Last Sunday night I watched parts of the Academy Awards ceremony on television, and was sickened to see the performance, celebration and victory of a song called “It’s Hard to Be a Pimp.” I discussed my disgust at length on The Bro-Log, which you can read at ministerfaust.blogspot.com. In short, I objected not only to the promotion of the stereotype of Black folks as criminals, exploiters and sexual deviants, but even more to the three groups who made this revolting display possible: the Black performers and music-makers who created presented the material, the Black folks in the audience who cheered the song and its sentiments, and the wealthy White Hollywood establishment that makes piles of cash by promoting these hateful and destructive stereotypes in albums, TV and films.
Just a week before, I’d hosted a forum on that exact topic at the Edmonton Public Library, a forum called Get Rich or Die Slavin’, an exploration of how corporate media in North America exploits images of Afrikan-Americans and Afrikan-Canadians as anti-intellectual lowlifes, hyper-sexed thugs, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, drug users, gang bangers and murderers in order to earn hundreds of millions of dollars for wealthy White record company executives and stock holders... and how plenty of rappers, singers and video models are quite happy to sell out their race in order to earn their own thirty pieces of "House Negro" silver... not to mention how far too many of us will support these vampires by buying their records, their fashions, their imagery and their ideals, all at the low, low cost of our souls.
Originally I was going to present only one edition of The Terrordome on that forum, but in light of our defeat because of an Oscar win, tonight we’ll hear part one of two of that discussion. I began the day by discussing the title of the event, Get Smart or Die Slavin’.
