Almost 30...

Almost 30

The closer i get to those magic numbers the more i start discovered that thing that i have always envied about older women. Women like nia long, jill scott, ms badu, they all have one thing in common. Beauty? Yes. But there is something else , self love and self awareness. Nothing more breathtaking than listening to an interview that jill scott did for the breakfast club and hearing her talking about her journey to becoming a woman, knowing that she wasnt born that perfect being that i often view her as. She had to take some time and come to terms and hold herself accountable for events that happened in her life and during that course she started falling in love with herself on a different level. 

The closer i get to 30 the more i am coming to terms with the woman that i am becoming. It took a really bad relationship to shake me up and wake up that woman inside of me. Before then it was so easy to place the blame on man for every bad thing that had happened but then i sat down with myself and said its you girl. You chose him, you chose to deal and then one day it clicked and i just wasnt anymore. Something about truly loving yourself is knowing and being in firm in what you deserve. That love that you need to nurture you. And knowing when to avoid the people that arent giving it. I look at the men and women of our generation and there are so many that arent planted and are just flowing where the wind takes them. Nothing against being free but in order to truly be free youve got to accept your roots, know what is for you and what isnt. Im learning that. Its ultimately a bumpy ride and it isnt always easy, everyday i dont wake up loving that extra cushion, or mole that just appeared over night or my melanin but you got to. No one else is obligated to go on your journey with you and i have accepted that. 

I love me and everything about me. From the crazy to the self assured. It is what makes Ingrid, simply Ingrid. Almost 30 and I love the woman that I am and that I am becoming. I don't care what people think about me or what I choose to put my energy into. I am vocal about it. I write about it. Might even sing off key about it. I dance to my own rhythm and I dont need the audience anymore. 

Almost 30 and it feels damn good. And it looks damn good. 

"Why Do We Hate Our Sistas?"

"I wonder why we take from our women? Why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think it's time to kill for our women, time to heal our women, be real to our women" -Tupac Shakur; Rapper, Actor, Revolutionary


Define visionary. Define prophecy. Both words are synonymous with Tupac Shakur. Let me connect the dots for you, follow me. The above quote is from a song called, "Keep Ya Head Up" by Tupac, released in 1993. The next line is "And if we don't we'll have a race of babies, that'll hate the ladies, that make the babies". Again, this song was released in 1993.

Fast forward to 2016. Black women, do you constantly feel like black men hate black women? I'm sure a good bit of you do. I hear it all the time and see it all the time... sometimes I even think it for you. So if nothing else, Tupac's words proved to be prophetic in the way that this is even a conversation. Social media is an eery place. It has developed into what has commonly been coined as a 24 hour news cycle. But the news is not only the news that the government sees fit to share with us. It's constant links and opinions and gossip from everyone in the world. Those paid and unpaid alike have almost an equal voice. Which is dangerous. So let's use twitter for example. More specifically, #BlackTwitter. If you have a substantial amount of people you follow and said people have a substantial number of followers, you probably are privy to the same "news" cycle as everybody else in #BlackTwitter. It's a numbers game. So I think more so than anything else, this is the root of black women 35 and under feeling like black men hate them. It's definitely not the genesis. Black stereotypes have long been perpetuated inside and outside of the black community but now there's really and endless platform for the rhetoric. The frustration. The complaining. The timeline!!

I pride myself on being a logical thinker. Which is a gift and a curse. But for this conversation I can't just use logic. Because logic tells me that there's clear agendas here. Logic tells me that if you're a woman you're going to be more susceptible to the complaints about women than you are about men. Which would lead you to believe that the complaints about women are more. I'm not here to defend that claim. I actually believe that in 2016, from my experience and what I've seen it could actually be true. And that's partially because I feel, now more than ever, it's more accepted for men to complain publicly. Which is alarming to me. I was taught, for better or for worse, that a man's first job is to protect. More emphasis was placed on that during my upbringing because I'm black and black women in America face oppression and attack like no other. With that being said, BLACK women feeling like black men hate them, hurts me. It annoys me. It angers me. And it's very frustrating to me. Unless you're new here, you know I write blogs that mostly cater to black women. Giving them somewhat of a spokesmen to my male contemporaries that can't understand what they're saying. Because it's emotion vs logic and most men weren't raise to embrace understanding and analyzing emotion. So when women speak from an emotional place, most men weren't typically trained to properly listen to that. I've wrote many blogs that give what I hope is clarity. I'm not a woman, more specifically a black woman, at all but I always wish to understand. Wish to learn. So that's what I want to focus on here. I don't want to discuss who complains the most. I want to discuss why our women feel like we hate them.

