Miserable Mispogons and the Misguided Media

The entire internet is mourning Nipsey Hu$$le’s untimely death right now. From city mayors to musicians to NBA baby-GOATs, his message and example of Black empowerment is being celebrated. Every celebrity who has ever taken a photo or shared a Twitter exchange with Nip is clamoring to establish their personal relationship with him and convey their hurt and sense of personal loss. As an aside, I’ve always been fascinated observing the widespread phenomenon of grief-expropriation following death in the Black community. It’s the reason why such an inordinately large number of hardly-acquainted people often “just spoke to” or inexplicably discover kinship with the recently departed, but I digress. Nipsey and I were complete strangers. Honestly, I didn’t even care too much for his music despite giving it a good college try. I loved his interviews more than his bars but I admired him because he was an unassuming intellectual and represented Black love and Black agency (among many things) well. Perhaps it’s that unfamiliarity with one another that gives me the luxury and onus of offering a different perspective and reaction to his tragic death. Again, I share most of the admiration for him but there’s little utility in touching further on what seems to universally-conceded. And as eulogies often go, deference is given to emotional support at the expense of the whole truth. I prefer to take on the role of Marvel’s Thanos as the moralistic supervillain and address an inconvenient truth while the proverbial iron is still hot. If you will, miss me with the “it’s too soon for anything but condolences and prayer right now” bullshit too. If evil-Whitey conspiracy theories are being peddled across the internet like Black Friday TVs and are considered suitable for commiserations then I see no impropriety in me being candid. Furthermore, if it’s appropriate for Liberals to decry the scourge of guns and racism before the bodies of 9 beautiful Black souls were even cold in the morgue on 6/17/15, please lend me your eyes and an open mind. The same things that make us ALL love gangsters is the same thing that makes their lives so precarious. There’s an inexplicable allure and charm to individuals who openly balk at the rules that most of us in society submit to. Their personas have come to thrive in a culture of financial Machiavellianism where the ends (money) justifies the means and financial success can absolve us of our past and present transgressions. A common fallacy held in many Black communities there are often no viable options apart from peddling drugs and excelling at athletics bolsters this dynamic. When people we admire for their gifts succumb to the lifestyle that they represent, we willfully suspend that same wisdom that informs us when trying to steer our loved ones away from the streets. To that hard-headed twenty-something year old cousin who fashions himself as a trapper or gangster, we passionately render warning about his lifestyle and how it inevitably leads to a bullet or prison time. But somehow when that person is a celebrated artist, the truth no longer holds priority. According to various sources and the obvious fashion and rhetorical cues, we know that Nipsey was a proud member of the Crips and the “Last Time That I Checc’d”, their mission statement is one that predisposes them to bodily injury and death. According to the LA County Sheriff’s Dept., in 2012 (only reported year), 60% of the 175 murders in LA County were attributable to gangs. With all this being said, is it more plausible that the same powerful government that has managed to kill our greatest leadership was somehow more preoccupied with killing Nipsey Hussle rather than Louis Farrakhan, Assata Shakur or Angela Davis? You’re telling me that he has incurred such wrath of our oppressor because of a documentary he is producing on Dr. Sebi; a man whose skeptical scientific work we ALREADY know about and yet still choose to eat fried chicken? Was this documentary slated to be the catalyst for revolution? If the movie ‘Rosewood’ or ‘Roots’ didn’t set it off then how is anyone so convinced about the transformative capacity of another Dr. Sebi documentary filled with information readily available on Google? We live in times where the truly conscious are made to look like coons because they follow the evidence and aren’t anchored to an agenda or groupthink. It’s not much of an intellectual exercise to blame all of our woes on White supremacy, but it’s not very honest either. Yes, slavery then Black Codes then Jim Crow exacted indellible psychological terror upon us and conditioned many of our people to self-hate and self-destruction. It has set us back economically, politically, socially and disrupted our families and progress through sabotage via COINTELPRO and other covert programs sanctioned by the government. It has exacted a legacy that still maligns us to this day. But a Black man likely killed Nipsey and that’s a narrative exponentially more familiar and problematic for us. We don’t do ourselves any service by just attacking the most convenient targets. At this point in the investigation, we’re all being rather impulsive in making assumptions given how little we know about the facts but such is the nature of any gamble. If I were a betting man though (and it appears I’m wagering my Black card), I would put my money on the culprit being another Black man with a motive for murder that has been engendered or bolstered through a subculture that consumes more Black bodies than the Klan could ever dream of. The responses to this are predictable but there’s far too much to address here to be comprehensive enough to refute them preemptively. Hopefully, this will serve as a primer for a more thorough discussion. The good certainly die young, rest in peace Nipsey. - Dr. Rod Singleton, M.D.

