I woke up late today as usual after putting in some time as a nocturnal creature of the night in my office pleasurably slumped over
in front of my computer tweaking some things on the hidden back end of my blog in order to make the LanceScurv.com experience a more pleasurable one to all who take the time to come and visit…….and since I am on the subject of my blog and my precious visitors please allow me the quick opportunity to say thanks! Without you being here to absorb my shared expressions I wouldn’t have the wonderful exchanges and validations to all that flows through me creatively! And I really mean that!
While still laying in the bed contemplating what my goals were for this new blessing of a day it hit me that I had a few things to do
before I went in to earn the few visible dollars at the job to pay that pimp Uncle Sam his cut of the profits from my labor. I had about
two free hours to do what I had to do before heading on in.
After my outside runs and chores were completed, having so much on my mind I barely remembered at the last moment that I had to go over to the local Walgreen’s to pick up a few personal grooming products that I needed so desperately. Any of you who know me for any amount of time will know that I am a stickler for keeping myself squeaky clean and presentable. I don’t feel right taking out the garbage if I am not shaved, showered and smelling good! Too much information? Lol!
Anyway, before exiting the Walgreen’s with two bags of items that I am sure was overkill (They get me everytime!) I casually glanced over to the newspaper rack and noticed the latest issue of the Florida Courier, one of my favorite weekly’s that focuses on the issues of the African-American community here in the State of Florida and beyond. It’s free, it cost’s nothing so I invested in the few steps in that direction to grab a copy to catch up on whatever pertinent issues that I may not have been up on in the last week or so.
With only forty five minutes and counting down to leave my home to start my trek to work, I knew I had to put the pedal to the metal if I was going to move smoothly without rushing in my patented Scurv style.
As I hopped in the car and tossed my belongings into the passenger seat, I noticed the headline of the Courier – No Thanks From Toyota – I made a mental note of that headline as I haphazardly pushed the key in the ignition that this was a MUST read because I have been a Toyota loyalist for years without interruption.
Heck, the car that I was driving home in at the moment is a Toyota and the other one waiting at home parked up in my garage was one also. So it really struck a chord in me deeply to read a headline such as that.
With only forty-one minutes left to exit my premises to go into my Uncle Sam visible income mode, I decided that I had to take at least five precious minutes to read this article because I didn’t like the rest of what I was glancing on the rest of the page when driving home.
In a nutshell Toyota pissed off the NNPA (National Newspaper Publishers Association – A network of 200 Black publishers that represent over 19.8 million weekly readers, half of America’s Black population!) Chairman Danny Bakewell Sr. and several top Black
newspaper publishers after backing out of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign that was to target Black consumers.
What ticked off Mr. Bakewell specifically was that he and the NNPA received a letter from Toyota executives stating that the Black
consumers will receive the advertising message from a number of media channels that include “mainstream” media. Basically what Toyota was saying was that to advertise directly to Black people in America by going through any Black owned media was unnecessary!
Well, if truth be told, the executives at Toyota can do whatever they wish with their vast sums of funds of which 2.2 billion of it came
last year from the very Black people that they feel no urgency to spend “some” of their advertising budget to their other respected
media outlets to whom they feel are very important and crucial in their business relationship.
But they had no problem taking that 2.2 billion from Black folks now didn’t they?
But what really makes their reluctance to spend money in the struggling Black media an unexpected big slap in the face is that when
they had their problems with their cars having a stuck accelerator pedal, they practically begged ALL of the press no matter what the readership base to print articles and write stories about how great their products still were despite the problems that were plaguing them in that respect at the time.
The Black Press showed a loyalty like no other in this crucial time of need at Toyota. But evidently they have a very short memory
indeed…….
But this led me to delve a bit deeper on this subject as well as thinking of a few other things that were not totally under the umbrella of this story but somewhat related regardless.
As a Black man growing up in this country called The United States of America, you are made to feel things that others will never feel due to the color of your skin. While you do no accept these things that you feel you begin to expect it after a while.
You learn quickly how another person’s sickness and warped mentality can have an effect on the most simple things in your life from getting pulled over by the cops for no other reason than merely “fitting the description” or being tailed in a store as though you are about to steal something even though you have a pocket loaded with money.
This type of “being followed around” in a store is something that is a common occurrence when a Black man is in an Asian establishment and is a well documented phenomenon in the urban Black communities here in America.
While it is the same scenario that is experienced through a racist mentality and a system that reinforces that destructive mindset,
nevertheless it has a special sting to it because you well know that they learned it from the racists that are already here in this country that we all know oh so well!
It’s the same feeling that you have when someone tells a lie on you and the person that was told the lie goes on to believing it without
any proof without any substance behind it whatsoever!
Why is it this way? What changed so quickly in the landscape of American race relations where at one time the Japanese were the enemy of the United States after pearl harbor eventually prompting (In an inhumane manner I must say!) the the nuclear bomb to be dropped in Hiroshima while the good ole loyal Black man was here fighting for America not only World War Two but every single war that this country had on the front lines more patriotic than anyone else regardless as to what treatment they received here?
Now it seems as though the Black man is an outcast and even an enemy in his “own country” with his only crime being that he is not as economically proficient as his Japanese neighbor therefore is in no need of their respect. Heck, if after spending 2.2 billion dollars
with someone only to have them still not respect you means they don’t really think much of you at ALL!