Throughout our history as black Americans we have strategically been taught to hate to ourselves. To hate each other. Divide and conquer. It worked. Unfortunately, it worked. But again, a man's first job is to protect. And black men, we have failed our women. So many of society's ills show this but I think the reason our women feel we hate them is because most men fail to understand that despite the stereotypical flaws, even on the occasion that they apply to particular women, men rarely take into account why they're that way. Because from their perspectives, if you really understood how painful it was for the woman you're complaining about to raise her two kids alone you wouldn't be complaining about her trust issues. If you knew how painful it was for Ashley to see her mom get beat by her boyfriend growing up you every two days but never leaving him you wouldn't be complaining about why Ashley doesn't like being submissive. If you understood how Ebony was always treated worse than her light skin sister you wouldn't complain about why she take offense to dark skin women jokes. If you understood that all Brittney's life she was told she was too fat, then when she got smaller she was told her butt wasn't big enough then you wouldn't be complaining about her body insecurities. Why don't you understand? Furthermore, why don't you care to understand? Why do you think this is funny? Why do you, a grown  BLACK man feel the need to say so much negative about black women when you know they have been told they have to be perfect or they're worthless directly or indirectly their whole lives? "An oppressed people will always feel under attack, similar to a war veteran that will always feel like loud noises could be gunshots." Because oppression isn't a sprint. It's a marathon. It's something that's done over a substantial amount of time and the dominoes fall in line. Logic says, I, a black man, shouldn't have to deal with your attitude because you had to raise your two kids alone. I wasn't the father that abandoned your kids. Logic says, I, a black man, am not Ashley's mom's boyfriend. I didn't throw a punch so why do I have to get attitude from Ashley every time I ask her to do something. Logic says, I, a black man, shouldn't have to not prefer light skinned women because Ebony is dark skin and was treated inferior her whole life. I could just like light skinned women. That doesn't mean dark skin women aren't beautiful. Or that I have to discredit a light skin woman's beauty because I want to uplift dark skinned women. Logic says that, I, a black man, can't help it if I love thick thighs or if I'm into slim girls. It's not wrong for me to have my own PERSONAL preference. That's what logic says. But hate is an emotion. Black women feeling like we hate them, no matter the specific reason, is emotion. A very hurtful emotion. And black men are supposed to protect. I can't protect you from your past. Someone has already failed you, beautiful black woman. Whether the failure was intentional or unintentional. Your father may have never left the family, but he missed the signs of you feeling like you weren't pretty enough. I can't blame him if he was the best father he knew how to be but somewhere he failed.

However, beautiful black woman, of all shapes, sizes, and shades I love you. What I'm attracted to physical doesn't negate who I love internally. But I understand that it feels like you're constantly under attack. That doesn't mean I can't voice my frustrations from time to time, that doesn't mean I can't recognize an emotional setback in the behavior of another black woman, but because I know occasionally I do both, I want you to know I still love you, black women. I understand in this constant 24 news cycle it could feel like all you hear/see is black men talking negatively about you. Negativity travels at the speed of light. But, still, we failed you. Our fathers and our grandfathers, failed you. Because as the protectors of the households, we didn't protect you. We allowed you to raise kids by yourselves and for those scars to develop. We allowed division to cause resentment. We allowed outsiders to degrade and abuse you. We allowed even our counterparts to neglect their families with no recourse. But I love you. I have a group of friends, who while we all love differently, we all love black women. Does that mean all of my friends have never dated outside the race? No. Does that mean all black men that date or marry outside the race don't love black women? No. Because no matter who I choose to marry, or date, no matter what her pigment or race may be, I love black women. I will protect my mother, my sisters, and my other "sistas" no matter who I choose as my personal companion. That, even though I understand how some women may feel this way also, is not an indictment against black women. Love is love. So in conclusion, I know these scars are present and there's a thin line between jokes and insults, but black women I will love you as long as my lungs have oxygen in them. I'll love you as long as my mind works. I'll love you as long as my heart beats. Because without a black woman, I don't have lungs, I don't have a mind, and I don't have a heart!