The hate we give is contingent upon the love we have. This is weighed on an ever sliding scale of subjectivity and accumulated goodwill. This concept holds true in just about any scenario. The more egregious the act a person is under scrutiny for, the more goodwill and love they have to have accumulated to survive the court of public opinion. We see time and time again, two people under scrutiny for the same offense and one is crucified publicly , while the other either given a pass, or a flat out refusal by the public to vilify. A pastor with indiscretions of infidelity may be said to be human and make mistakes, while a basketball player in a relationship with a famous social media influencer is given the weight of full social persecution. Thus arises the curious case of Robert Kelly vs. Michael Jackson. For years both of these entertainers were under public scrutiny for their alleged sexual behavior with under-aged children. In the case of Robert Kelly, his alleged transgressions included marrying the beloved Pop and R&B songstress, Aaliyah, several years before her 18th birthday, recording himself giving a golden shower to a wayward teenage girl, and multiple accounts of engaging sexually with teenage girls under 18. On the other hand, we have Michael Jackson, who was alleged to have, at minimum, fondled multiple children at his Neverland Ranch when letting them spend the night. This led to several multimillion dollar settlements and a number of recantations. Both of these high profile entertainers endured years of simultaneous professional success and public scrutiny. One has died and lives on with seemingly high regard by the public, while the other is now facing ten felony counts of sexually assaulting minors. Both have had documentaries made about their alleged sexual misconduct. In one instance most people wanted to grab some popcorn and watch the flames of hell engulf the rest of his career- Robert Kelly. In the other instance, many are refusing to watch, or reluctantly watching with the assumption that it’s all a lie- Michael Jackson. What separates these two and the reception they receive by the public when it comes to their accusations? Sure we can argue that Kelly has way more direct evidence against him. But weak circumstantial evidence has never stopped the angry mob from throwing social media stones before. Sure we can argue that Jackson is dead, and some folks are of the opinion that your transgressions die with you. But there’s plenty of people that will spit on their deadbeat father’s grave 20 years later if given the opportunity. The hard truth is, people love Michael Jackson, and they are tired of Robert Kelly. Michael Jackson reached a place of almost musical sainthood as a result of his continuous presence within the entertainment industry. He is arguably the most famous entertainer to ever walk the earth. Men and women alike have fainted and swooned simply because they were in his physical presence. At least three generations of fans have grown up knowing Jackson, singing his songs, and learning to emulate his moves. On the other hand, you cannot deny that Robert Kelly has enjoyed his fair share of fan craze, but nowhere near on the same level of his counterpart. But Robert has exhausted his goodwill. In the 90’s there were rumors, accusations, and police inquiries. In the 2000’s we heard more about him and his pedophilic trysts. And now in 2019, we have heard that he STILL has not learned his lesson and continues to exhibit what can only be described as compulsive behavior. Jackson had the decency to learn that, the public feels much more at ease if they no longer hear from you and force them to see that you are really, just a mere mortal. The only thing that the public hates more than someone who acts like a piece of shit, is someone who continues to act like a piece of shit when given another chance to be holy in their sight. And that is the failing of Mr. Kelly. He has exhausted his goodwill with the public and the friendly fan faces are dwindling. Mr. Jackson had the decency to die on a scandal-free high. He died with the love of the people and as such, the people tend to find it unpalatable to now screen his past and hold him up to the standards that 2019 America is starting to hold more of their beloved to. Maybe Kelly should take a lesson out of Jackson’s book in an effort to salvage any semblance of his reputation… - Brennen Dunn, Esq.

