It's Hard Out Here for a Pan-Africanist

You know, until this evening I was content to simply ignore the whole controversy over the win of "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" at the Oscars. I mean, I love Hip Hop music. I've listened to it since it's inception. I even have a liking to some so called Gangster Rap. I do however, have serious problems with what has happened to it since large record labels got their hands on it. But see that's not really the point.

I've watched as the popularity of conscious black people, at least in black communities has taken a serious nose dive. Back in the day, even the most superficial rapper rocked the Red Black and Green or a Africa Medalion. I mean we could get our heavy hitters to come together and record tracks like Self-Destruction, which was probably the most prophetic record ever produced in Hip Hop.

Now a days, people will literally run away from you if you are "pro black." In fact being "pro-black" has become so diluted, so twisted, that even sell outs can claim being pro-black. I'm serious. We got Sell outs who claim that Malcolm X is their hero! We got people like Andrew Young, who used to be pro-civil rights and pro-union, providing cover for sweatshops in Asia and worker exploitation by Walmart.

We got black legislators in the US Congress who think they don't have to answer to the black folks who put them in office. On the international scene we got black "leaders" who can't seem to leave office peaceably. and others who lead Jihads against there own brothers, sisters and countrymen.

Meanwhile, Bush and co. are pimpin' the treasury to find an illegal war in Iraq. We got Oil companies making the biggest profits in recorded economic history.

The NY MTA with a billion dollar surplus wouldn't give transit workers a decent raise and gets the millionaire mayor and governor to call the striking workers "thugs."

Recently the city of New York was set to give the New York jets about 14 billion in taxpayer money to construct a stadium so that other private corporate entities could make millions selling $100 tickets to games, charge cable customers $40 to watch, and $1.99 for an iPod edition. meanwhile housing prices are going through the roof as flippers price hard working people out of neighborhoods they grew up in.

We got folks like Thomas Sowel who feels that black workers deserve to be paid dirt cheap "market force wages" because they are not "productive." Never tha-(bad f-word here) mind that these same black workers have largely been denied any kind of training or incentive to be more productive.

So when we look around we see that it ain't hard to be a damn pimp it's hard being an upstanding black man. It's hard being a working class person earning "market force wages." It's hard being a single parent with kids and no health insurance. It's hard being elderly with a need of expensive medication. It's hard being HIV positive in Africa. It's hard being an African sold into sexual slavery in eastern Europe. it's hard being a Haitian. It's hard being a native American in South America. I ain't got no sympathy for a pimp.