Just My Thoughts

You Won't See Me on TV

"Because I ain't shucking and cause I ain't jiving, some of these crackers won't stand beside me, And cause I ain't killing and don't support pimping, some of these niggas wanna call me a Cosby" -Phonte; Rapper, Singer, Songwriter

Remember when we Claire and Cliff AND Martin and Gina? Remember we had Will and the Banks family, but we still had Jazz? Remember when we had a majority black woman cast that were dating tastefully (You can pick Living Single or Girlfriends) while also being professional women? Remember when we had A Different World? Now ask yourself why these are such distant memories? Do we need these exact shows? It would be nice, but no. That's not the point. The point is we had representation. Broad representation. Respectful representation. So the real two questions are:

1.) Why don't we have an equal amount of balanced representation now?

and

2.) Why don't we care about it?

For all the trivial daily outrage I see on social media, why aren't we really attacking this issue. We, being black people, and the issue being, not having proper representation of us. Bias or not, black people are such a diverse people. But all I see representing us on mainstream tv is "ratchet-ness". I'm neither naive nor oblivious to the fact that we do have our "ratchet" side and I'm also not dismissing the fact that it can be entertaining in moderation. But there's no moderation. There's a landslide. More specifically, as a black man, I only can think of one positive representation of myself on a major network. A black man that cares about more than his next sexual conquest. One of honesty and integrity that prevents him from cheating on and lying to every woman he deals with. One with a career that doesn't involve working on his next mixtape (I love rap. Don't confuse my point). One that isn't, or once was, heavily involved in drug dealing. That one example is Dre Johnson. The father on the hit show, Black-ish, played by Anthony Anderson. I love Black-ish but I also know there's more than one type of cohesive black family in the world. I know there's more than one black man in this country capable of loving a black woman monogamously. I know there's more than one group of intelligent black kids that didn't come from a broken home!!! But "All I see is victims", to quote Pusha T. All I see is {no}Love and Hip-Hop and it's offspring. Is there a place for shows like this on television? Of course. I'm no monk, I have guilty pleasures. My biggest issue with these shows is the fact that they run year round, with entities in different major cities that rotate by season, and in essence, corner the market. If we had one Black-ish for every Love and Hip-hop entity, Black Ink, and Empire, you wouldn't hear a word from me. But the writing is on the wall. The very criteria of being on love and Hip-Hop isn't that you actually have to be a formidable working artist in Hip-Hop, you just have to have 6 degrees of separation from someone who WAS, and either be dogging and degrading black women or being one of the black women being dogged and degraded. You have to either be cheating or being cheated on. You have to be either a regularly drunk and belligerent and physically fighting black woman, or a gossiping naive one with poor taste in mates.  So news flash, you can't have a positive lifestyle and be on this franchise. Which again is fine, but if you don't live like these people, where's your representation?

Let's dissect another angle: other than "Bow" Johnson (Dre's wife, played by Tracee Ellis Ross) how many other positive images of black women on a major television show are dating a faithful black man? I'll wait. The closest thing to it would be "Cookie" played by the stunning Taraji P. Henson. However, Cookie dates black men on the show, but they're always temporary characters as she somehow always leaves them indirectly because of her ex-husband Lucious Lyon. Lucious and Cookie aren't bad representations of black people. While Empire is more of modern day Soap Opera, in my opinion, I wouldn't label them bad representations. They are successful and family oriented. But they had to be sullied. Both are former drug dealers who became successful off of drug money first, and then the music business. A common tale in the music business, specifically hip-hop, tho.   Lucious is a lying (Lyon), cheating, unethical, immoral, murderer that also is a shrewd, effective businessman. Ehhh. Then you have Ghost and Tasha. Another black couple, from the show Power that started in drug dealing. Not to mention, Ghost is cheating on Tasha with a white/ Italian woman, and Tasha was cheating with a younger black man. Cheating and drugs. We are more than that. While I love Power and love what the success that Empire quietly represents (and the amazing job Taraji P. Henson does), why can't we "get right" on TV? Olivia Pope, played by the beautiful Kerry Washington, on the hit show Scandal, only dates white men. I have no, absolutely no, problem with interracial dating, I just want them to stop putting the poison in the candy. I also want us to open our eyes to the subliminal messages.