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The situation in Dallas in which yet another black man is killed by an overzealous cop is more than just a matter of black vs. blue. There are multiple layers to this issue. I’ll try not to conjecture too much in this editorial. I’d prefer to take the information as-is because there’s enough to unravel without adding more theories to this debacle. Amber Guyger is a 30-year-old police officer with 4 years of experience with the Dallas Police Department. On the night of the shooting involving 26 year old Botham Jean, a St. Lucia native, she had just finished working a 15 hour shift. According to the arrest affidavit, she arrived at her apartment building, proceeded to the apartment she thought was hers, inserts a key with a unique electronic chip into a door that is noticeably slightly ajar, walks in, lights off, sees a dark figure, gives commands to said figure that are not obeyed, shoots said figure, calls 911, and then runs BACK to the front door to get the unit number only to find that it isn’t her apartment………..Whew! Let me breathe first. Let’s start with the actual story presented in the affidavit. It simply doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if it’s the fault of the officer writing the affidavit and doing so in a poor, sloppy, and non-verbatim way, or if it’s a matter of Officer Guyger giving us a story with Swiss cheese holes riddled throughout. Either way, it’s a poor attempt at making sense of an already murky situation where the only other eye witness can’t tell us what happened because, ya know, she shot him. Focusing on JUST the alleged facts, the first thing that stands out is that Guyger puts a key with an electronic chip into a door that is ALREADY slightly ajar. Never have I ever looked at my door, seen that it was kinda open (aka unlocked), and still put a key in to….unlock it. But hey, I ain’t her, and she’s not me. The next thing we see is that the room Guyger enters is described as dark. What do most of us without night vision goggles handy do in the dark? The opposite of Teddy Pendergrass…turn on the lights. But not good ol’ Officer Guyger, because, again, we ain’t her, and she’s not us. THEN the affidavit states that Mr. Jean was alerted to someone entering the unit by virtue of the door being opened. Now I don’t know what kind of loud ass door this must’ve been but it was loud enough for someone, presumably in an entirely different part of the house to hear and come investigate. On top of that, neither Guyger (the real intruder) nor Botham (the purported intruder) turn on a light to see WTF is going on? Never have I ever felt that if I thought someone was in my home I would just walk in the dark, no weapon (real or makeshift) in hand and walk boldly into danger. However, that’s Guyger’s story and she’s sticking to it. Next, we have the coup de grace of this fantastic story. Guyger says she is on the phone with 911, immediately after shooting Jean, and is asked for the apartment address. She GOES BACK TO THE FRONT DOOR and DISCOVERS that she is in the wrong apartment. Now…breathe Brennen. Why in THE world would someone need to go to the front door to see what their address is? Again, this dissection is predicated on exactly what’s written, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not until she reads the unit number on the outside of the apartment that she realizes she’s at the wrong address. Not the red doormat at front before she got there. Not the strange occupant of another home. Not the eerily dissimilar furniture of not-your-home. This story is poorly constructed and begs more questions than it provides answers. That being said, at least Officer Guyger was given ample opportunity to provide a coherent, plausible yet ill-constructed answer. In fact she had plenty of time to sit, ponder, discuss, and manage her situation. Guyger pulled the trigger around 10:00 p.m. on a Thursday. But she wasn’t placed in the much less crowded and much more pleasant Kauffman county jail on resulting charges until Sunday around 7:20 p.m. Mind you, Kauffman isn’t even the county where the shooting took place, that’s Dallas county. Guyger’s name wasn’t even released by police until almost 48 hours after the shooting, and only then because news outlets were already sleuthing and discovering. There’s something to be said about how police handled Officer Guyger’s situation. They gave her the benefit of the doubt. They didn’t jump to conclusions. They were discretionary on what information to release and when. They treated Officer Guyger the way EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN wishes they were treated in these unfortunate instances. It’s quite ironic that this officer was given the sort of treatment that the citizens they are sworn to protect and serve, hope for, but don’t expect to get. There’s also this issue that keeps getting brought up of Officer Guyger having just worked a 15 hour shift. It is being mentioned as if to mitigate the severity of her actions. As if to say, because she worked a 15 hour shift, tiredness and exhaustion could have diminished her rational thinking or cleared some room for some cognitive mistakes to be made. Well. Well. Well. Is that REALLY where we want to go with this? If so, are you now telling us that cops working long shifts have a diminished cognitive capacity, thus impairing their decision making ability? If so, at what point does that diminishment start? Right after hour 15? 