As I was walked into Safeway this afternoon I passed by an older man with a case of Pabst. The first thought that came to my mind was “sucker juice.” No disrespect to the man but what does it mean when you spend on alcohol? What is the lasting impact? Is it positive? Could your money be better spent on something else?

Consumer culture is dependent on suckers and businesspeople. Those that don’t spend with a purpose define suckers. Businesspeople invest.

When you spend, is some person in suit getting one over on you? Is your money going toward an investment or temporary gratification? How much time do you spend feeding your emotions versus feeding your empowerment and sustainability?

No one is a complete sucker or full-time businessperson. I’m certainly a work in progress, at best.

In addition to drastically cutting down on the sucker juice, I recently made a decision to stop smoking weed. It had nothing to do with health concerns or legal trouble. I simply had to think about what I could be doing with all that time. Chances are, even if I was reading, I wasn’t operating on optimum capacity when I was high. I certainly wasn’t making money. In fact, the money I was spending on temporary gratification was most likely funding many of the political issues I speak out against.

In the months since I quit, I’ve replaced much of that time with exercise, which has done good things for me emotionally and physically. Not to mention, I’ve saved a pretty significant amount of money (Now if I could just kick the social media addiction…).

Nonetheless, sucker mentality is about more than vices.

I get frustrated with the lack of Black businesses in Oregon because it institutionalizes unsustainability. While we have many restaurants, barbershops and hair salons, we’re lacking in grocery stores and beauty supply stores to parity the amount of barbers and stylists. Thus, in order for me to support many of these Black businesses, it means I have to put money into one-time meals and temporary hair maintenance. With more grocery stores and beauty supply shops, not just could we do more to invest in Black business but we could also purchase food that lasts throughout the week, give ourselves more opportunities to learn how to cook and teach others how to cook, and take care of our own cosmetics and hygiene in sustainable ways that don’t require us to restructure our days around hair appointments. Barbershops and beauty salons are great places to hangout, congregate and organize but that should be something we think about consciously instead of as a positive side effect of inefficiency.

The same goes for:

Music- Do you support local artists whose profits affect your economy? Do you support artists that give others jobs and/or give back to their communities? Do your favorite artists leave a message that will be impactful to listeners in the future?

Politics- Do you vote for the lesser of two evils instead of someone who will actually serve your needs? Does a political party take your vote for granted? How do you hold politicians accountable? Do you vote for politicians that will give you tangible results or do you vote based on likeability?

News consumption- Do you read to be more informed than everyone else? What do you take from your reading that you can use in your everyday life? Is your level of news consumption actually having an adverse effect on your health and/or daily interactions?

Religion- Does your religious institution reinvest in the congregants that invest in it in a tangible way?

And the list goes on…

At the end of the day, it’s all a matter of thinking. None of us are perfect but we can all be conscious of our spending.  Businesses need our dollars to thrive. Why not ask for something to help you thrive in return for your investment? It costs nothing to think like a businessperson.

Last week I took the opportunity to attend the PAALF (Portland African American Leadership Forum) intergenerational forum. Whenever Black people get together to talk, skeptics ask questions like, “Why? What’s the point? What are you actually going to get accomplished?”

People have no shortage of excuses for passing up these events. They will focus on every problem that won’t get solved instead of looking at what they could gain.

These events are about networking. The goal is to build relationships. None of the community’s problems will get solved until there is some unity. Community building, in itself, is revolutionary.

While the conversation at the intergenerational forum was enriching, what I really got out of the event was meeting other Black people in different fields. I got to connect with elders, tradespeople, businesspeople, politicians, activists and any other field you could imagine.

Who knows what these connections might yield in the future? At the least, we helped eliminate the tensions and distrust that Black people often have towards each other because of slave era conditioning. At best, we could’ve planted the seeds for partnerships in the future.

The common theme in any workshop or discussion I’ve attended on getting jobs is that the key is to build relationships. You’ll never know what people could offer you if you don’t meet them. There’s an African proverb that goes, “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.”

This is why I have a lot of respect for Chappelle’s Show and Snoop Dogg’s GGN podcast from a movement perspective. Besides entertainment, Chappelle and Snoop illustrated economic empowerment. These men used their gifts to build careers and then created vehicles that helped give jobs and/or promote other Black people and broadcast them to a larger consumer base that they might not have had access to otherwise.

As a writer at a Black-owned newspaper, I see this at a local level. For example, one of the first assignments I covered was the Journey to Freedom Teaching with a Purpose Conference. What I noticed at this event and subsequent JTF functions I covered was that the founder, Karanja Crews, got educators and lesser known local artists and gave them the opportunity to speak and/or perform. Consequently, they would spread their brand to new audiences. Even I, as a reporter, got the opportunity for more exposure by meeting people I could potentially profile in future stories. One interview I did with Stic.man from Dead Prez was not only popular in my paper, The Skanner, but also got picked up and re-printed in the Oregonian. While the information shared at these events was important, it was really about being there and planting seeds.

No matter what your field is, you’re more likely to patronize a person’s business or work with them if you have a relationship. Considering the need for economic self-determination in the Black community, building these relationships couldn’t be more pertinent.

