A Kentucky Katholic Wedding

The happy couple

So this weekend, one of my oldest and best friends got hitched. There’s no real moral of the story here. No if/then proposition or deep reflection on what it all means. I guess if you want to, you can look at it as proof that youngish black people are still walking down the aisle with some frequency, but that’s never really been a point of doubt for me. If you look at the wedding party and friends and family, The best man is married, and just had his second child, literally days before the wedding. One of the groom’s line brothers is married and just had his first child. Another line brother flew in from Seattle and has been married five years. He’s going to B school and they’re planning to start working on children after he finishes his first year. Actually, if there is a parable here, it’s this: Ladies, if you want to get married, find you an Alpha. They’re all about some marriage. The GDI’s, enh, maybe not so much. I keed, I keed. Needless to say, given the caliber of guests at the wedding, Lawrence Otis Graham would at least have given the celebration a passing nod before explaining how we all were crude ruffians unfit for polite society.

The wedding was great. It was a little long, I’ll admit, and the thing with Catholics is you ever really know when they’re actually married. I kinda needed someone to do the whole “I now pronounce you man and wife” deal. Three times during the ceremony, I thought it was over and started heading to the car to go watch the game before the Priest asked everyone to be seated.

Someone pass the cheese please

In fun news, at the wedding reception, the Bride and Groom came out to Jay-Z’s PSA, which of course confused the old people and the young folks crunk as hell. Best line of the night:

Wayne mouthing  “I got the hottest chick in the game wearing my chain!”

And that was that. Then we all went back to the hotel, got really drunk, and at nachos and watched five college football games simultaneously at the sports bar. Certain unmentioned people decided to take over my room to indulge in a certain illegal habit known to cause short term memory loss and giggling. It was a nice time. Some pictures:

Class warfare Part II: Why everyone hates the “black elite”

Can you see my nose job? Isn't it awesome?

So last week, I ripped the lower class a new asshole for their multitude of failings. This week, it’s your turn, “Our Kind of People.” And it’s long since past time someone took you all to task. Let’s face it, you people are insufferable. I say this with love, because while I may not be a “de facto” part of you all’s little thing, to some degree, our fates are intertwined, so if this makes you upset, think about it as me looking out for our own interests. Tough love if you will. Now, I was never a member of J&J, never pledged a frat, have never received an invite from the Boule. So I can maybe look at some of you all’s behavior from an outsider’s perspective. But I have lived in your cities, gone to your schools, and maybe diddled your women a little bit, so I’m close enough that this isn’t just someone throwing rocks from afar. Here’s why you suck:

1. You’re really not that elite. Many of you spend far too much of your time trying to one-up people that look like you but aren’t you. You pull out your fancy awards, memberships, and degrees, and somehow believe this makes you better than everyone else. Worse than that, many of you have nothing to recommend you other than lineage. Seriously, I’m supposed to give you props because your great grandfather was the first black dentist in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina? In the same breath, you people try to use these pitiful self-aggrandizing odes to look down on blacks who made it via hard work. I remember when Lawrence Otis Graham, your doucebag king, was putting together his list of the “Black families that matter”, he was so proud to exclude Jay-Z.

“People like Oprah and Bill Cosby shouldn’t be compared to Jay-Z and Beyonce,” Graham said. “While all the people on the list will be millionaires and billionaires, it is also about where did you go to school? Who are you married to? What med school did your granddaddy go to?”

Hmm. Jay’s worth $400 Million. How much are you worth, nose job? When Forest City Ratner wanted to redevelop Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards, who did he go to as the public face to appease the black community in Brooklyn? Who owns an ownership stake in the Nets (albeit less than 1%). Here’s a hint: It ain’t Lawrence Otis Graham. But if it makes you feel better to try and socially stratify yourself as better than someone more powerful than you because your great granddaddy was lucky enough to go to college, knock yourself out. And this isn’t just limited to LOG. Many of you people really aren’t elite period. It’s not just that you’re not better than Jay-Z, you’re not any better than some fresh off the boat Ghanaian going to school here. That dude probably speaks three languages and his been all around the world. The best you’ve done is go to N’awlins for Essence Fest. Check out this article in the Root to get a sense of how much better people with far meaner backgrounds are doing than you all. And your English isn’t all that good. One of my friends was the one of the first black partners at Goldman. His family’s African, and he would have nothing to do with the lot of you just as you probably would have nothing to do with him.