30 minutes before hour 15? What about hours 11, 12, or 13? Surely we aren’t allowing officers to work the kind of hours that puts their fellow citizens in danger of poor cognitive function? Or does that only matter when the officer is looking at some dire consequences. I know I promised I wouldn’t entertain conjecture, so I’ll make this brief. The last thing that bothers me is the nagging question in the back of my mind of “if Officer Guyger believed this ‘intruder’ to be a black man, did that heighten her sense of fear and anxiety?” Officers seem to be conditioned, based on the mountain of anecdotal evidence, to be on high alert when dealing with black and brown suspects. Let me be clear. This narrative should not be about an officer shooting another unarmed black man. It should be about a lady who shoots a guy in his own home, purportedly because she mistakenly thinks there’s an intruder. Then we let the legal chips fall where they may and allow attorneys on both sides of the law to duke it out in the name of justice. But Guyger’s deferential treatment by fellow officers forces us to follow the former narrative. Her prepared statement that seems to be the only investigative tool used in an arrest affidavit egregiously written to justify her and defend her actions forces us to follow the former narrative. Her being placed in a county jail outside of the original jurisdiction only to bond out hours later forces us to follow the former narrative. Us finding out that there are witness who seem to have a different version of the story than the one given in the affidavit forces us to follow the former narrative. The fact of the matter is, Guyger made a mistake. Whether her actions were intentionally or not, we may never know. But the support she has been afforded by her colleagues sure has made it hard for us regular folk to look passed the color of her uniform. Brennen Dunn, Esq.

Let’s be real here, people fake care and become faux enraged when someone else’s actions don’t coincide with how THEY think life should be lived. The animosity people feel about being confronted with social issues usually either comes from, an empathetic and relatable understanding of the issues, or a willful ignorance fueled by thought-prohibiting tunnel vision. Those on the empathetic side are usually the ones fighting against the status quo of the social issue, and those with tunnel vision are usually defending. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being opinionated. Without diversity of thought we become a homogenous group of bland ideology. But if you are going to confront an issue, denounce an action, or rail against a perceived slight, it is imperative that you understand exactly what your opponent’s argument is about and how well equipped you are to champion your opinion. EVERYONE should know by know that the NFL national anthem issue has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with respect or lack thereof of the American flag itself, or its progeny, the Star Spangled Banner. When we are told to stand and place our hand over our hearts as the flag is presented and the song is played, it is not to pay homage to a piece of fabric, or rhythmic intonations. Rather, it is to stand in solidarity with an ideal. That ideal being one of national comradery, solidarity, and united prosperity. An ideology is at the heart of the matter, not an object, or song. But what happens when someone tells you that you HAVE to support an ideology that you don’t agree with? When you are told that you are disrespecting something that is only tangentially related to the subject of your discord? The flag and anthem are as related to the social issues prompting people to kneel as Santa Claus is to celebrating the birth of Christ during Christmas. They go hand in hand, but have become so intertwined that the meaning has been lost in the ritual. People kneel during the national anthem because they have a fundamental disagreement with the ideology previously expressed. Minority citizens continue to die at the hands of officers sworn to protect them, with no substantive punitive repercussions by a penal system that does not hesitate to prosecute and sentence those same minorities at an alarmingly disparate rate. Yet those same minorities are told that they must stand in agreement with a proclamation of comradery, solidarity, and united prosperity vis a vis the national anthem. It is not only a slap in the face to those individuals, or anyone else affronted by such a blatant hypocrisy, but to the other American ideal of having the fought-for-privilege of speaking against governmental injustice. Americans have long held the right to peacefully