Boobs, Thongs, Footballers,and a Latina reporter

"After all, men at nude beaches are incredibly discreet about expressing their feelings towards any women who they see in such an environment, if they don’t want to get booted from the place."
Dear friends,

It's football season. If you remember, back in the fall of 2010, there were a number of articles, regarding the treatment of a Mexican female reporter and an incident that happened between her and some NFL football players in a locker room. At least for me, every single piece that I’d read had been totally distant from the real issue. That is: the main theses of these articles (how females dress around male athletes) are red herrings, and have absolutely nothing to do with the way that females either are or should be treated in male athletes’ locker rooms.

Now, I’m speaking from experience. You see, back in the late-Seventies, when female reporters were first allowed into men’s locker rooms, I was Joe Frazier's protégé, fighting out of Philadelphia. After fights, while I was cool and respectful with them, always putting on a robe whenever it was announced that a female reporter wanted to interview me, some of my boys would do stuff like, literally, stand naked and stroke themselves right in front of any female reporter, as she turned her head away, while, simultaneously, trying to write on a pad or hold up the microphone from a tape recorder to any of the aforementioned masturbators’ mouthes.

That was especially the case, if one of those vulgar fighters had other guys standing around to watch, including male reporters (all from different news agencies) who would stand there amused as much as the idiot athletes. In that situation, female reporters were, obviously, humiliated and embarrassed beyond belief.

Consequently, the real problem lies with the fact that Male Supremacy (euphemistically called “sexism”) frowns upon the whole idea of females in men’s locker rooms, except when they are serving the exact same purpose of being sex objects as, unfortunately, most women outside of locker rooms seem obliged to be.

Additionally, the cats who fought not to have women in the locker rooms, during those days, were the same guys who were vocally-outraged about affirmative action and abortion rights, as were my vulgar boxing buddies mentioned above who conspired, not so unwittingly, with the other sexists just mentioned to keep females “in their places”.

Worse yet, I find it interesting, and I’m absolutely certain, that none of my boxing buddies here-to-mentioned would have wanted either their wives or girlfriends to know about, much less see, their behavior with the disrespected female reporters/victims. Dig? Additionally, it’s pretty pathetic that even African American and Latino male athletes join(ed) with other cowards in this scumbag behavior, in order to find self-worth.

Moreover, I think that, perhaps, it’s instructive for us to keep the dialogue in the proper context of what is really at the bottom of this whole mess, and not trivialize it by pointing out nonsense about how someone either dresses or carries herself. After all, men at nude beaches are incredibly discreet about expressing their feelings towards any women who they see in such an environment, if they don’t want to get booted from the place.

Besides, in some Latin American countries, like Brazil, women can be seen, for example, in television laundry commercials, in full frontal nudity. I’ve seen it. Therefore, Puritanical views about a female’s attire - or lack of it, can be out of place, if not altogether uncalled for. Feel me?

At any rate, on the link below, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Solomon Jones, although he offers a slightly different “take”, shares, along with many of his colleagues, some thoughts in the practice of what I see as missing the whole point here about Ines Sainz’s situation. What do you think?

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20100918_Solomon_Jones__Half-dressed_women_and_naked_men.html Read full post

Steoin Fetchit lives in most of today's Black Comics

Dear Friends,

It is interesting that Stepin Fetchit is now receiving accolades from the new generation of buffoons like Steve Harvey and Martin Lawrence. Worse yet, with all of the phony sentimentalism that is directed towards the late Trayvon Martin, very little analysis of the young man's murder, as it relates to how the negative images of African American people that the three aforementioned so-called "comics" and their ilk keep etched in both the collective conscience and unconsciousness of those who call themselves "white" helps create the George Zimmermans.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLfxxgqg5ow Read full post

"Seasoning" Our abilities for Profit

Dear friends,

Just as Columbus had initially introduced it with Early American Native peoples, African captives' first introduction to "seasoning" was, more often than not, through violence - then Christianity. In The Black Jacobins, the great C.L.R. James wrote, "All America and West Indies took slaves. When the ship reached the harbour, the cargo came up on deck to be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects, looked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the perspiration to see if the slave's blood was pure and his health as good as his appearance. Some of the women affected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse, would have caused them (the purchasers) to be kicked back 20 yards across the deck. But the slave had to stand it. Then in order to restore the dignity which might have been lost by too intimate an examination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave. Having become the property of his owner, he was branded on both sides of the breast with a hot iron. His duties were explained to him by an interpreter, and a priest instructed him in the first principles of Christianity."