When we don’t know the owner of the family owned beauty shop, we end up shopping at Walgreens, even though stores like the one on 122^nd and Glisan were caught locking up the Black beauty products and forcing customers who wanted to by them to walk to the counter with escorts like little children.

We need business owners that look like us and we can interact with on a daily basis. We need their profits and tax dollars to flow back into our communities. We need to know they can be held accountable because they have to see us.

Our business owners need us, as consumers, to support them. They need our feedback so they can best serve us. They need our spending. These businesses can’t have competitive prices if they don’t have a large enough consumer base. Black people are still the tastemakers and trendsetters throughout the world. Where we go is where others go. What we wear is what others wear. If we support our own then others will follow us.

If we know each other then we can serve each other instead of begging these stores we don’t own to treat us with dignity.

As a shy person, I never used to understand the point of saying “Hello” to random Black people on the street. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize these are community-building opportunities. Whether on the sidewalk, in a store or at formal gatherings, we have to make the effort to network with each other. No one is going to solve our problems but us. Use every resource possible. You lose nothing by attempting to gain access to these resources but you have no idea how much you’re losing when you don’t try.

Sometimes I get so angry

I go to black businesses

And spend as much as I can afford.

I tip 30 instead of 15.

Sometimes I get so annoyed

I tell my woman how beautiful her curls are.

I drool over her complexion.

I get so mad I tell her to never lose her curves.

Sometimes I get so cross

I smile and ask, “How are you?”

To every Black person I see.

I get so pissed I volunteer.

So furious

I help Black children with their homework.

So enraged I spend time

With the boy I promised to mentor.

Sometimes I get so incensed

When I see all the things we don’t own.

Then I remember the words of Che Guevara

On guerilla warfare.

I go to the white man’s gym

And build strength, endurance and discipline.

I build habits I can pass to my children.

I go to the white man’s grocery store

And buy healthy foods

So I can live as long as possible

With few diseases and all my energy.

I go to the white man’s library

And soak up all the knowledge I can get

I fume when I see our bookstores have closed

But I still go to the white man’s

And support the works of my people.

Sometimes I get so fiery

I study the history of my family

And plan on how I will build on our legacy.

I research the history of my people

Not just as survivors of slavery

But as the heirs to all of Africa’s riches.

I get so impassioned

I realize that when oppressors bred us

They made us all of the best of Africa.

I am the ingenuity of the Ancient Egyptians.

I am the royalty of Ethiopian Kings and Queens.

I am the feared speed of Kenyan runners.

I have ability and the genes

To do anything I put my mind to.

Sometimes I get so heated

I pore through class schedules,

Looking for new skills to gain

So I can own my own means

And never trade silence for pay.

When I get this angry

I yell the words of Marcus Garvey.

“Up you mighty race, accomplish what you will.”

With everyone talking about what hip-hop is and what it shouldn’t be, why are female MCs, who are as big of stakeholders as anybody, still seemingly invisible?

Earlier this year, Angel Haze got a surprising (but encouraging) amount of media attention for remixing Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet” to talk about rape on wax. By the time everyone was talking about Ross, the song had all but been forgotten.

When I look at the 80s, it seems like female MCs would come at their male counterparts’ throats on the regular. Everyone from Roxanne Shante to Salt-n-Pepa made sure disrespect would get called out and it didn’t matter how big the male MC was.

While that may have happened during the Rick Ross saga, it got no media attention and more importantly, while everyone else saw a rise in their profile, few took it as an opportunity to give some shine to female voices in hip-hop music.

Any discussion that deviated from simply silencing Ross was dismissed as either trying to change the subject or even defending his lyrics. If anything, this was the opportune time to explore structural change and owning and operating these media outlets we give so much energy to. If we’re so quick to embrace reactionary solutions then aren’t we responsible for when things stay the same?

New misogynistic controversies in hip-hop pop up all the time like whack-a-mole. If you don’t like Rick Ross, an even more ignorant, offensive artist will be a household name before you know it.

Everything from female artists’ presence in front of the cameras to behind the scenes in ownership and management is a serious concern. Changing this structure would do far more for media presentations than begging labels and radio stations to give us concessions.

Before we get to ownership, it starts with recognizing the role we play in the situation.

I could simply demonize the powers that be that make these decisions but in reality, I’m just as guilty. No matter how many times I listen to the Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, that doesn’t make up for my lack of tangible, across-the-board support for female artists. Every time I hear Jean Grae on a feature I’m like, “Damn, she’s dope,” but I have a grand total of four songs with her in my Itunes.

I only have two local female acts in my library, which are Rose Bent and MC Rose. Both are the result of some searching on my part.

I interviewed Rose Bent for a hip-hop business story last year after an acquaintance put me on to them.

MC Rose was responsible for the most hip-hop moment I witnessed in 2012. A high profile MC was performing at a fundraiser concert at Last Thursday and was steadily alienating the crowd. As the contentious set reached the breaking point, a seemingly random little girl in the crowd asked the MC to pass her the mic. The rest of the crowd and even the host and DJ joined in. For those of us who weren’t familiar with her, it seemed surreal. Eventually, the MC gave in and walked off into the sunset. This little girl, who I later found out was MC Rose, stole the stage and killed it.

