Today in the World of Media
“Director plans movie remake of ‘Kung Fu’”
It hurts only people lying to themselves (and their descendants) for a living to mention that it was Bruce Lee who had the idea for the Kung Fu series. My complexity as a man permits me to say that David Carradine is very talented actor—but at the same time it is clear to me that it was Bruce Lee that put food on the table for him and his family. I’m “sensitive to this issue” because this Bruce Lee story is a typical Black-genius-hanging-out-with-white-people story: entire white families get rich off of that genius while the Black genius’ family is made to feel inadequate in 666 ways. It seems promising that a press release about the Kung Fu remake is coming out of Hong Kong but not only is Bruce Lee not here to see this—his son is not here either…
“Boule”
Not all Black families are poor. Some are “rich” for all the wrong reasons. In The Assault on Black Folks’ Sanity, the “Boule” post, we get some insight into the history of this elite world.
“The Mexican Mafia”
For those of us who heard the N.W.A. cut “Dope Man” hit my teenaged streets of Los Angeles in the late 1980s, you might remember this line from the Mexican guy in the rap:
Hey Mr. Dopeman, You think you slick. You sold crack to my sister and now she’s sick.
And if she happens to die because of your drug. I’m putting in your coulo a .38 slug.
On the streets in the late 1980s, anyone hearing this would never assume anything “racial” about this. In “The Mexican Mafia” we are reminded that this is no longer the case. Things done changed.
Tony Rafael reports that leaders of the Mexican Mafia, “…brought in the Aztec heritage as part of their philosophical inspiration, and there are no black people in the Aztec culture.” What’s really sad is that is that none of these racist Latino people know about the African presence in early America—and the priorities of white educators and too many rappers plan to keep it that way…
“The Line Between Two Worlds: Tracy K. Smith and Elizabeth Alexander in Conversation”
The new racist styling of Latino’s in North America should be a problem for the fresh new poet, Tracy K. Smith. This statement from her poets.org interview is an interesting juxtaposition to the Mexican Mafia looming:
Spanish became important to me when I felt I was drowning, or perhaps suffocating, in English. This was many years ago when, as a fellow in a writing program, I came upon a very discouraging period of writer’s block. One of the things that alleviated my silence was travel to Mexico and an engagement with the language and voices I encountered there.