Many of my readers here may feel as though I am speaking without any tangible facts behind what I say. But how can I express an invisible feeling with tangible facts? I fan only tell you how I feel from my experiences and it is up to you to figure out what is real from what is imagined. But let me tell you, when it comes to this issue of the perceptions between the Asian community and the Black American community, many will agree deep down inside without proclaiming what I say as being authentic out in public.
I have a friend who has lived in China (China? Yes I know that we were speaking on Japan but now we are speaking about a general Asian attitude toward Blacks) for the last 15 years as a doctor and she has truly opens my eyes to many things abroad that I would have never realized on my own.
First of all I must say one of the most eye opening points that she taught me about living in China was that the Asian people do NOT want to hear the whining of Black people who feel as though they have been wronged by racism. They don’t give a damn. They do not care one iota about you being wronged. There are no Asian Al Sharpton’s or Minister Louis Farrakhan’s over there to run to that will defend your plight. To bad. Tough. It’s irrelevant. Get money. That is all they are concerned with. Do you have money? This is all they see. They have no time to worry about the Baptist being angry at the next Black person who has proclaimed Islam as their faith or the battle between a Black person from the United States who doesn’t like the coconut from the Caribbean.
All of you dummies are Black fools who can’t get it together to do anything on a worldwide scale of note and never will! So just line up, eat the fried slop that we would never consume for ourselves and sew that dead hair over an even deader brain that will never realize any brilliance because you are a dead people whose carcass benefits anyone who has the balls to go into your neighborhood to get rich from the ghetto gold that you yourself are too stupid to see that lines the streets in YOUR community!
Many Chinese people are not really feeling Black people at all. They have been affected by mainstream American perceptions either directly or through the American media. While China now holds the upper hand (As does Japan) economically over the United States, they are still very much in awe of the American culture here which is still number one in their mind no matter how much better they are doing than America in the finance department.
They love our culture so much that they will fashion their own stars after ours down to the last detail. They have their own Chinese
Beyonce, they have their own rappers that actually take the exact beats to rap over (Who is going to sue them?) and everything from
fashion to our swagger is duplicated as though it was their own and they originate it.
Interesting indeed.
This is why any athlete or performer who happens to be Black who goes over there will tell you a completely different story about the Asian countries and have such a different opinion about them. It’s because when you are a rapper or an athlete that is your place and that is what you are supposed to be doing! But go over there as an intellectual and your brilliance will be in question no matter how
many accolades you have achieved under your belt! You will find the challenge even doubled if you happen to be a Black woman living there who has achieved a measure of excellence in your chosen area of expertise!
So for the blue collar Black man that doesn’t leave to much of any leeway for respect. Why? Well for starters, not to flip the script, but many of us have played right into making the lies spread about us to appear to be true by the buffoonery that many of us indulge in here right before the very slanted eyes of those who own Asian establishments right in our very own Black neighborhoods!
I don’t have to look too far in any Black neighborhood to find a Korean fruit market or beauty supply store (Who else is going to
supply all of that fake ass weave yak hair to our women?) or a Chinese take out joint. They are the familiar faces in the terrain of any
inner city experience and I must add that they would not even be there if it weren’t a lucrative endeavor for them to say the least!
But do understand that they get to observe us at our worst and do not have much respect from what they see either. Guess what? Don’t you think they call back home to their family to share their experiences on how out of control as a people we are? Imagine the things that they are saying about us. Think about it. So you think that they have any good to say about us at all when they can come into an area where we live and make a fortune from our lack of discipline to run an efficient stable household that will take care of all of our needs where we wouldn’t have to find ourselves out spending precious money to eat out food every night that is actually no good for us? Yes! I am talking about that “half a friend chicken and pork fried rice” that has both women AND men looking like they are in their third trimester of pregnancy!
Our lack of respect for one another is well known and documented all over the world and even though we can see bad in every culture we as Black people have got to be the worse when it comes not showing any unity amongst ourselves so how can the people from other countries come her and just give us a respect that we don’t show to each other.
Remember, we as a people have put ourselves in a bad position “perception” wise by our not having a united front. Don’t think that
when we argue over our so called differences in political affiliation of faith that others are not thinking how foolish a people we are.
Also, do not think that another people are going to step in to school us on how we can become that unified front when such a lucrative opportunity exists in the exploitation of our differences.
Divide and conquer? We make it easier for anyone who wants to take advantage of us because we work so hard to maintain that separation and all one has to do is step in and conquer us. Our own ready made situation is turned in against us for someone else’s benefit.
So when the corporate arrogance rears it’s ugly head as in Toyota’s thumbing of its well paid nose at the Black press, we have to take
some of the blame in helping to manifest their confidence to act toward us as a people in the manner in which the do.
The bottom line is that we have so much house cleaning to do and when these incidents happen we really cannot get angry at anyone us but ourselves. Think not? Let me ask you something and answer me honestly…….don’t you find it harder to respect a family whose dirty secrets you know well after hearing them arguing at home amongst themselves for the world to hear? Well that’s us, and as long as we continue on this deadly trajectory of self hate then we will get pimp slapped for so much more next year than 2.2 billion dollars and laughed at in the process…….
How can we demand respect when we don’t even respect ourselves?