My friend, who was also there, saw Rose performing on the streetcar a few weeks later and said she ripped that set apart too. I decided to do some research and figure out who this girl was and sure enough, I got my hands on all the songs I could because her sound was different than anything else I was listening to.

While I’ve conditioned myself to think of this as an anomaly, the reality is, there are a wealth of young female MCs ripping mics apart everywhere.

I know I’m not the only person who sometimes gets bored whether I’m listening to the most conscious or most party-focused music. It should be obvious that I seek out more female voices, but often, the idea doesn’t occur to me.

I have no one to blame but myself when I’m rocking out to old Queen Latifah tracks while wondering, “Whatever happened to this period in time?”

These artists never left. Just because the only female MCs I see on TV serve more as ventriloquist dummies for the males at the label that supposedly discovered them, doesn’t mean I have to limit myself to those options.

If we don’t actively seek out fresh female MCs and throw our support behind them (buy the music, go to concerts, share songs on social media, support female owned music ventures, etc.) then the industry will continue to only give us carbon copies of Nikki Minaj. We can wait for balance or we can make it.

I didn’t stop and think about watching the video of the “evidence” until after and I noticed something. There’s no actual evidence. It’s two people walking.

Didn’t CNN and the New York Post both come under fire this week for rushing out news that turned out to be inaccurate?

I saw the pictures the day before of the backpack that supposedly was filled with explosives. I didn’t see that backpack on either men in the surveillance video that only showed them walking. I didn’t see them place anything down.

Since when did the FBI become such a trustworthy source? Do we take their word because CNN and the New York Post are so bad? This is the same FBI that has a building named after J. Edgar Hoover; the same group behind COINTELPRO. That didn’t matter though and as I write this, one of the alleged suspects has been shot dead and there’s a manhunt for the other one. A cop has also been killed and Boston is on lockdown with police and military everywhere.

Some say that the fact that these men got into a gunfight with the police and one had explosives on him is proof enough that they were the suspects but as I learned from the recent gun control debate, there are plenty of armed people that are ready to fight back if the government comes for them. The only thing that these men being armed and shooting back tells me is that they were armed and shot back.

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s to not attach yourself to comfortable narratives. I wanted to believe that Chris Dorner was the Black Rambo fighting for racial justice but at the end of the day, where is the evidence that he did all the killing the police said he did? How do I get the whole story when the police burned him alive in a cabin?

Even this week, they broke the news that the person behind the Texas DA murders was a disgruntled government employee. It wasn’t the Aryan Brotherhood as had been previously speculated and projected ad nausea.

When the news broke that there was a shootout at MIT last night, I did something crazy and continued to watch NBA TV, a documentary on Public Enemy, the Daily Show and went to sleep. I didn’t even look into it until this morning’s news. As a result, I think I digested the information that was being fed to me with more clarity.

The 24-hour news cycle is designed to fill time. CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc. illustrate that on a daily basis by telling the same stories and often admitting they don’t have any new news on said stories.

There were many people arguing that by following Twitter or the police scanner, they were getting the true information in real time. However, if you’re not in Boston, why would you want to simulate the experience of being on lockdown and living in fear?

I can tell you from experience that it’s neither healthy nor is it a good way to obtain information. Several months ago, a man was murdered up the street from my house early in the morning. Of course, all we knew was that a cop had told Dad to go back inside and for everyone in the neighborhood to stay in their houses because a crazy, armed man was roaming the streets. I didn’t find out that a man had been slashed up with a machete until hours later when I finally went to work and got an update on Oregon Live. Even though facts from the story sounded weird, we were still on high alert around the neighborhood as the killer, who was reported to be a white supremacist, was making his way down to Corvallis.

In the heat of the moment, it’s difficult to get all the info but if we have the privilege to not be in that situation, why not take some time to digest and look at things with a critical lens?

This doesn’t mean that those throwing out conspiracy theories with no evidence are any better. Whether it’s been a bombing or a mass shooting, I’ve noticed that there are always people crying, “False flag,” the moment the news breaks. There’s a difference between asking questions and making accusations that you can’t prove.

To those fighting supposed “info wars” against these news giants, understand that is a reactionary move and one of the main tools of war is propaganda. Trying to be the first to say, “I told you so,” and counter the narrative is a different side of the same coin of CNN. Ultimately, it does more to feed one’s ego than create change.

The vast majority of people don’t follow the news regularly. The majority of those that do, don’t actually read and out of the readers, an even smaller few actually practice critical thinking. If you’re a politician, law enforcement official, or even a reporter sitting behind a computer, reposting wire news, you have the ability to play Geppetto with people’s minds, rather easily.

Most of this is done unintentionally, at least at my level. We get our news from an agreement with CNN. We can only change headlines and ad subheads. If we have the time (which we usually don’t), we can go through and correct spelling and grammatical errors. After that, we’re charged with reposting these stories.