protest. Protestation of governmental oppression, subjugation, and tyranny are exactly what led to founding of this country. The Boston Tea Party was not an quaint little elitist shindig by the harbor. So when you tell someone that they are being disrespectful by asserting their right and privilege to peacefully protest, you are essentially disrespecting one of the core ideals that the flag and anthem represent. So who really is in the wrong? I have yet to meet a member of the armed forces who believes that kneeling during the national anthem is an affront to them, or this country. In fact, just about every one of them echoes the sentiment that they fought and bled for your right to do just that, regardless of if they agree with the underlying reason or not. So when NFL owners and football patrons rail against the notion of kneeling during a football game, they may be saying that it’s disrespectful to the flag and anthem, but the literal interpretation of that is- “I don’t really understand what the flag and anthem represent, but since I only have a surface level understanding, you are offending me, and since I don’t agree with your position on the underlying issue, I’m even more upset that you would use my designated entertainment and money making time to highlight something that makes me super uncomfortable and would force me to come to some hard-to-swallow realizations about social equality in this country.” Because if these owners and patrons really had the utmost respect for the flag and anthem, they would cease all movement, concessions would not be operative, side discussions would come to a halt, and they have a tear of pride trickling down their cheek at how American kneeling in the face of injustice is. And let’s not even get into their lack of knowledge of forcing anyone to stand with admiration and listen to a song whose lines include such a culturally demonstrative lyric as “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” But alas, we let owners get away with things like calling their cash commodities (the players) prisoners, collude to keep conscious quarterbacks out of the league, and make ultimatums about how, where, and when to be a good and obedient American. And we won’t even talk about the brainwashed commentary of the step-and-fetch-it idealism of players like Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott who do nothing to advance the objective but everything to give the willfully ignorant ammunition to discredit righteous indignation. If social injustice has yet to be limited to a time and place, then the protestation thereof should have equal freedom of discretion. Buuuuut, we all know that equality in this country is a conceptual war with many battlefronts and even more soldiers….on both sides.

Equality on paper does not equal equality in action. When slaves were given their freedom through the abolition of slavery in 1865 under the 13th Amendment, that did not make them equal to their once-slave-owners. When the 14th Amendment made former slaves legal citizens of the United States in 1868, that did not make them citizens with equal rights. When the 15th Amendment gave all men the right to vote in 1870, that did not ensure that all men could actually go to a booth free of danger and vote. When women were included in the discussion of equality and voting rights in the 19th Amendment of 1920, that didn’t mean their voices were actually to be heard in politics. Although there is no constitutional provision for the right to marry, only heterosexual white men and women were afforded the ability to marry freely until 1967 when the Supreme Court made it illegal to ban interracial marriages, and 2015 when the same high court made it illegal to ban same-sex marriage. Jim Crow laws of segregation and racial denial, so cutely known as “separate but equal” measures, were birthed after 1865, nurtured in the 1870’s, cemented in law by the Supreme Court with Plessy v. Ferguson, and applied with fervor until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. But those laws continued to scratch and fight for their existence through the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in an effort to end practices to keep minorities from voting, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act that purportedly ended discrimination in selling and renting homes to minorities. Through it all, equality was being lauded as the cornerstone of America while the actions of its citizens, businesses, and educational institutions acted in concert to undermine such a silly notion. Affirmative action is one of the few light towers of human decency that America has constructed in a historical sea of discrimination and oppression. The 1961 mandate of President John F. Kennedy to government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin” has been a bastion of protection and building block for a number of federal regulations to ensure that citizens, businesses, and educational institutions actually do what the law was written for them to do. And let’s be perfectly clear. Black people in America are