The Age of Anger

Are you mad?

If you're like many folks in this country, you have a whole host of reasons why you're upset, and all of them feel justified. It could be your job, your family, your health or just some nebulous feeling of unease. Whatever, it is, it's making you angry.

American has been an angry place since that guy got in the oval office. You know the guy, purple lips, slim build, peculiar gait. That guy seems to have made everything worse. Civil discourse has completely disappeared, the economy is tanking, racial violence is increasing, and dammit, I can't turn on the news without having to hear about a racial issue.

What happened to my country?

In my America, people knew how to talk around important issues, we knew how to sweep certain discussions under the rug. There was not this incessant push to confront injustice, it was more about going with the flow. Don't make waves and you'll be taken care of, you know.

Look at how this new anger thing has affected the blacks. (By the way, I still don't understand why we can't say Negro. It means "black" in Spanish and it sounds so much more poetic than regular "black.") Back in my day, the blacks knew how to enjoy life. The ones who were poor had their Saturday night fun, and the ones with a little money understood how to keep to themselves.

You could be confident that if you gave a Negro, I mean a black, a hand-up he understood that you were his benefactor. He was eternally grateful to you. The blacks knew that success was a privilege and that it could be snatched from them. Althea Gibson would have never gotten cheeky like Serena Williams, and if you think Bill Russell would have dared give a speech like Michael Jordan's, well you don't know America.

And Kanye? Kanye! First of all his momma would have never named him after a pepper. And, I know he damn sure wouldn't have a career if he did that to an all-American girl in my day. It's like these Negroes have lost their tiny minds.

You know it's all because of him. He made them think they could let their hair down, that we would tolerate this sort of behavior. Sure, he says all the right things, although he showed his black buttocks with that Henry Gates thing, but beneath that placid veneer lurks an angry black man. Do y'all remember how he got all huffy when folks started making some good natured jibes about his wife? Issuing threats like he has the right to impede my free speech, how dare he!

It's like these Negroes think they can say anything now that this guy is running the show. And running it into the ground I might add. How do we go from peace and prosperity to anarchy in ten months? Well, when you start worrying about diversity and not about results, what do you expect? I don't want to sound like a racist, but any time you let certain folks get involved in stuff, well the quality deteriorates. Look at our urban areas.

What really galls me is how angry so many of the blacks are now. You would think that they would be satisfied now that they've got their guy in the White House. But you give a Negro an inch and there's no stopping him. It's like they think that the world should change immediately. Where's the patience, where's their understanding? Folks don't like disruption. Intelligent people can discuss problems without resorting to name-calling or ugliness. I wish these blacks would follow the example of real Americans.

I just want to let all the hardworking, tax-paying Americans know that I get their confusion over all this misplaced anger. Just like you, it makes me mad, and I think I deserve to be mad. It's the folks without legitimate complaints that need to learn some decorum.

Thanks for your time.







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An Open Letter to My People

Sometimes you people can be so ungrateful.

Seriously, sometimes y'all make a black prophet feel like he ain't nothing. Just two years ago I gave you all the greatest tome in the history of black literature, and then I followed that up with a sequel of damn near equal brillance.

I thought we had forged a Covenant, that could not be broken by credit card debt or boring ass television shows.

I showed all of you exactly how to rise above your mediocre lives and embrace the fullness of being credits to your race. This was only one of 28 books that I've pawned off, I mean provided to you all for you edification.

But, do my people, my children, appreciate my efforts? Do you praise me and gladly line up to provide your names, incomes and spending habits for my annual pimping, er, uplifting of the black community?

No, no you don't because greatness is rarely recognized during its zenith. Instead, you all have turned your backs on a real member of DuBois' famed Talented Tenth, have run off to support the first mulatto who bats his eyes at you. Despite the years I put in working for upstanding black companies like BET, and the partnerships I've forged with community benefactors like Wal-Mart, you raisin-heads swallow this smooth-talking socialite's tripe about hope and change like it's Cold Duck.

Obama has your noses so wide open I could land a 747 on your faces. His every comment has y'all swooning. You've forgotten the years I spent at podiums and book signings making the world a better place in favor of some politician who claims he can bring about real change if you give him real power.

And this isn't just about how y'all have attacked me when I've spoken the unvarnished truth about this elitist imposter on Tom Joyner's Morning Show. No, I can handle the tripe you idiots spew, particularly all you bitter, lonely sistas speculating about my hidden love for white women.

For the last time, it's not white women keeping me single, but black women who haven't embraced the lessons of women like my mother. Maybe if you could cook and didn't have so much attitude you would have a man of your own.

Truthfully, I'm not even mad about that anymore. What really pisses me off is that you ingrates have started questioning white folks who have done so much for you like Hillary and Bill. How dare y'all try to think for yourselves and parse the words of your betters? What qualifies people like you to determine true intent of white folks?

It's just shameful.

So, I'm done. It's over.

Go ahead and embrace your new, favorite Negro, but don't forget this is the same domino who wouldn't even speak honestly about race until he had to defend his pastor!

AND I DON'T CARE IF HIS SPEECH WAS WONDERFUL. I could have done better.

It's all good. In fact, all of you can let this smooth talker fool you into believing that things will get better in this country, and you won't need me and my cronies to speak for you. Keep sipping that Kool-Aid. I don't need you. I have more pressing business to attend to.

Now, where did I put the program for my roundtable discussion with Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson on Black America?