By now you've probably heard this story already. "Duke lacrosse team members accused of rape". Here's a link to the/an article:
http://www.eviplist.com/news.php?n=1613
I have some fairly strong opinions about this topic and all of the beautiful harshness is captured below (not for virgin eyes).
1. The dancer is a black girl dancing for a bunch of white guys (and the one black player on the team). This kinda irks me b/c it shows that these guys MAY have hired the black strippers b/c they view our women as if they're loose, hoes, freaks, or whatever else you want to call it. Can you imagine them looking at BET or MTV and thinking: "We want some girls that dance like THAT!" The city of Durham is half white and half black so there are undoubtedly some strippers of non-African-American descent in the city. But of course, these Duke players probably wanted and deserved (sarcasm) "the best". I mean this is Duke after all. This creates a sad, sad, sad for our (Black) women. This makes me dislike the strippin' bidness even more. J-rock, if part of your reasoning for not wanting a bachelor party is/was because you don't want to further the stereotype of black girls being loose, lude, and promiscuous, I feel you. While everything I said may be totally incorrect, I can't help but believe the portrayal of Black women in videos and on TV leaves subliminal messages in all of our minds.
2. There was only one black player on the team and he was not required to give a DNA swab like the other players on the team (who are all non-Black). GOOD! It's not fair and he probably should have been swabbed too. But the girl said her attackers were white. Well, I don't think that's necessarily fair. If it was a team of black guys (let's say a basketball team perhaps) with one white guy on the squad and they were accused of raping a white girl...AND, the police kept the white guy from giving a DNA swab on the basis of him being white...Man, the NAACP would be all over that shyt! So while I say "good" and I think "one for the negroes", I believe that it's unfair and facilitates a dangerous double-standard.
3. Is it not a fantasy of most white men to be "with" a black woman? Maybe not...Maybe so. I don't know. That's a pretty deep issue but I'll refrain from diving into that deep pool of water in this post. What I will say is that due to the images of our women on TV and in movies (for the most part), do other races view our women as hoes? YES! Do they view we Black men as THUGS? YES! So to me, this can also serve as a sort of wake-up call (another) for the types of stereotypes about Black folks that are facilitated in the media and in entertainment. What makes it even sadder is that alot of Black people promote the stereotypes. I am not excluded from that either. We need to stay cognizant (defined as "fully informed: conscious") of the fact that alot of the images we accept because we are Black actually hinder our overall progression in a world that is ruled/run/managed by a group of people in which Blacks are a minority.
Something like this Duke situation taking place in a southern city where the racial divide is about equal...Man, this could turn into some movie shyt!
"Food for thought, you do the dishes!"
1 comment:
If I could comment a bit (but I'll try to keep it short).
For a very long time Durham had a 60% black majority of the population. It has only been during my lifetime and the most recent 10 years that we've seen the population become more blanced between white and black residents. However, Durham, a very proud "black" city has had many issues as of late that this situation seems to only add to.
The dancer in question is a student at NC Central Univ., a well known HBCU and she's a single mother. It is not unheard of for women, especially students, of any race to use employment as a dancer to supplement thier income.
There are a number of cultural issues at play here, but at the end of the day I think you've got to be "fully informed: conscious" of what you're taking in. If you're dumb enough to commit a crime based on some TV-made fantasy then maybe you ought 'be real' and drop your sister, mother, or aunt off in the neighborhoods those images "come from" and see what you do to get by.
It's hard not to make a big deal out of what this is, but crap like this has gone on for years. Because it's Duke and the neighbor heard the racial slurs and called in the report might just be the reason Durham is getting this bad press. Though that's nothing new around here...
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