a. Last week, I tuned in to Taylr Mayd's Chopped and Screwed Show, and I must say, it was hilarious. You can hear it at wwww.chroniccast.blogspot.com. He made me think twice about biting into a fried chicken leg. I'll never do it on camera! Taylr Mayd, in a round-about way, made some very important social commentary concerning stereotypes of Black people, and how the media plays with those stereotypes. Let me leave off here, and I'll come back to that later.
b. Yesterday, Governor Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia declared April Confederate History Month. It can be read in its entirety at http://www.governor.virginia.gov/OurCommonwealth/Proclamations/2010/ConfederateHistoryMonth.cfm. The language is very beautiful. The imagery is heroic. The tale is stuff of legend.
c. Last year, Governor Rick Perry of Texas played to his base by campaigning on the right to seceed from the union. Texas is a sovereign state, he claims, and can seceed from a tyrannical government that would impose its bigness on the great state of Texas.
d. About three decades ago, Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign by talking about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
The genius of Taylr Mayd's commentary is that he asks a simple question over and over again, "What's up with people giving all this chicken away?" He goes on to ask, "What's up with Black celebrities endorsing stereotypical commercials that feature Black people laughing and singing about chicken?" By now, my very expensive liberal arts education is causing me to sit up and take notice. The chicken, the declaration from yesterday, Rick Perry's crazy secessionist talk, Ronald Reagan kicking off a "states rights" campaign at the site where three Civil Rights workers were brutally slain, these things are very symbolic.
They symbolize the fact that America is definitely not post-racial. America is still steeped in white Supremacist rhetoric and culture. A bunch of Black folks laughing and singing and biting into a juicy fried chicken leg is exactly what white supremacist culture needs to comfort itself in the wake of America electing an Ivy League educated Black man to lead the free world. It is a way, if I may say so, to put Black people, "back in their places" behind the fried chicken counter, Taylr Mayd.
Reading the declaration by Virginia's governor is stunning because it does not mention the long nightmare that lasted over 400 years in a "free" country. Civil War apologists have been touting "states rights" for almost 150 years since the war ended. They simply do not finish the sentence. The war was over "states' rights to enslave other human beings and treat them as chattel property." Rick Perry's secessionist banter, in no way, mentions the over 600,000 dead because rich, Southern planters convinced many poor, white boys that they were better than Africans simply by virtue of their white skin. They neglect to mention that most white people of the South were lower-classed white who were either ignored or scoffed at by the plantocracy. And when the plantocracy lost the war, they had no more time to waste on their poor, white brothers who died to maintain their wealth. Ronald Reagan's bid for presidency, based upon smaller government and "welfare queens," began at the site of one of America's most heinous acts during one of its darkest hours. Taylr Mayd, I think the message is clear.
The state of Texas has even demanded textbooks for innocent school children based on this sanitized version of history. Attending school at Ole Miss, I've met people who were honestly brainwashed enough to cry and become angry when they learn the real truth about the South. I've heard people, barely over 20, scream very fervently that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of all time, and I know damn well they were not even alive when Ronald Reagan served as President! Oh, the horror the horror they experience when they say these things in front of Vietnam veterans and suck up that first ass whipping in the name of Ronald Reagan!
What damage will this type of misinformation do to a new generation? It won't be harmful for the richest 1% of America that propagates lies about itself. It will produce of generation of sheep who vote how they are told, become angry when they are told, and hate who they are told to hate...regardless of the facts.
Taylr Mayd, I have one question for your thoughts: I wonder what would happen if the true builders of the South, my ancestors and your ancestors, begin to fly the Confederate Flag? It should be ours. Our ancestors were killed, raped, and worked to death for it. Would all of these people then yell about tradition and continue to sanitize history?
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