not the sole benefactors of affirmative action. Suffice it to say, the EEOC, affirmative action’s biggest enforcer, sees its fair share of white women, Muslims, Hispanics, and any other demographic that considers themselves a cultural minority. When the playing field has only allowed one team to play with protective gear, equipment, coaches, practice facilities and the rule book since the game started, it’s overwhelmingly difficult to level that playing field and then expect the other team to catch up in points scored immediately. The would-be naysayers of affirmative action argue that it takes away from the deserving and gives to the unqualified. That merit is underminded for the sake cultural sensitivity. That good people with families to feed are being undercut. I sure wish these same people could take a moment to understand a few things. Take a moment to understand that affirmative action simply gives minorities a chance for an open door to the interview that would otherwise be slammed in their faces. It allows them to pursue educations that the privileged take for granted. It puts them on the platform where their merit can even be considered, instead of being presumptively negated. Affirmative action gives minorities the precise means to do exactly what the privileged want them to do, pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You can’t get out of welfare if you can’t get a good job. You can’t get a good job unless you get educated in your field of interest. If you hardcore conservatives want tax dollars to decrease to welfare recipients, maaaybe you should consider encouraging affirmative action instead of cutting your nose off to spite your face. If America wanted their good old boy system to thrive, they should have never let Blacks, Hispanics, Women, Muslims, Asians, and anyone else that didn’t fit the status quo of privilege in to begin with. Never in the history of subjugation has there ever been an oppressed group that didn’t want to be free of said oppression. You can’t cry ignorance. After all, you’ve been able to read far longer than we could. Didn’t your history books teach you anything? Affirmative action is a tool of equality, not a harbinger of doom. Judging by the looks of the current cultural backslide of our country, I’d rather us use the tools we’ve been given than make America great…….again.

The question came up on our show about black people and the root causes of their perceived criminality. At some point reality must set in and fantasy ends. The racial disparity in sentencing and arrests are not simply a matter of “black people are more inclined to criminal behavior.” The numbers suggest quite the opposite. Black men constitute 6 percent of the US adult population but are approximately 35 percent of the prison population and are incarcerated at a rate six times that of white males. Police are three times as likely to search the cars of stopped black drivers than stopped white drivers, based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Nationally, black drivers are also more likely to be pulled over and less likely to receive a reason for being stopped. These statistics come from an inherent racial bias against minority citizens. If all elements are equal except race, and yet one race receives disparate treatment, then race must be the determining factor in treatment. A 2012 study found that black male federal defendants were given longer sentences than comparable whites. Black men’s sentences were, on average, 10 percent longer than those of their white peers. This is partly explained by the fact that prosecutors are about twice as likely to file charges against blacks that carry mandatory minimum sentences than against whites. An additional New York study found that black defendants are more likely to be offered plea deals that include prison time than whites or nonblack minorities. Even after controlling for many factors, including the seriousness of charges and prior record, blacks were 13 percent more likely than whites to be offered such deals. Similar studies show that the racial divide in sentencing has widened since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in U.S. v. Booker, which struck down a 1984 law requiring judges to impose sentences within the sentencing guidelines. In the two years after the Booker ruling, sentences for blacks on average were 15.2 percent longer than those for similarly situated whites. While Black Americans may no longer be legally bound as slaves and discrimination barred on paper, the actions of law enforcement, and the court system do not reflect equality in practice. Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races. But black people comprise 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated in state or federal prison for drug law violations. The Justice Department statistics, based on the Police-Public Contact Survey, show that "relatively more black drivers (12.8%) than white (9.8%) and Hispanic (10.4%) drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop during their most recent contact with police." Or, to frame it another way: A black driver is about 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than a white driver, or about 23 percent more likely than a Hispanic driver. "Driving while black" is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon. FBI statistics for arrests by race showed that, while Blacks barely edged out Whites in the number of arrests for murder and robbery, Whites more than doubled Blacks in the areas of rape, aggravated assault, burglary, thefts and fraud. Black people have long been imaged as the dangers and dredges of American society. Painted as rapping criminals with no higher goals than fancy cars and shiny things. Granted, we have played into the demonstratives of those stereotypes with our music videos and reality tv, but that egregiously erroneous narrative was placed on us long before Yo MTV Raps and BET came along. The media and journalists have never felt compelled to highlight any of our achievements outside of most successful prison reformee. There aren’t NY Times articles that laud the first black millionaire Madame CJ Walker, or the most recent black billionaire, Pat McGrath. Or the many great inventions that Americans would be lost without- from the mundane but crucial clothes dryer invented by George T. Sampson, to the privileged American’s golf tee by Dr. George Grant, to the life saving pacemaker by Otis Boykin. For all of our good deeds and vital additions to society, we as Black people, still continue to fight to be looked at as more that fodder for police brutality, and investment opportunities for private prison stock holders. If you want to look for the answers to why Black people and crime go hand in hand, look no further than the media, the systemic lack of socioeconomic equality, and the preservation of the status quo. I will not hold this as an excuse, but rather a factual reason. It is up to the Black community to force a change in the narrative, which could very well require us to live outside of our comfort zone and challenge our own modern self-imposed visuals. We have been overcoming for quite some time now. No need for us to get complacent now. Progress is quickly killed by comfort. Let’s show them exactly how dangerous we can be with the education we fought so hard to achieve.

Very few conversations regarding sexual health topics degenerate so quickly into incivility as the topic of“squirting”. Indeed, the question of whether or not the climactic shower of fluid emanating from the female nether regions following sexual stimulation is in fact ejaculate or urine has proven to be very divisive. I will readily admit that this brief essay will be weighted more in my personal opinion and common sense rather than an academic appraisal of the evidence. So, I’ll just go ahead and share my position that in the pantheon of stupid-shit-people-believe, the idea of squirting has reigned supreme. For those of you who are prudes, up for debate is the widely-held belief that a minority of women possess a coveted ability to ejaculate in a projectile fashion at the peak of orgasm akin to their male counterparts. For years, I have been persecuted by many of my peers for standing firm on my assertion that it’s JUST pee. After all, no female organ system and its requisite conduits with such capability has EVER been elucidated in Gray’s Anatomy (the textbook from which the show was eponymously titled) during my exorbitantly expensive medical education. Furthermore, what evolutionary mechanism would be fulfilled by a woman spewing her precious gametes onto the sheets?! Today, however, science has come to my defense. In a 2015 French study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers used bladder emptying studies and chemical analysis to determine that“squirting is essentially the involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity.” In my opinion, the French should be respected as the subject matter experts given their significant contributions to sex; the invention of the French-kiss and the ménage à trois resonate among them. Men and women alike have touted their abilities to either elicit or display this mythic feat, respectively. Invariably these tend to be the people who itemize this capability at the top of their sexual résumés in gaudy display as to suggest some rare sexual prowess. So much has this urban legend persisted, odes have been written in its veneration. Bryan McKnight’s particularly hilarious song titled“If Ur Ready 2 Learn” comes to mind as a classic example. Impressively, even the most vulgar Brian McKnight melodies are acoustically ideal for the classiest of wedding processionals. Lo and behold, you disciples of the gush have merely been the givers and recipients of golden showers. My singular encounter with the squirt left me feeling more played than pleasured, which turns out to have been the appropriate response after all. Oftentimes the truth can be very disruptive. I’m sorry if you were considered one of these unicorns yesterday, because today your friends and sexual partners know that you’re probably just intermittently incontinent