“It’s time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good luck.”
This is a quote from (and the general thesis of) an article entitled, The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger written by John Ridley for this month’s issue of Esquire Magazine. It’s a long article, intentionally provactive, and a little distasteful - but an important read for Blackademics, as it reflects many of the prevailing elitist sentiments of the Black upper class. My initial thoughts on the article:
This guy is not saying anything new. We’ve all heard the “Black people vs. Niggers” argument back in 1996 from Chris Rock’s HBO special Bring The Pain, “It’s like a civil war going on with black people. And there’s two sides: there’s black people, and there’s niggas. And niggas have got to go.” -Chris Rock (they even have a wikipedia about it). Where Ridley deviates from Chris Rock is that he takes the joke serisouly, blaming black people for everything from their dispropotionate incarceration rates to thier unemployment and high school drop-out rates. He even goes so far as to make a case for the justification of the murders of 15 blacks by the police department. Wish them “luck,” indeed.
This “ascended blacks” vs. “niggers” debate reminds me of an argument about women, known as the difference between a “sister” and a “bitch,” laid out by Jay-Z in his song, Bitches & Sisters. “Sisters get respect, bitches get what they deserve, Sisters work hard, bitches work your nerves” -Jay-Z. I would equate Ridley’s argument that we should abandon “niggers” to Jay-Z’s underlying thesis in this song, which basically dehumanizes women and holds them responsible for thier own sexual exploitation. Jay-Z makes a case for abandoning these women who are dragging us all down, and focusing on “ascended” women, who have something good going for them.
This is a dangerous perspective which places women, or in the Ridley’s case the Black community, solely responsible for their situation, in poverty, uneducated and downtrodden. They are there because they want to be - because they are lazy niggers or horny bitches, who “disdain actual ascendancy.” This perspective completely absolves the systems of racism and patriarchy which have VESTED INTERESTS in perpetuating those conditions, which leave blacks and women economically and psychologically available for exploitation.
“It’s time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good luck.” This sounds like something a Black man, who was about to snitch on a slave rebellion would say. Seriously, not to call Ridley a race-traitor, or a Tom, or a house negro because he deserves to have his opinion. Just because I happen to disagree with it, does not compel me to reduce myslef to his level, by name-calling and branding him with honestly played-out terms. Ridley is not a Tom, he’s a Black man. Just like the Al Sharpton is a Black man, not a nigger, as Ridley suggests in his article. However, that being said, this does sound like a quote from a snitch during slavery times. Wish niggers good luck, “niggers” meaning slaves or the descendants of slaves - lazy, violent, oversexualized, and wretched creatures of ignorance and filth. This is the contempt for Black people with which the author is speaking. What John Ridley does not realize is that the white constituency which reads Esquire magazine, probably thinks he’s a nigger, too. A good nigger. An obedient nigger, through whom they can channel and justify their racist ideas.
More than anything else, that is the one thing that takes any credence or validity away from the author’s points (if there were any to begin with): the context in which he is writing. Esquire Magazine, a posh white magazine, in which I can imagine you could count the number of Black faces on one hand. This is the context that Ridley is using to try to appeal to Black people - a magazine, which probably has a .001 percent of Black readership!?
It’s like a brother trying to rally the Black community at an Orange County debutant ball, (or better yet at a clan rally) yelling, “leave the niggers behind! They’re dragging us down! Be like Condi and Colin, two Black people who made something of themselves!” And when he looks out into the audience, into a sea of white faces who applaud him with thunderous resolve, he tries to convince himself that he’s speaking on behalf of Black people. If Ridley had the guts to say something like this in Essence or Black Enterprise Magazine - publications, which will actually put a black person on the cover of their magazine more than once a year - then I honestly could have looked at it more objectively. But it’s obvious that his goal is not actually to help the race ascend. He’s talking to white people, articulating what they could never say in public. In this regard, I can’t take anything he says seriously. He’s like a prostitute talking on behalf of his pimp.
Published on December 6, 2006 at 10:52 am.
24 Comments.
Filed under racism, women's issues/feminism, mainstream culture.