As you get higher up the ladder, you get to see the corruption that often comes into play much more up close and personal. In this ever-changing news industry, the struggle to get ad money creates strange bedfellows for institutions charged with the task of exposing the truth. I won’t name names but I’ve seen it with my own eyes with publications around Portland and to be honest, it’s not too difficult to follow the breadcrumbs and see who’s in bed with certain institutions.

Readers and news consumers can combat the resulting rampant misinformation by resisting the constructs. Yes, we have a 24/7 news cycle but that doesn’t mean you have to be a junky that consumes this schwag news so you can stay more updated than everyone else. Believe it or not, that doesn’t actually make you more informed than the next man. A friend once told me that you can get all the information you need if you just check a story every eight hours. If you’re updating your Twitter feed or refreshing the news page constantly, imagine how much you could learn about the context of the situation with that time?

There are people poring over constant updates on the Boston suspects and they could be learning the history of Chechnya, the current political and economic situation of the country, what relations are like with the U.S. and other contextual information.

If any news source can scare you enough to trust them and hang off their every word, then they’ve got you. Their news becomes your agenda. I’m far more fearful of what the PDC has done and continues to do to make Portland a ghost town for Black people than I am of a random terror attack. Yet, the big story the other day was a random toolbox on the Steel Bridge.

At the end of the day, the best way to counter propaganda is to exercise your mind. Ask questions. Think critically. Know and understand history. No matter what side of the fence you’re on politically, don’t be afraid to challenge information.

Since 9/11, our response to “terrorism” targeting us has been one of blood lust. We have excused the use of torture, night raids (often resulting in murders), bombs, missiles and most recently, drones firing these missiles upon civilians because we’re so afraid of being hit again.

In many ways, it’s easy to feel disconnected from this violence because the US media doesn’t force us to look at it on a daily basis.

As someone who works in a newsroom, I have access to the CNN Wire and I see stories of bombs and drone strikes killing and maiming more people than were hurt in today’s tragedy at least a few times a week. However, there are no pictures. The stories don’t give any humanity to the victims. Often, they’re no more than five or six sentence summaries of the body count.

As every news channel and even ESPN halts its coverage to interview people on the ground, I can’t help but wonder what someone in Pakistan or Afghanistan is thinking as they see this story scroll across their news source. As horrible as it may sound, I wonder if some are yawning or even raising an eyebrow at all.

As I look at how so many people in Boston, as well as around the country, are visibly and understandably shaken, I wonder if this will make people look at aggressions abroad more critically.

The horror of a bomb attack is all over our televisions. The ambulances. The screams. The tears.

No infographic on drone strikes in Pakistan could illustrate the effects of this violence as well as these visuals.

All I can hope when I see the pain and fear splashing across my television is that if the perpetrators are, in fact, foreign “terrorists,” that we don’t respond in kind. No matter what has been done to us, no neighborhood, town, village, or any other locality deserves this.

Even though many Americans have cheered on the perpetration of these tragedies throughout the world, I honestly believe they don’t visualize that this is the destruction we’re causing.

Look at video of the Boston Marathon explosion and then watch “Collateral Murder” on Wikileaks. Read stories about the death and destruction of drone strikes and suicide bombings. Think about the pain these communities go through following these tragedies. Not just those killed, but their families. All of the citizens who have permanent post traumatic stress disorder. All of the people who live every day of their lives in fear because they have no idea if the killing machine in the sky is going to come back.

Who knows when we’ll find out who perpetrated this attack? Instead of speculating and plotting vengeance, we should take this time to reflect on this and all the other similar tragedies that are happening daily throughout the world. If there were ever a time to push back against this violence, it’s now.

While enjoying some pizza earlier this week, a friend posed the question, “What was your favorite part of the LO (Lake Oswego) Woodshop class?” The three of us at the table chuckled. If you missed the joke, it’s because we never had such a class. Our education was based around the idea that we would be getting the jobs that allowed us to pay others to do that work. At the very least, our dads already knew the trades so what was the point of us learning?

Little did we or the people that signed off on cutting vocational programs know that we were pulling the rug of privilege from under our feet. This lack of foresight and gluttony of privilege is getting ready to reach a breaking point. There is no shortage of people that justifiably hate LO for its arrogance and concentration of wealth. If you are one of these people, I suggest patience and a good disaster capital plan because the privilege bubble is about to burst and few places are as deserving of a good pillaging.

There is a difference between good towns and good-looking ones. For all its wealth, LO is certainly the latter. Common parenting issues like neglect, hypocrisy and substance abuse are just as prevalent in LO as anywhere. Epidemic levels of white privilege (in many cases, outright racism) and the involvement of far too many of these people in shady business deals only amplify these issues.

For example, look at the house flipping schemes around town. In an effort to keep the property values up, which conveniently prices many “undesirable” people (see: low-income and people of color) out of the community, these schemers unintentionally repackaged homes for prices that even those in LO could no longer afford. It’s easy to see the results when you drive around town and there are a plethora of empty new houses, which was especially bad during the height of the recession (not that we needed more consumers or more tax revenue).