This method of forced acculturation (seasoning) is still very much a part of the North American culture, although manifested in a different way. Now, instead of physical torture being used to make Black people - whether adults or children - assimilate, Eurocentricity and Negrophobia are perpetuated through cultural institutions like the legal, corporate media and educational systems.

The word cultural is used here to describe certain institutions because it is through culture that We transmit behavior and ideas to both present and future generations. However, the first thing that We must understand about culture is: it is largely tied to a people's resources. That is, social status and income as well as materials to produce what people need or desire determine how, why and through what medium folks can express themselves as a distinct group.

The crucial point to be made here is, African peoples who were forced to migrate to the Americas did not lose their cultures. Instead, each cultural group merely took on a different developmental direction. In other words, although they were enslaved, African American captive workers were still people. As a result, Black folks adapted to the new circumstances with which they were presented.

Oddly enough, most North American social theorists have paid little or no attention to the realities mentioned, thus far. Instead, their intellectual energies have been geared towards apologizing for upper class fantasies as they pertain to human progress. However, the real challenge for scholars will be to responsibly analyze societies according to what people actually do to sustain themselves, as opposed to what certain groups think of themselves.

G. Djata Bumpus Read full post

Should rich people pay more taxes?

"They have poor people complaining about the fact that the rich are gonna be taxed more."

Dear friends,

Recently, while rappin' with one of my siblings about the whole issue of income tax rates in our country, he quipped, "They have poor people complaining about the fact that the rich are gonna be taxed more." Go figure.

Yet, the rich have far more to defend in this possession-oriented, market-driven economy. Therefore, they should hardly be complaining. After all, as I have pointed out in a previous post, Adam Smith, the "Father of Economics", in his classic volumes called "The Wealth of Nations" summed up the entire notion of how our system works, when he wrote: For every rich man there are 500 poor ones, and he would not get a night's sleep if it weren't for the local magistrate.

Consequently, the dishonest claim by Republicans and their ilk about wanting “smaller government” and “less taxes” contradicts their genuine wants and needs to get multi-billion dollar government contracts for their sponsors like Halliburton and various other giant corporations of defense and technology who also given protection by the taxpayer-funded US police and military for their financial interests, both here and around the world. In other words, the very wealthy have far more to lose, so why shouldn't they contribute more? Moreover, why should those who make far less subsidize the wealthy?

Meanwhile, via the mainstream media that serve as the official communication organs for both the huge corporations mentioned above, as well as their sycophants called “politicians” who aid such companies in acquiring greater wealth, everyday people, that is, both military and non-military workers whose aggregate sweat and blood make all of this possible, live with one foot in the poor house, while the other foot is on a banana peel. Let’s keep it real.

G. Djata Bumpus Read full post

Federal politicians Lie about Tax Cuts

Dear friends, 

 As usual, the government- and corporate-controlled mainstrean media has hoodwinked the public. That is, while the income tax rates have not increased, the payroll tax has gone up That means that "middle class people", on average, will get a $1, 000 to $2, 000 increase in wages taken from their checks this year. 

 Let's remember the difference between income taz and payroll tax: Income taxes are withheld from an employee's wages and go into a general fund . Payroll taxes are comprised of Medicare and Social Security taxes--also withheld from an employee's paycheck. However, the employer also pays payroll taxes to the federal government for these programs (in addition to the amount an employee pays)....Federal income tax and the Medicare tax have no limit, but the Social Security payroll tax always carries a cap. In 2008, Social Security tax topped out at 6.2 percent on an earnings maximum of $102,000. 

 As the New Yorker magazine reports today, January 2nd, 2013, and I agree, an article called THE PAYROLL TAX AND OBAMA’S NEXT FIGHT, by Amy Davidson: More outrageously, cuts to the already highly regressive payroll tax are being allowed to expire, meaning that they will rise from 4.2 per cent to 6.2 per cent. Obama didn’t even fight for them. In his statement Tuesday night, Obama described the bill as “preventing a middle-class tax hike” that could have hurt families and sent the country back into a recession; that is true, but it allowed another middle-class tax hike that could have the same effect. 

 Please don't sleep on this! 

 G. Djata Bumpus Read full post