Black Mythology: A Manifesto

***The following is something that I wrote back in 2008. I apparently saved it as a draft and never published it. Anyway, here goes*** I am not hood. Nor do I want to be. I went to college. I have a degree. I grew up with both of my parents, and they are still happily married. I am not from the hood. I grew up middle-class. Why does it seem that everybody wants to give the persona of being impoverished, whether you are or not? I am proud to be Black, but not proud of what we as Blacks now glorify on TV, radio and movies. I could care less who is offended about what I am saying. Our mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and grandparents and great-grandparents and so on got their ****** whooped, lynched, degraded, everything so that we could have the liberties that we have today, and the way we use the opportunities that we have? We have become in many ways a people of enablers. We have let many of our communities deteriorate to the point that much of our youths embrace what past generations (and just about every other group of people) These ***** that run these record labels and TV stations control the images that you see and hear and many of us are weak enough that we fall directly into the trap. This is the new slavery, the new minstrel show, the new millennium. We need to wake up and take economic and social control of our destinies and stop blaming and continuing the self-hatred that we inflict upon ourselves.