What are the odds that the apples won’t fall far from the proverbial trees?

Kim Jong-Uns Without the Grooming

It’s bad enough that we are as medicated, both legally and illegally, a generation as ever and most of us have yet to face real consequences for it. That this same generation isn’t exposed to a diverse life experience (in fact, they often see the worst possible form of the opposite) doesn’t help either.

People I went to high school with are in the process of or have already been handed the reins to the family businesses. Not all of them were great scholars or even people any of would’ve seen running a business in their 40s, much less 20s. Imagine a bunch on Kim Jong-Uns without the grooming. They might not have their fingers on the nuclear button but they control the town’s economy.

In this ever-changing world, it’s bad enough that these heirs are taking control of businesses without all the context of their predecessors. The inability of many to interact with non-white and/or non-privileged people is going to catch up with them. No matter how much “post-racial” Kool-Aid some of these people have been fed, when they, most likely unknowingly, insult business owners and representatives of color, eventually people will take their business elsewhere.

In the meantime, the landscape is already changing. I never thought I’d see the day when LO had a Wal-Mart, not to mention another one nearby in West Linn.

I use to point to LO as an example of the economic empowerment. It wasn’t too long ago when almost all the businesses you saw in the town were small family firms. In Malcolm X’s speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” he discusses how the proverbial white man sets up his businesses in the Black community and after he closes shop for the night, he takes all those profits back across town and reinvests them in his community. With the arrival of Wal-Mart, the dynamic has shifted from the proverbial white man taking advantage of the Black community to the even bigger white man getting one over on the white community too.

(Malcolm X discusses economics at 6:54.)

“The Help”

Perhaps the biggest irony of my friend’s aforementioned woodshop joke is that LO High use to have an award winning woodshop program. There are still some houses around LO that those students built. The same people that decided to phase out those programs are the same racist idiots who are complaining because they see Latinos building things all around town today. It’s a delicious case of the tortoise and the hare.

My friend recently told me that on the bus ride to work, she found herself in the rare situation where there were only Black people in a public space in LO. All the people on the bus were transiting to work. Even though residents might degradingly look down on these people as “the help,” what’s really going on is the flipping of Malcolm’s discussion of economic empowerment.

While landlords, business owners, politicians, etc. are forcefully fighting the expansion of affordable housing under the guise that it will lower property values, and consequently keep the low-income and people of color out (there is Section 8 housing around LO but it’s mostly hidden and about as diverse as the rest of the town), they are simultaneously dependent on those they look down upon. As a result, these people who are only accepted within city limits as “the help” can take their earnings and spend it on propping up their local businesses, donating to area schools, and funding other resources that build up their communities.

Reverse Disaster Capitalism

People in LO are as hungry for services as ever. If you have a skill that’s in demand and a sustainable business plan, this is the time to get a piece of the action.

Are you a musician? Try and book gigs at the Gemini. Can you cut hair? Rent a chair at one of the local barbershops. Do you have interest in cooking, especially ethnic food? People here are starving for diversity in their dining options. Do you coach or specialize in skill training? There is no shortage of parents that will pay top dollar to give their kids that extra edge on the field. Are you proficient in the trades? Just walk around town with your eyes open and you’ll find plenty of things to build or repair.

Do you do cultural competency training? Eventually business owners are going to see an effect on their bottom line if they don’t figure out how to communicate. No matter how stubborn they may be, they’ll be more than willing to pay a person of color and *gasp* actually listen if it means not losing the family business.

People are picking up on the increasing demands for goods and services, as well as the increasing lack of do-it-yourself incentive and training in this town. Wealthy communities have preyed upon less privileged ones forever. This is the far less common opportunity to profit off of Rome before it burns. Wal-Mart and other corporations shouldn’t be the only ones that get their hands on all this disposable income.

I keep this in mind whenever I complain about the struggles at my job and the Willie Lynch politics I see on a daily basis in the Black community. It plays in my mind when I have arguments about white privilege, institutional racism and economic empowerment. I can’t escape it when my friends and family tell me I need to breathe and not take it personally every time I am disrespected. I keep it in mind even on days like yesterday, when an old white man I’ve never seen before chooses to come and shout curses at me driving by like I’m a foreign invader even though it’s my neighborhood, the same one I’ve been living in for 24 years.

All Black people, whether we recognize it or not, are forced to negotiate how much freedom we’re willing to enjoy. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery 150 years ago but the reality is, there are consequences that come with expressing our freedom that those in positions of privilege don’t have to deal with.

While we may not be in bondage, we are still slaves in the mind. We aren’t free to speak our truth at will as much as the privileged. We aren’t free to act upon the disrespect and outright oppression that we deal with daily without facing consequences that would likely harm our lives and livelihoods.

Yes, you have the freedom to defend yourself, but in reality, the justice system (and society as whole) still treats Black people differently. Yes, you can live in communities with white people and engage in all the same vices, such as drugs and alcohol, as they do. However, while they’re getting slapped on the wrist, if punished at all, when the police catch up with you, you’ll find out that all your money and privileges don’t matter. The police will take any chance they can to punish you to the maximum extent of the law. I know this personally.