As a black man, I constantly feel attacked, in the media. From the examples I just gave you I feel like the message is, I, a black man, will never be good enough (for the public). Because I can't be successful without a drug background or music career. And because I'll cheat on every woman that loves me. That Dre Johnson is an anomaly. Also, whenever we see a black man on the news who has allegedly committed a heinous crime, he's a thug. Or every rapper or fan of rap is a thug (See: Bill Blanton's comments). However, when a caucasian adult or young adult is guilty of similar acts they're considered "troubled" or "mentally ill". It's privilege at work. We are all aware of this; even the ones that don't care to publicly admit it. Personally, I'm not one of those people who try excuse, without accountability, crime just on the merit of "a white person would get away with it". But I don't think this perspective is extreme. I don't think I'm overstating. Somebody has to say it. Somebody has to change it. Somebody has to care. We need equal representation. We also need accountability. We air our dirty laundry proudly; and we support every second of the clothesline, it shows in the ratings. So why would they change the formula? When will we get tired of it? When will we wake and see the social engineering? Where's the writers? Where's the trailblazers? Where's the real activists and community organizers? I just want the balance. I want critical acclaim worthy representation. I want positive influences. I just want to see {me} on TV!

Just My Thoughts,

Travis Cochran

Why You Shouldn't Let Your Child Work for Chick Fil A

I usually don't eat fast food because it makes me feel horrible after. It's also expensive as hell and the prices keep going up. But I'm not here to bash fast food because in some ways it makes the world better. What I am here for though is to tell you why as a person or parent you should never want to or let your kids work for Chick fil A...

Yesterday at work I got a coupon for a free chicken sandwich. Never the one to turn down free food I went to get my sandwich and I planned to get some fries and a Coke which totally violated my no fast food rule. I noticed that Chick fil A has the absolute very best customer service I've ever had in a fast food spot. I literally waited 2-3 minutes for my food and when I got it they called me by name, (not sure how.. Unless the digital coupon had my name on it) thanked me for my business, and apologized for my wait. I was absolutely blown away because most places won't apologize no matter how long you've been waiting. Everyone was so happy and upbeat! As I was walking to my car I really wondered how does Chick fil A maintain its high, energetic, almost flawless customer service.. Then it hit me! Chick fil A only hires super young kids who don't know anything about the world let alone customer service. The difference between them and other restaurants is that you either see high school aged kids or 30 plus adults, nothing in between. This is probably the first job for most of them and I'm sure you can remember how excited you were for that first job. How you were on time everyday with your shirt tucked. And I'm sure somewhere along the way the excitement faded and turned to "I hate my job." It happens to everybody because you can tell when somebody doesn't want to be at work. Not in Chick Fil A though! They've developed the perfect system of making kids believe that work is always supposed to be like this. How else can you explain the amazing service and hot food. If you go in and close your eyes I'm sure that's what heaven sounds like. These bright eyed teenagers don't know how good they have it because just on the outside of those friendly walls, with pictures of happiness and joy, is a miserable world that is ready to drain every ounce of joy they have. I almost feel bad for them because Chick Fil A is sheltering them under a building where nobody is unhappy. They make you happy to eat fast food everyday because you want that warm feeling inside that comes from an eight count nugget and waffle fries and not having to deal with an attitude to get it. I've never even seen a drink spilled in Chick Fil A. The place is nothing short of a perfect world only to be realized once you leave it. The real world is no joke and Chick fil A doesn't prepare these teenagers for that at all. 

