Culture Culture

After watching the Superbowl last night I am certain:

Television is getting more and more nonlinear, weird, and “random.”
Pop culture is getting more and more self-referential. (I didn’t think it was possible.)

It’s Naomi Campbell. . .doing “Thriller.” Really? I hate the commercial but kind of love it.

Trust, I will break this down later, along with some other thoughts on bodies of reference on TV and music videos. . .and for more on that check the Badu video below.

PBS has developed a docudrama from Terry Alford’s nonfiction account “Prince Among Slaves.” I read this book in graduate school: it’s the fabulous story of a very wealthy prince and devout Muslim, Abdul Rahman from Futa Jallon, who becomes captured during battle by non-Muslim Guineans in 1788 and eventually traded and brought to Natchez, Mississippi, at the time a Spanish port. The crazy part is that nearly twenty years later Abdul Rahman meets a white man who stayed with his family back in Africa for sixth months when Abdul Rahman was a teenager, setting in motion a long series of events that proves his identity.

Abdul Rahman came to America better educated than most slaveholding whites; he could read and write in Arabic for one thing, and spoke well enough Spanish to explain to Thomas Foster, his new master that he was indeed a prince. Foster was nearly illiterate and like many slaveholders, couldn’t even afford to pay for his slaves and had to mortgage them. Yet, Abdul Rahman remained his slave for forty years. In these instances, literate, cultured Africans were forced to play down their talents and abilities for the man, and whites emerged in popular thought as the only intelligent race on the planet.

I can only imagine: this dynamic set in stone the insecure relationship and subliminal discomfort that I’ve seen develop between blacks and whites when blacks have enjoyed greater privilege and advanced education beyond he, a white individual, who should be higher in power and stature. Among all the deep-seated issues that arose between blacks and whites from slavery, it’s rarely considered outside of academics that a white inferiority complex may be one of them.

And consider the black inferiority complex, of which much has been written: aside from the physical and spiritual toll of slavery, consider the intellectual stagnation. Can you imagine all the nonsense that could have been avoided. . .perhaps it’d be less surprising and more acceptable for blacks to be ’smart’ without it being read as an act of whiteness or rebellion.

I’m giving thanks for intellectual emancipation. And to those who are wilting; blossom, and those who are bright, shine forth from the shadows.

Happy Black History Month.