Yes, you can say whatever you want, but if you alienate the wrong person, even if you’re speaking the truth, you may be out of a career, never mind a job. The perception of someone being an “angry Black person” can negatively affect that person’s career opportunities because it supposedly makes “the public” uncomfortable, especially considering that the vast majority of media is white owned. If you only pay attention to the mainstream media, you’d think justifiably frustrated people of color don’t exist. Recently, a friend admitted to me that she could see why (even though she doesn’t agree) some people would think I hate white people. I do speak angrily at times. I do spend a lot of time discussing inequity and can often be blunt about it. However, the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and countless other pundits make careers out of being loud, ignorant and appealing to the worst fears and intentions in their audiences. They get platforms and publicity all over every mainstream news outlet.

Not to mention, this also has a negative effect on your health. Even if your career or physical freedom isn’t affected, the mere act of negotiating these dual realities on daily basis causes real stress.

I found this out the hard way a week ago. I was dealing with multiple personal stress factors, along with pressures related to being a journalist for the Black community and the daily struggles of expressing myself as a Black person. On one particular night, I went to bed with full-blown anxiety. The next day, I woke up  with a feeling similar to a heart attack. The feeling would re-emerge to a lesser extent over the course of the weekend, usually brought on by small arguments with friends and family or reading particularly upsetting news articles. Fortunately, my heart is fine. It turns out, I’ve been experiencing anxiety attacks. I have had to make the decision to step back and pick my battles. I have also had to begin dealing with my stress in healthier ways like exercise and de-escalation techniques.

Following an argument earlier this week with a friend who suggested to me that the key to reducing Black youth unemployment was repealing minimum wage laws (he originally said minimum wage laws have done the greatest damage to Black employment but later took that back), I joked to some people that some of these white pundits must have grandfathers who tell them at an early age, they can simply cut Black lives short by 20 years if they constantly tell us ridiculous things that exploit our predisposition to high blood pressure, hypertension, anxiety, etc.

Although it was a joke, it did highlight an underlying truth. There is real stress in having to tolerate people who have no idea how much they’re disrespecting you. It takes a lot not to fight white privilege every moment you’re faced with it, especially from the most well-intentioned people. Fighting every single battle will shorten your life span.

At some point we’re faced with the choice of how much we’re going to take before our lives and livelihoods don’t matter. That’s why certain people never get a chance to speak their minds in the media, no matter how beneficial their opinions. That’s where people living through false freedoms and Rick James-like lifestyles come from. That’s why you see people eventually snap.

As the old negro spiritual goes, “Before I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free.” I know I’m much more valuable to my family, friends and community if I don’t go out in a blaze of glory, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t think about tasting freedom.

The idea that our children’s minds are dependent on the content of hip-hop music sells these kids short. These kids, even the “worst of the worst,” are smart. Not to mention, if we look back to when we were kids, what are the odds that someone telling us (often with a very shallow explanation), “Don’t do that,” actually stopped us from doing that forbidden activity? In fact, it probably made us want to do it that much more. There are a number of environmental factors that play more of a role in bad behavior than the music kids are listening to. If those factors dictate that an entertainer is playing the role of parent, mentor, and/or teacher, then that is far more problematic than anything Snoop Dogg or Wiz Khalifa will ever say on a record.

I’ve been listening to music with explicit content since 3^rd grade, when my mom accidentally bought me the Fugees “Blunted on Reality,” to help with a class project on Haiti. Later that year, I managed to buy Puff Daddy and the Family’s “No Way Out” and scratch off the parental guidance sticker and it was pretty much on from there. Despite my parents’ disagreement with a lot of my music choices, they made sure to always remind me of my heritage and plant the seeds for critical thought, which was another safeguard preventing me from taking too much stock in media imagery.

I remember going to see my family in South Carolina and showing my cousin Dee my Nelly and DMX CDs. He let me listen to Eric B & Rakim and Heavy D and they opened up my mind so I could look at music more broadly. By 7^th grade I was getting into Nas, Public Enemy and Ras Kass. After a brief “purist” phase, I was bumping Mac Dre by 9^th grade. Somehow, I could go back and forth between a Mos Def and an Eminem, all while taking advanced classes, reading obsessively, playing basketball and participating in a Black rite of passage group. It would seem like spending countless hours listening to Mac Dre talking about pimping and popping Thizz (“I’m not hurting nobody but my body”) didn’t bring down my grades or quality of life.

Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely things I find very problematic in hip-hop. For example, it really bothers me that many mainstream artists are playing the role of molly (what they call ecstasy nowadays) spokespeople now. However, when I reflect on my life, my decision to start smoking weed in high school wasn’t a result of listening to everyone from Snoop Dogg to Redman to Common to Talib Kweli talking about it. The first time I tried it, I was with a friend who didn’t listen to rap at all, in fact. I was curious as result of listening to his and other peers’ stories and I could never get myself to abuse my recently prescribed Prozac to get the twitch he would talk about. In his case, he picked up the activity from a cousin. Any music that was involved was merely a soundtrack.

