Nullus to the fullest re: the above headline.
Right now I am fucking with this crack’dberry as my main blogging tool. Ha, I said tool.
Over twenty years ago I remember a criminal case that polarized New York City like no other has since. The case was that of the Central Park jogger. A white woman had been viciously beaten and raped, then left for dead in the bucolic confines of the city’s largest park.
The case was vigorously prosecuted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and five(5) Harlem teenagers were tried and convicted of the crime. Nearly fifteen years after the crime these convictions were vacated when the perpetrator confessed to the violent acts.
The fact that his DNA evidence was withheld by the Manhattan D.A. was never examined as an obstruction of justice. Instead the prosecutor, along with New York’s entire media machine was allowed to villify these young men and irrefutably alter their lives forever.
When this case initially popped off I knew something didn’t smell right. Here’s the deal… Any Black kid growing up in America understands what raping a white woman will mean for you if you are caught. That information is carried in the whispers of the ghosts belonging to the souls that have hung from trees like so much strange fruit. For some of those victims their crime was only glancing at a white woman, if even that much. So trust that these young men knew the repercussions of sexual assault.
What the District Attorney and the New York Times employed was the spectre of the boogieman’s black staff.
That is something that strikes more fear in peoples’ minds than even the fear that a Black man is holding a gun. It’s the fear of the Black penis.
Pop culture has used the imagery of the big buck to promote fear and hysteria. I pulled this drop off the trash heap to use the image below from recently deceased illustrator Frank Frazetta.
Even an artist that I admire can’t escape the popular culture prism that objectifies Black men.
Jungle Fever
^ is that THE nation? What’s poppin’ dunny?
dP word is bond on everything I just came from the bar kickin’ this knowledge. A broad came over to the table specifically to holler @ me, sitting in a booth with the homies grubbing and watching The Lake Show disperse of the Mormons’ 5. Even though she looked like an 8.5, I told cats that’s the one who sobers up with the pointer on the tongue and calls enforcement.
I had to remind them of our other homie who’s just started 4 months of a 35 year vacation.
nation Says:
September 19th, 2007 at 1:16 am
^ WTF?
Re: $yk post.
That sh@t is deep.
That’s the popularity of your Ving Rhames’, Michael Clarke Duncan’s, Tiny Lister’s, Terry Crews’, etc. It’s not so much that they’re clinically trained thespians, but the awe & wonder of a big Black dude [ll] is intriguing to “them.” “They” fear & adore the buck equally.
It’s just ashame that instead of taking advantage of that, there’s generations of Black dudes that villify that imagery just as much as “they” do. Fuck all that; Black is beautiful. No [ll] necessary.
Theres a girl at my school we call JaFeve, for Jungle Fever.
Its a accurate nickname… haha
DP, word to Big Bird.
Back in the day, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing articulated the fear so well and came up with her own theories.
Between lightskint & green eyed dudes “going out” in ’88, and I played football… Well, LOL.
VEe-
‘The Isis Papers’ was an interesting read, no?
I didn’t agree with a lot of it, but it surely made me think.
@ VEe & T. Grands….Eldredge Cleaver also articulated it, though not as eloquently, in “Soul On Ice”. For that chapter alone, it was an interesting read.
@Mark Dub,
Cleaver was buggin with his rape theories.
VEe-
‘Soul’ was ill. I read it when I was about 18. I’m looking at it on my bookshelf right now. While we’re speaking on books of a certain subject matter, has anyone read ‘Nigger’ by Randall Kennedy? If not, do yourself a favor…
^^^^
I meant VEe & MDub…
Tony Grands, I read Kennedy’s book a little while back. Definitely a good read in my opinion. The account of the professor just mentioning the word in discussion is kind of crazy.
I plan on checking out ‘Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal’ some time soon.
VEe! & T. Grands, I haven’t read Soul on Ice since I was about 18 either, and don’t remember a whole lot about it, but that part where he was retelling what the old inmate told him about how white believed that blacks were beastial and made for work while white himself was more intellectual and should run things, all the while not being able to separate blacks from being more sexual since they are of the body was some deep shit to my 18-ish year old mind. DP’s post reminded me of that section. I don’t even remember the rape theories. Is that the same section, VEe!?