Wake The Fuck Up

I struggle a lot with whether I should speak on certain issues because I feel that people are going to judge or just not listen. Now I am the point that I do not even care anymore, because of sick of the shit. You would also think that African "Americans" really are terrible people. At that moment I decided that I was not going to shut up about what was going on in "OUR" country or community. The first thing that I am going to speak on is this whole election going on here. Like wtf are we doing? Are we really going to let Donald Trump represent us as a whole? I really hope people have a little more fight in them. You can add your candidate in on the ballot the day of the election as long as your state is not a swing state.(google this term) Please do! I think it is important that we take voting serious. If you have black(or any shade of black) skin & don't vote... you are basically spitting in your ancestors faces who went to bat for your black ass to change the world.

Look at all these people doing something other than complaining.
Wonder what that would be like? 

We have to gain knowledge of a system that has oppressed us for years and play them at their game. We have to sweep out congress and get new people in there will be for the people. All revolutions started off slow but it can be done when the movement is backed by people willing to put others before themselves. I am putting the well-being of my son & family before mine. I can not imagine my kid or the kids I teach still being treated differently because of their skin color.

Black people we have to wake the fuck up! What are we doing? Is really that hard to fuck with your own people? How can we support everyone and show no love to each other?  It's time we start sticking up for each other. It's time we start linking up. Loving each other. Teaching our own kids again. Building a community. I feel like it is going to be a time when we are going to need this & now is a perfect time to start. Start talking to your friends and family. Find like minded people who will share your vision, plan, and then MOVE! All this praying to God is a totally waste if we do not put in ACTION behind it. I know it sound like I am a dreamer, but I feel it all in reach if we finally forgot our differences among us & work towards a common goal. I think something that we can all agree on is that we want peace. Do you really want to get free? Stand your black ass in your power then & ride. 

I don't want to sit here and chastise people because what is done is done, but everything change. We will get it together. I have faith in us.  

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

-Malcolm X                                                                    

Who you talking to???

"I liked it better when the 'Net was still a novelty, cause now people who ain't found themselves get an outlet, yet don't know how they sound themselves. They like me better when I'm silent and don't have an opinion, pretending to blend in like I'm a minion" -Joe Budden; Rapper


​Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Snapchat. Tinder. Tumblr. Periscope. These are the most dominant social networking sites in today’s society! Millions upon millions of users simultaneously are glued to these sites/apps every millisecond of of every minute of every hour of the twenty-four hours that we are privileged to. "Pulls down to refresh phone" Daily people log on to bounce thought after thought off of stranger and friend alike! I’m sure there are more sites that I’m forgetting but, as the rapper Wale famously named one of his mixtapes, it’s just More About Nothing! Not to be misunderstood, I’m not anti social media. I’m actually a very avid user myself! I just really pay attention to the trend of where it is going, and that trend is what scares me! And there’s not much that scares me​

​In an era of mass information consumption and networking people are talking to each other less than ever. Literally and metaphorically, everything is about doing the least as possible to get the point across. Emojis, acronyms, and 140 character tweets are engineering a social consciousness that being able to thoroughly express yourself is no longer a necessity! Everything is abbreviated. Everything is aggressive. And last but not least, everything is outrage! Whether it’s a disgruntled lover passive aggressively "subtweeting" venting on the timeline instead of having a direct conversation with their mate about their feelings, an inability for the majority of society to respectfully disagree with each other, and how aggressively and abrasively the internet has become as a warzone to hurl insults at people with no recourse.

