“Hey! They told me they call you a nigger when you ain’t around!”
It’s 6am and I just came home from the most epic of nights. Manhattan, Brooklyn and some stops in between. As I was about to upload the day’s video footage I read a comment from ctorre telling me to respect the gangsta of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. becuase he wrote some academic book on the trickster – The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism
The trickster character is prevalent in most mythology as the character at the crossroads pointing in several directions all at once. The signifying monkey was supposed to be a guide to gauge your moral and mental capacity in order to decide your fate. Professor Gates sure could have a used a signifying monkey in his house the evening he got pinched. He has been looking down from the ivory (ivy) tower for so long he forgot that he got in there as a janitor.
Here’s some blurb on Gates book that tells me he should have owned the filter in his brain to keep him from talking sideways shit to a man with a gun in his home…
“Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s original, groundbreaking study explores the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, and particularly the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey whose myths help articulate the black tradition’s theory of its literature, Gates uncovers a unique system of interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. His critical approach relies heavily on the Signifying Monkey–perhaps the most popular figure in African-American folklore–and signification and Signifyin(g).”
If he had really studied ZORA NEALE HURSTON’s incredible novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching Gods’ he would have realized that his battle was in another place at another time. I still don’t believe this professor has any inkling what the majority of Black males have come to understand as the normal police procedures but we will see whet lessons he develops from this experience. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Black males are inmates in prisons across this nation for non-violent crimes.
Can we get these men a signifying monkey?
Gates is an asshat and its only unfortunate the douchebaggery on BOTH sides of this case will obscure that fact. Whatever decent scholarship Gates ever did has long been eclipsed by his politicking his “brand” for white– sort of how like Wynton Marsalis became the face of jazz to the exclusion of a couple generations of black (and other) genius because he was acceptable to white and, like Gates, he reveled in that power.
Any Gates’ defenders want to talk about who ghostwrites some of his crap?
I could name 30 superb black scholars in a variety of “African-American”-related fields that blow this witless fuck away in every manner EXCEPT “Harvard” pedigree and marketing but the regular media doesn’t give a shit and most academics are afraid to cross the name because then THEY might get shut out of different gigs.
I’ll go on if interested but while NEVER defending the abridgement of anyone’s civil liberties, excuse me calling fraud on Gates’ phony “prestige.”
“I’ll talk to ‘your mamma outside…” a
I would have put his ass in a half Nelson and called it a night…even with the Harvard credentials..ignorance knows no depths.
Never underestimate the depths of twice-removed self loathing.
This may have been a much needed reality check for Prof. Gates, but after the beer fest, he’ll most likely continue thinking he’s a part of society uppercrust, better than (than the rest of) us niggers.
For all his high-falootin’ & book learnin’, he show wasn’t snart enough to know that rarely does a “brotha” win an argument with a soldier of Uncle Sam’s domestic MP unit.
I can only assume his next book will be the Harvard equivelant of “Fuck Tha Police”, with a forward by Ice Cube & Chuck D.
Wow.
“Show” should’ve been “sure”.
Heh.
ya need to stop with the race card come on this shit is silly. ya wanna play the race card no matter what. real talk that shit needs to be exposed cause ya don’t wanna stop with that shit. seriously man when i read this type of shit i feel like gettin a gun and just killin for real stop stop stop
Thanks for the response.
I love when people respond and they clearly haven’t read what they’re responding to.