Black Americans are the most popular people on the planet and we are the only ones that don't know it.  We are some of the best looking, some of the most talented and some of the most innovative, yet as a group we fail to understand that about ourselves.  We have not had productive collective consciousness for several thousand years.

Shit Floats If The Water Is Salt Or Fresh     

I hope that you played the video.  Serena Williams is worshipped all over the globe (especially by yours truly).  French tennis players convinced her to shake that magnificent booty then pasted it all over the known universe.  I wonder out loud if me and a couple of my partners could have convinced her to go in a studio and do that performance.  Those horny Frogs convinced the hottest woman on earth to behave like a hood rat. I'm a little embarrassed for her although, quiet as kept , I could watch her take a dump on camera but that's just me.

I happen to be 4 blocks from one of the baddest studios in recording history - United Sound Studios - and I'm 6 blocks from the original Motown recording studios but I could never convince her to do what she did for those Frogs for me, even if I offered her 100k.

Why would she do it for them but not for me, one might ask?  Well it's pretty simple, in my twisted mind.  On the surface, I'm just a G from the hood.  I don't speak a language that is different from hers.  I don't live in a glorified environment and I'm the same color as she.  Her family is from Saginaw, Michigan.  Some of her relatives still reside in Sagnasti.  People different from her allow her to feel especial even when she is not being special.

Black people tend to believe in the grass is greener phenomena.  I was watching Okrah a while back.  She had a young woman on the show that conducted a study with black children and brown and white dolls.  She asked the children to pick out the "pretty" doll.  The boy and girl chose the white doll.  The woman then asked the young black girl which doll looked most like her.  The child reluctantly chose the brown doll.  The child had a look of resignation on her face as she chose the brown doll.  The little choklit girl had a catharsis as she came to the realization that she preferred anything over her own skin, her own features. 

When Did The Disconnect Occur?         

I feel like there is something wrong with me.  I've always liked myself.  I colored myself brown when I portrayed myself as a child.  I have pretty healthy relationships with women.  I don't particularly like men but many of them admire me and want to be my friend and I accommodate them in a socially appropriate way.  I also enjoy being by myself. 

My younger brother and I frequently discuss the fact that being "normal" is quite abnormal in today's world.  We have discovered over time that loving ourselves and feeling good about ourselves is almost in opposition to the world around us.  We have to deal with a great deal of acrimony in our professional lives because of people who for lack of a better work playa hate.  We simple ignore or seal around the folks who playa hate in our personal lives.

My brothers and I grew up in a loving environment with parents that adored us and devoted themselves to us.  There was dysfunction.  which occurs to some degree in every nuclear family. 

Ozzie And Harriet In The Hood              

Our mother and father tried to pattern our family after the wholesome goals being promoted by the mainstream society in post World War II America.  My parents bought into it.  My brothers and I lived it.  My father had the wherewithal to force my mother into the workplace.  That additional income helped my family members to individually self-actualize.  It was a freedom that allowed us to be a mainstream American family.  It insulated us from the institutional forces that stifle the very lives of many black Americans. 

From my personal perspective, as a middleclass college educated mainstream American male, I find it difficult to understand while we-black people-indulge in self hate as a lifestyle while others take gross advantage of the opportunities that abound in the greatest country in the western world.  It pains me intellectually and on some level emotionally to understand in a critical way how much contempt we as a people have for one another.  And I don't know how to fix it.  It's never been about someone else.  Culturally we have been our own worst enemies for a millennium.