​“I’m from the 80’s”, late 80’s but 80’s nonetheless, and my generation is the middle ground now. By middle ground I mean, we’re the last generation that was pre- internet but also are naturally affluent in the life of the internet because we have been here and been in tuned with it since it’s inception. This lends to varied perspectives. First, for more perspective, I personally think generations are typically four year blocks. From my scattered unconscious and undocumented research, experiences are typically based on who you were in high school with. Of course there’s a gap between the experiences of a senior and a freshman but that’s the smallest consistent block I’ve noticed so I’m running with that. Back to the topic. My generation is the middle ground, so I’ve seen how people, myself included, communicated with each other pre internet and how it has grown over the years. Modern day communication is more texting than calling. More memes than letters. More emojis even… than words! Everything about communication has been about getting the message across the quickest, not the best. Not the most thorough. Just the quickest. Very cool example of this is the Coach K’s (Duke University basketball coach) commercial where he tells his son to relay a message to former Duke player, Justise Winslow, and his son takes his words and relays them in emojis. No words used. Another example of this would be memes. If you’re out of the loop, google the word “memes” prefaced by any emotion you want and watch the plethora of memes, which are pictures with short captions that are intended to quickly display sentiment, pop up as a result of your search. A lot of times when a girlfriend has gotten her feelings hurt by her boyfriend, don’t get me wrong men do it too, you’ll see her post memes on one or all of the before mentioned apps with captions like “Never give another man a chance to make your woman smile” accompanied by a beautiful woman looking sad. Or if a man thinks his girlfriend should be doing certain duties that she’s not, he may post a meme with a caption like “A real Queen knows how to treat her King” or something overtly misogynistic with a picture of a man holding money or wearing a lot of jewelry. Or a woman performing a sexual or "domestic" act. Disappointment not being the only sentiment memes are used to display but it’s definitely one of the most used. Anything from #RelationshipGoals to #BodyGoals or just pure comedy and insult can be and more times than not are used… instead of words. This also showcases another factor in this which is, now more than ever, people don’t mind putting their personal life on full display for the world to see. People have also gotten into the habit of even when they use their words, they don’t calibrate their aim. This is commonly known as a subtweet. This is when I have a problem with Jamie because he owes me money, it’s past the return date he said he would return it, and he hasn’t called to make the exchange or ask for an extension but instead of contacting Jamie indirectly I tweet “Don’t you hate when people owe you money and you don’t hear from them” or “I promise I’m not helping people anymore”. All the while I know that Jamie is one of my “followers” on these sites and he will almost surely see these post and know I’m talking about him. Which, warranted or not, will only make the issue bigger because no one wants to be sucker punched. This happens all day up and down timelines back and forth until boiling points are reached and two parties are fed up with being indirect or the timeline has figured out the culprit so now guns are blazing directly. But why not tell your boyfriend or girlfriend what’s on your mind? Why not directly address situations amongst friends, or enemies for that matter? How have the limitations of a tweet that is restricted to 140 characters (I’m currently at 4,441 in this piece) and emojis devalued the usage and importance of the English language affected literacy? What happens when the meme is misinterpreted?

​Secondly, when did having an difference of opinion become the mark of the beast? Who’s the best rapper, Jay-z or Young thug? Who’s the better basketball player Jordan or LeBron? If I say Jay-z and you say Nas, is that not ok? If Jay Z drops an album today, and I love it but majority of the people on twitter think Jay Z is old and out of touch does that make me old and out of touch or an idiot or just too biased or was I blessed with my own ears and my own mind? I regularly say Groupthink is the worst epidemic to hit America in my natural life. Groupthink is when people form their opinions, solely or close to it, off of popular opinion? A product of groupthink becoming so prevalent is that when a person that doesn’t aspire to it contests a popular opinion, they’re attacked or dismissed from that moment on. I personally don’t want to live in a world where everyone wants to agree more than they want to think.  I also don’t want to live in a country where you’re exiled because you don’t agree with everything status quo. An example of this is the current case of Bill Cosby, which up until recently have only played out in the court of public opinion. I’m not here to argue guilt or innocence, that’s not my place, my argument is people reserve the right to disagree on it. People also reserve the right to say "I need more information". There’s people who are more educated on the evidence that has been presented who will attack anyone that doesn’t automatically presume Bill Cosby is a rapist. Because the general consensus is, "Bill Cosby is guilty because there’s no way this many women are lying on him." Which very well could be true, but one day watching my timeline and anybody who disagreed with that rhetoric or dared to say “let’s wait until we hear both sides” was immediately attacked or ostracized.  I used this example because of it’s sensitivity. Just follow me.