during orgasm. What a difference a day makes! Perhaps, you should consider consulting your gynecologist if those“issues” persist. Those of us men who have been derided as being puritanical out of our refusal to be treated like urinals can now hold our heads up high. Women who have been made to feel physiologically inferior can now feel restored in their sexual-esteem. Sometimes the benighted control the narrative and disparage the wise until the facts exonerate. Nonetheless, I anticipate that like flat-Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers and climate deniers, many will still reject the unassailable scientific evidence in favor of the more fulfilling delusion. In this world, it’s very easy to discover information that supports whatever one wishes to believe; however ridiculous. It’s called confirmation bias. Just a cursory Google search resulted in countless well-written articles in the tenor of pseudo-science perpetuating this idea. Despite my strong opinions, admittedly the evidence doesn’t establish full proof so there is some room for debate. Given that the most progressive of us inveigh against gender normatives and oftentimes deem acknowledgement of valid gender differences to be malicious, for women is this belief in the squirt just a modern manifestation of Freudian penis envy? If you’re passionate about this topic and believe me to be wrong, URINE LUCK. We will be discussing the topic more in depth during one of our forthcoming podcast episodes so stay tuned. In the meantime, join me in the comments section.

Recently we discussed the role of the Black Church within our community and eventually we began debating the issue of tithing to the church and the continued contribution to church funds that never seem to reach their goal, i.e. building fund or church funds, etc. It was stated that the church is fleecing or taking advantage of its members, namely the older members and a point of contention was raised when a fellow Gent stated “…we are financially smarter than our grandparents.” I was immediately surprised by the absurdity of this statement and began to wonder, actually yell, how could he truly believe our generation is smarter financially than our grandparents. Two of the greatest tools in financial wisdom are the abilities to save and manage money. We all understand that it takes money to make money and our grandparents knew it all to well. They watched as their labors were exploited so that others could generate wealth off their backs; they saw the brass ring and realized it was just outside of their reach. Rather than sulking and basking in defeat, they worked, saved and built stable lives for they families. Grandma’s house may not have been big or luxurious, but it was hers, the frig was stocked, the power was on and the telephone always rang. No one can deny our grandparents knew how to save money, my grandmothers, maternal and paternal, could save fifty cents from a quarter. Despite their low earnings, they knew more about finance than we know today. They knew how to control their spending, maximize their resources and get the most bang for their buck. Their financial intelligence allowed them to purchase homes and start businesses before there were government programs to help low income minorities. Just look at Black Wall Street, and its destruction, the Harlem Renaissance and even Black River Oaks in Houston for examples of our grandparents financial intelligence. They created their wealth through blood, sweat, tears and discipline. Basically, they did more with less. Our generation has better, and easier, access to wealth, wealth creation and wealth preservation than our grandparents. Unlike our grandparents, we are not forced into blue collar jobs with dangerous work conditions and sub par pay. We have easier access to higher education, we live in a more integrated society and we have the single greatest innovation of our generation… the internet. Please don’t sleep on the power of the internet, it will go down as one of the greatest inventions of mankind, losing only to the printing press and the computer itself. Back to the topic at hand, with all of our knowledge and access to knowledge, are we truly financially smarter than our grandparents…NO. We lack discipline. We live in a consumption society with little patience. We do not save as much as we should and we have bought into this idea of credit, which is basically financial slavery, wholeheartedly. Despite our ease of access to knowledge and wealth creation, we have only built stable lives for ourselves, we have not created wealth they way we should, we have not capitalized on our opportunities to do more. Basically, we have financially settled for an American Dream that was forced upon us. Our financial intelligence tells our generation: to consume and not create, expend more than we earn, and spend before saving. We are financial survivors. Our grandparents achieved a lot from a little and our generation has achieved a little from a lot. So I say to my fellow Gent, we are not financially smarter than our grandparents.