When I hear people rail against the rampant negativity in hip-hop, I can’t help but think it’s a reaction to the lack of balance in the mainstream. What you see on TV and hear on the radio is a direct function of commercial culture. As someone that works in the media and has to track page views as part of my job, I’m well aware that those YouTube clicks and replays are very important. They determine ad revenue and what music will get corporate support. If you’re wondering why it seems like there’s an endless barrage of money, cars, clothes and guns, it’s because companies are trying to sell these things and messages about financial literacy and going to your local library don’t fit with American consumerism.

There are a select few entities that own our media outlets. Ras Kass sums it up perfectly in his track “Behind the Musick”:

“You can be the hottest MC, literally leave the mic smoking
No marketing and promotion
No 106 & Park, no TRL
Don’t kill the messenger homey but don’t expect to sell
Viacom own MTV, VH1
BET, five labels until BMG
Merged with Sony, EMI, Universal and WEA
Only four labels in the music industry bruh
All radio controlled by two companies
Just two rap magazines, read between the lines.”

If we’re really concerned about diversifying the messages in the mainstream (aka making more positive and directly educational music easily accessible) then we have to create an environment where artists aren’t dependent on these media entities who are often tied to these corporate forces that could care less about the Black community’s welfare. An artist wouldn’t feel so much pressure to make only a certain kind of music if he had complete creative freedom. The limitations of corporate dependence are as evident in Portland as anywhere, where local hip-hop only gets mainstream play for a whopping three hours a week on Cool Nutz’ Northwest Breakout Show on Sundays from 9-12 pm (Much respect to Cool Nutz for doing his part in promoting the local entertainment economy).

This is far from a coincidence. Last year I did a three part series entitled “Hip-Hop Crackdown,” where artists who varied in content all told the same stories of having a hard time booking shows because of promoter, police, OLCC and other institutional pressures throughout the city. Ultimately, this hurts creativity because artists have to spend an inordinate amount of time just scraping by and don’t get the exposure that allows them to grow.

In order to counter this, fans have to go out of their way to promote their favorite artists, buy their music, and demand and show up for their shows. It may seem trivial, but bump up their YouTube stats and “like” or “follow” them on social media. Someone is keeping track. You can even write to these artists and tell them personally how much you feel their music because chances are, most of what they’re hearing from people is criticism (Coming from a columnist, hearing a good word every now and then really does make a difference).

If there’s any positive to the plight of Portland’s hip-hop scene, it’s that many of the false divisions between different types of hip-hop aren’t very pronounced because artists have to work together just to make anything work. In theory, people should be able to put their heads and money together to create outlets outside of radio and unsupportive concert venues, in which their fans could engage and support their music.

Of course, as with any goings on in the Black community, the Willie Lynch mentality has an uncanny way of rearing its ugly head. Artists will say all the right things for the reporter or the cameras but will be at each other’s necks either directly or behind each other’s backs, often over trivial issues.

In terms of conscious artists, especially on a national level, there has been the seeming emergence of the “progressive celebrity” in hip-hop. These artists are very much like the personalities you see on MSNBC, who are great for sound bites but often lack depth and/or proactive solutions when really pushed. To spot one, just look for statements saying artists who don’t make music like them “aren’t real,” or that fans that listen to records with negativity or don’t personally support these artists are “part of the problem” (the old George W. Bush “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality).

These statements do a disservice to the promotion of variety in hip-hop and more importantly, hurt individual’s credibility. Telling the truth requires nuance and complexity. Hip-hop has roots that date back to Negro spirituals. Discussions around spirituals are often (and rightfully) framed around how they were used as coded language to escape the plantation but many of these songs also served the simple purpose of helping slaves relax and take their minds away from their plight. Some people may hate the more foolish music, but chances are if you just listen to completely serious records and literally scheme on revolution 24/7, an anxiety or heart attack is in your near future.

The dueling, yet cooperative dynamics of Black music are very much evident today. Places like Pittsburgh can produce both a Jasiri X and a Wiz Khalifa (although if you listen to Jasiri, their beginnings were far more similar than one might think).

Black artists can choose to use their talents in many ways but at the end of the day, we can’t forget that this is a business and currently, we don’t own the means of production. Whether we like it or not, these artists are going to have to work together and in reality, that isn’t as much of a problem as some would think. Artists don’t want to be one-dimensional. No matter what image we put out there for others, fans certainly aren’t one-dimensional either. As Black people, we have the right to be as complex, sometimes contradictory, and full of variety as any other group. We may have been conditioned to kill ourselves over this (see: Willie Lynch mentality again) but that doesn’t have to be our reality. We really can support the entertainment we produce as a whole and create a thriving economy that isn’t dependent on the carrot and stick of established corporate powers.

Black people getting money productively is a beautiful thing so stop stressing yourself or others out for listening to Trinidad James. If you step back and look at the bigger picture, a Trinidad James and a Kendrick Lamar cover a pretty large segment of fans and potential revenue. It would be much easier to re-invest these profits if we had some sense of collectivity and cooperative economics. Why let trivial labels like “conscious” or “gangsta” stop us?

