps us deal with White guilt. I’m afraid that
the fact that this one activist, out of millions across the country has been exposed as a bit
of a ridiculous fraud allows us to believe that the larger problems have been solved.
They Have Not. If the past week has taught us anything, it’s that. Let’s let Ms.
Dolezal fade back into deserved obscurity and get to work.
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Also, thank you for sticking around! This is my 100th video. I had no idea I'd get to this point. Thanks so much for participating, watching, all of it.