Dear Black Intellectuals: We Don’t Know What the F**k You Talkin’ Bout!

(By Arnold Burks)

On December 7th, 2016, Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, posted a video to his Instagram. In the video, he is in an airport, holding a stack of money. He says “Tell me when to start.” A woman, whom I assume is black, can be heard off camera, laughing and telling Thug “Tell them how rude she was”. Thug then begins arguing with two black women who work at the airport. He laughed as he hurled insults at them, such as “Y’all ants.” The women turned away from the camera, as to avoid being humiliated by having their faces visible. Thug went on, saying things such as “They hair nappy as a muth***cka, they look like Africans.” The video went viral, and the conversation quickly dwindled into sensationalism (as it often does in the black social media-sphere.)

On twitter, many black Africans from various parts of the continent, took offense to what Thug said. They resorted to the age old misconception that “African Americans hate Africans”. Many young black women, some of whom are students of Gender Studies and intersectionality, resorted to the sensational belief that “Black men hate black women.” Both stem from pertinent topics, but the conclusions themselves are lazy and libelous. They’re too superficial of explanations.

Although many are aware, some African people who are not descendants of those kidnapped during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade may not understand the context in which this conversation exists. But if you’re black and are a descendant of slaves, you should know better.

Let’s look at Young Thug. Dark-skinned, tall, dreadlocks. He is “African-looking”. So why does Thug feel that ‘looking African’ is a negative thing? Did someone teach him these ugly sentiments? Or did he just pull it out of his own ass? Blacks born in America can attest to what it was like growing up for many of us. The anti-blackness we are introduced to, as children, that becomes infectious once it is absorbed. In his youth, Thug was probably teased the EXACT same way in which he is heard insulting the women in the video. He was most likely teased by girls and boys alike. It’s what makes us put perms in our hair, bleach our skin, date lighter skinned black people (or date outside of our race completely), etc etc et-fu**ing-cetera. So to our African brothers and sisters who live on the continent, no we don’t hate you; we hate ourselves.

Now to the latter of the reactions.

What’s interesting is that if these comments came out of a woman’s mouth, we would attribute her actions to internalization. But because they were said by a man, we chalk it up to plain ol’ black women hate. Many of us are on Twitter daily, doing threads, or writing articles for various websites, while the people we’re criticizing are oblivious to our assessments of them. They don’t know what we’re talking about with our “-isms” and big words. Walk up to a black man on the street, or outside of a corner store, and ask them if they have ever heard the term ‘Misogynoir’ before. I’ll bet you money they haven’t. This cycle of online educating, as opposed to real life application, creates a situation where we’re writing for other writers, threading for other threaders, and not for the people we’re criticizing. The only people we end up persuading are those we’ve already persuaded. It’s almost as if we are merely trying to impress each other. And thats perfectly fine, but when you peruse the Twitter-Sphere all day, triggering yourself to the same toxic stuff over and over, it’s time for introspection. Furthermore, many of us give liberties and have patience with whites that we don’t give lost blacks (as we discussed here).

You end up resembling white mayors of majority black cities, who only have something to say about the state of black communities when something goes wrong. Monday through Saturday, they ignore the failing school systems, ignore the desperation of many young men in the community, then when one man kills another on Sunday night, they’re the first ones to offer platitudes such as “Enough is Enough.” If the web shut down, and we all had to look each other in the face, many of us wouldn’t be good for anything more than a think-piece. We’ve lost the ability to relate to those we write about.

On August 25th, 2016, Young Thug released the mixtape cover for “Jeffery”. On the cover, he is wearing a dress designed by Alessandro Trincone, who said the gown wasn’t designed with a particular gender in mind. This wasn’t the first time Thug wore clothing that is usually worn by women. He’s been quoted as saying “I feel like there’s no such thing as gender”. It’s the straight black male equivalent of a white male saying ‘I feel like racism is wrong’. Many straight black men, who are listeners of Young thug, were conflicted initially but came to the conclusion that he was ‘doing that s**t for attention’. And attention is something he is receiving, whether you agree on what his motives are or not. When black rap fans (and non rap fans) saw the cover for his new mixtape, many praised Thug for pushing the boundaries of what black masculinity looked like. Although on the mixtape he raps about the usual topics of shooting black men, and calling black women ‘bitc**s’ while demanding oral sex from them, he was applauded for being ‘woke’ and received mostly positive reviews from music websites. So months later, when the video popped up of Thug verbally assaulting two airport workers, many of these same people were conflicted.

As long as he was in a gown saying “Gender doesn’t exist” many people ignored his lyrics. When this video popped up, we rushed to tweet his lyrics like evidence in court. Thug has a condescending view, and disdain for black women that every other lost black male in America is taught to have growing up. He compartmentalizes black women into ‘worthy of respect’ and ‘unworthy’ (ex: his love for his sisters, cousins, etc vs his demeanor toward the two women in the airport). This is no different from what other men do. But saying he just straight up hates them is sloppy and will only make him become defensive and not willing to listen to us. So, the next time you’re about to type that thread on ‘Toxic Masculinity conveyed by Cisgender Hetero-normative black men’ ask yourself: will the people I’m writing about understand and do I even care whether they do so or not? Because it’s obvious we prematurely applauded Young Thug for understanding something he never understood in the first place.