"Puffy" ain't no Paul Robeson

That whole Puffy thing is like O.J. - it's a distraction from the real issues that black people deal with everyday. Namely their lack of political influence in context of the amount of money they spend in retail sales alone. Black people are being harvested by the system to (instead of working the fields) be a sort of front man for cultural consumerism. That's what I'm thinking, but I don't quite know what it means. The sports stars, rap stars, comedians, and other entertainers, and entertainer's lawyers seem to make up the gist of black culture[in America]. With the exception of Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell, Al Sharpton, and Clarence Thomas(a somewhat dubious group I must say) an overwhelming majority of exposure of African-American culture to black people in America, and to the world at large is "restricted" to the aforementioned categories. In other words, we sell products. Black people sell products for white people. Black people(in America) sell their entire culture to white people. It's all entertainment to white America. Just because Tiger Woods is a freak of nature, now we all have something in common(?). I still don't like golf, and I'll NEVER like "Friends" or "E.R.". One thing that is often overlooked concerning African-Americans is the idea that our culture is rooted in Western AND non-Western contexts. Capitalism is, for the most part, a Western invention. It came to Africa, and Africa sold Africa to the West. We've been selling ourselves every since. Baseball. Jazz. Film. Rap-Music. Someone once said that black people in America suffer from an acute case of low resistance to instant gratification. We were all against South Africa, but we kept sportin'(and killing each other over) the gold and the diamonds - as Puff Daddy finely illustrates. Are the mines in Africa now owned by the black majority? Black people would serve themselves well to explore other cultures outside the United States, and eventually outside of Western culture. Only then can they begin to understand that part of them deep inside that resists being assimilated[completely] into Western culture, and at the same time urges them impulsively to express out loud, and sometimes outlandishly(i.e. the pimp suit) the only part of "being black" that they know, or can relate to. Puff Daddy ain't no Paul Robeson, and that's what people need right now. They need to open their eyes to the ideas of the world, not just the concerns of black people in America. Unfortunately, the media through which black people are portrayed is not the sort of vehicle that routinely portrays any minority culture with any sort of respect, short of that culture's ability to assimilate into, and/or entertain the majority culture. Right now, if you're black and not rich, and living in America, there is really no place for you as a "black man". First we were slaves, then cheap labor, and the whole while we are laying the bricks of this country, coloring and enriching it's culture, and defending it's freedom. And STILL there is no place for the "black man" in America. However, Africans migrate here every year, and many better their lives, and live their own American dream. But to them, being black is secondary to being African. They make their place like every other immigrant, although with that extra burden of(STILL) being, a "black man" in America. We can embrace our "Africaness", or what other heritage my might enjoy, while at the same time reflect our part in the wonderful dynamic that is America, but we first must rise above what someone else has defined as our "blackness". What is that if it's not defined by the slave master's indoctrination that because we are black, we are inferior? And that Africa is inferior. And then we retaliate by saying that Jesus was black, and the pyramids were built by black people. We can reduce Christianity or man's greatest engineering accomplishment to "a black thang". That can't be right. Puff Daddy, and Russell Simmons, and Tupac are not helping black people out of their caves. Actually, they make the situation worse by providing entertainment that appeals to the most narrow of scopes intellectually within the minds of black(and white) Americans. However, white Americans have available to them a variety of character archetypes that serve to contextualize(within mainstream culture) "Bad-Boy" behavior as socially deviant, and unacceptable at higher social levels. Black Americans, culturely speaking, look at the same people as heroes, and spokespersons for the generation. Now if that isn't a chasm I don't know what is.