​This leads into my third gripe, which is, the internet has taken bullying to all time high levels. People that disagree, people that produce content, or just people who challenge a point of view are often, very often, insulted beyond belief online. Have you ever looked in the comment section of any post of content? People have taken the general anonymity of the internet to say the worst things they can think of to people. About people. About people’s work. And about people’s kids. It opens the window to how much unprovoked hate there is that’s being concealed until an outlet lends way to express it. It’s alarming. What’s more alarming is the infatuation that “we” have come to have with seeing and commenting on hardships. How in moments of mistakes or misfortune our society feeds off it. Blogsites, gossip sites, and the “ordinary joe” alike take to keyboards hourly to not only document missteps but to vilify and persecute people. As much as we like to conveniently attempt to forget celebrities are still people, that’s what they are, people! For no reason at all we engage in dialogue completely aimed at inflicting pain or exciting a negative reaction. This practice has been coined as “trolling”. The aforementioned rapper Wale, is a consistent victim of this. Deemed emotional, and living in that reality willingly, Wale has become a target. Not because he wishes ill will on people or because he’s attacking people but simply because they know he, being his “emotional” self, will react! So daily people contemplate the most demeaning, harsh, and provocative insult they can say to him about his appearance or music or prior actions in hopes of getting him to simply respond. This “trolling” practice isn’t limited to Wale or even to celebrities but it’s just a very well known example of a sadistic trend. It’s alarming that this is how we are communicating with each other more and more!

​So to say all of this is unnerving is a bit of an understatement. I worry about how common good will being an endangered concept amongst such a beautiful concoction of people that is the United States. I worry that even though it can be fun, effective, and convenient our growing devaluing of the English language will have a domino effect. That concept is justified by the fact that it’s almost a surprise when I see people use the proper usage of there, their, and they’re! I worry about us becoming a culture where people have been shamed into not thinking for themselves. A culture where dialogue can’t be had unless the parties are like minded without getting disrespectful. I worry that we are consistently losing respect for how we speak to people. How we aren’t being held accountable for our words because the keyboard is a mobile conduit where you can flow insults into a person’s head space without being anywhere near their personal space. These things worry me. I can’t fix them. I can only hold myself, my family, my friends, and my colleagues accountable but that doesn’t feel like nearly enough! I could go on but, in essence, until the majority becomes conscious of these things and the dangers of them, I would just be going on More About Nothing! The irony, I want the group, in this case, to think like me!

Did Cam Newton "Let Nas (the hood) Down"?

By now, everyone knows who won this year’s Super Bowl, the Denver Broncos. Not Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers. I took some time to release this because I wanted to see how things played out in the aftermath. If you are a NFL fan you know that Cam Newton was the most polarizing player of the year. You either love him and what he stands for or you hate him and think he’s arrogant and disrespectful. For US though, Cam embodies what we term being “Unapologetically Black”. He was successful at playing his way and being proud of it. But he lost. So the question is, did Cam let us, “hood’, down? I would say no!

Cam put a target on his back for being so unapologetic in the face of political correctness so he will take a bevy of criticism from the press. However, the most common thing people say about the NFL is that it’s the ultimate team game. No one player can takeover a game like basketball or even baseball where a pitcher can dominate a game. Even as a quarterback, you need your offensive line to give you time to make the passes, you need your receivers to catch said passes, and you need your running backs to run effectively and not fumble the ball to keep the balance and manage the clock. Cam had neither of those the night of the Super Bowl. That will go lost because in this world the biggest star shoulders double the blame because they get so much praise for the success. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Do I feel Cam looked lethargic and beaten well before the game was out of reach? Yes. Do I think Cam should’ve dived on the ground for that fumble? Debatable. Do I think his body language and lack of visible accountability on the field and sidelines contributed to the play of his team? Yes. Because leaders lead by example first and by voice second. Cam’s polarizing personality could’ve helped light a fire in his team. I believe that. So I’m not absolving him of any responsibility. But he didn’t “Let Nas (the hood) Down” because he still was a great inspiration to black young men all year. He won league MVP as the 6^th black man in this century. He still has not broken laws or done anything morally wrong to paint black men in a bad light. Cam learned a lesson on a national stage that you have to get the job done. So even in his defeat there was a valuable lesson that may resonate to all the people that follow him and that is that you have to finish the job. Also, when you talk the talk and don’t finish the job, the world will remember your failure far more than they remember your accomplishments.

In the end, Cam will go back and become a better player and hopefully a better man as we all should aspire to be on a daily basis. And hopefully he will still, “Dab on them folks”. Unapologetically. But humility isn’t weakness, hopefully he'll use the lessons as strength and let it fuel him to finish the job next time. He's a young man trying to figure life at a faster pace than most of us and with a way bigger audience than most of us. Even grass grows.