The fact is, there is no shortage of men who find it perfectly acceptable to perpetuate and act on rape culture. Just yesterday I was privy to multiple stories throughout the day. One friend of mine shared with me how a man told her he’d “fuck her good” if she gave him a place to stay in the afternoon. Later on in the night, a group of guys undressed her with their eyes in between harassing other women on the MAX. Apparently it got to the point where the driver had to stop the train. This even extended to a group of teenage girls next to me on the exercise bike. I couldn’t help but overhear them trading stories about their “heavy handed” boyfriends’ sexual advances and those girls’ inability to get the message across to them.

As a man, it bothers me that society expects me to travel with my girl and/or female friends to prevent the most egregious harassment and in some cases, such as creeper gazes, even the presence of a man can’t do anything about it. It is sick that society says women need to be cautious and have men to protect them from creeps, as opposed to expecting men not practice rape culture. Period.

All the BS about women shouldn’t go out by themselves late at night or wear skimpy clothing is patently false because there are a wealth of women who will tell you they’ve been harassed or even attacked when they weren’t dressed to impress, most often by someone close to them, not this stranger in the bushes we want to think of all rapists as.

Not too long ago, a friend shared a very sobering story with me. According to News One, a study conducted by Black Women’s Blueprint found that 60 percent of the women surveyed had been sexually assaulted in their lifetime by Black men. The fact is, these kinds of statistics are prevalent for women, and women of color especially.

As men, we have to do better. I know I’m not the most evolved man and have plenty of growing to do. However, the least I and other men can do is recognize we are not entitled to women’s bodies and treating women however we please. Men of color especially need to hold ourselves accountable because women of color are the most targeted and often, their cases go unreported.

There is no room for excuses. We have to hold each other accountable and not let these problematic ideologies slide amongst ourselves.

While many were shocked by the viral video of Steubenville football players laughing about an alleged gang rape of a girl, the reality is that these conversations are more of the norm than we’d like to acknowledge.

I was an athlete in high school and I was in a fraternity in college. I also considered myself very much a nerd and those kinds of conversations were present in all of those circles.

As I’ve grown older and found myself around more women willing to discuss and challenge me and my peers on patriarchy, I’ve noticed that many guys are quick to plead ignorance as a defense. According to this logic, we simply have never been exposed to these concepts before so we can’t be expected to really understand and stop messing up.

Many of these arguments display the same kind of resistance I get when I try to make people aware of white privilege. They don’t hold water because when a person hears the same things ten different times and continues to blatantly disregard it, it shows he really doesn’t care about addressing the problem or is so conditioned to not see his male privilege that he needs a forceful awakening.

One way to let go of some of that male privilege is to do something as monumentally groundbreaking as actually listen to women (Crazy right?). Stop shutting women down when they try and tell you these stories. Stop dismissing rape jokes. Stop making excuses.

There are a vast amount of resources detailing what rape culture is and plenty of voices discussing it in rightfully uncompromising terms. If you’re really in the dark and you don’t know someone you can immediately talk to, Google it. Do some reading. Listen to podcasts. There really is no excuse to continue to clutch on to ignorance.

When I first proposed “National Punch a Sexist Asshole in the Face Day,” it was a bit of hyperbole. It’s not that I don’t think it would be justified and/or welcome but men, and especially Black men, are better served trying to create change when they’re not in jail on assault charges (and they will lock our Black asses up with the quickness).

We can take steps in our everyday interactions with women to contribute to the destruction of rape culture.

I, by no means, am a finished product. One way I’ve tried to accelerate my evolution is by being conscious and when in doubt, asking questions. In terms of just walking through the world, I can be aware of my gaze and other actions that make women noticeably uncomfortable.

On a much more intimate level, I’ve found that being conscious of how a woman is feeling is never a bad move. The fact is, I can look back at a number of instances where I’ve crossed the line and the reality is, in most of those cases the woman didn’t come out and tell me that I was being a scumbag. By no means am I a rapist but even the attitude and actions that suggest “I expect sex is going to happen” are a form of accepting rape culture and male privilege. If you find yourself guessing whether she wants sex or not, that’s a good time to stop and be deliberate about asking what the situation is.

There are a number of reasons why a woman might not say anything and at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter because the onus is on us as men not to perpetuate rape culture in the first place. Even though it’s not the sexiest sounding thing (sometimes it even does kill the mood a little), the act of stopping and taking the temperature of the situation just shows a level of respect for your partner’s body.

If humanity and respect don’t appeal to you, then maybe creating a society where women aren’t inherently distrustful of you does. Rape culture is a major reason why many women have a hard time trusting men. Most of us have been in three-way relationships with a woman and her trust issues and it’s not fun (the same goes women who are with men affected by their sense of patriarchy). Practicing respect is a small contribution to the greater efforts of creating a world where women don’t have to cross to the other side of the street when you approach them.

Seriously, it’s a simple matter of respect. Give it and something crazy will happen: You’ll get it back.