Jide > You all

2. You’re worthless to anyone other than yourselves. While many of you bask in the gory of being the “only ones”, meaning the only black at your firm, school, country club, etc., you really do next to nothing to open up these opportunities for other. You’re fine being the taken as long as it benefits you and keeps you getting glorified at the next Bougie Black chapter meeting. When’s the last time you actively mentored a promising inner-city kid? Or made a donation to buy books for an underfunded black school. Or took some time to teach single-mother raised boys how to tie a tie and dress for an interview? I’ll wait. But you’re the same people who scoff and guffaw at T-Pain buying the “big ass chain” while lamenting what he could do for the community.

"Have we sent them n****s back into slavery yet?" "No but we're close. Awards show is coming up" "Excellent!"

3. You take yourselves way too seriously. Unfortunately, no one else does. It’s great that you have your facebook group claiming tobe the HBCU Ivy League. But outside of a couple schools on that list, ask anyone from the real Ivy League and see what they have to say about that. Ask the Indians and Chinese who are mollywhomping you in terms of wealth creation and career achievement. I mean it may feel good to look down on someone cause they went to Morgan State, but in the places where decisions are actually being made, no one really takes it that seriously.

Femi Otedola, who knocked Bob Johnson off the Billionaires list

4. The rest of the world has passed you by. Sorry, guys, you’re the fax machine in an email world. There was a time in which, yes, you did need to get on board with you all’s agenda to get anywhere in life as a black person. But praise Oliver, that time is gone. Two words: Barack Obama. Who is the poster child for the tupe of guy you don’t consider one of your own until they get somewhere. Now you’re mad cause Michelle hasn’t reached out to the upper crust black community in DC. That’s cause y’all wouldn’t have been reaching out to her had she not made FLOTUS. I picked up the example of Jide and Jay-Z earlier. The fact is, what you all offer is growing remarkably irrelevant. I don’t need an introduction or a cosign from any of you to talk to top level bankers, developers, and financiers. I’ve made those connections completely without your help. Matter of fact, those guys? They don’t even know you. They’ve never heard of you. And in the few instances where I’ve tried to go to you for support, for the most part, I’ve had to put up with your self-importance and you thinking I owe you something. And you usually don’t know anyone above VP level anyway. Because that’s your lane. Middle of the road, not Master of the Universe. In all seriousness, hanging around with you all for too long would only make a promising person more risk-averse and less able to get out and get it.

Now this isn’t a characterization of all of your kind of people. Just some If this one stung, well, you know, A Hit Dog Hollers. What do y’all think? Bougies and non-bougies alike.

Class Warfare Pt. I Our Kind of People vs. You all

Before

After

So I went to Sequoia’s on the DC waterfront for my birthday a few weeks ago.  Well, let me restate that. Tried to go to Sequoia. After a lovey dinner at Bistro Fraincais (I highly recomend their early bird prix fixe special: 3 courses for $25), we strolled down there only to find that last call is now 9PM. Last year, it was 10PM. Back in the day, I think it was like 12PM. My friends and I all surmised the same thing: They’re really trying hard to get rid of the element. By the element, I’m referring to a name my friend Bianca calls a certain class of people. You know who I’m talking about. So we went over to Tony and Joe’s, which is right next to Sequoia, and where the element migrates once the Hennessy stops flowing at Sequoia. If you’re unfamiliar with sequoia, it’s a large seafood restaurant in Washington DC right on the harbor. What makes the place neat is that it’s large, has great views of the water, and has a huge outdoor area with tables and a bar and these nicely lit trees. If you live in Brooklyn, think a much more upscale Habana. But with fish, not corn.

All this brought me back to a conversation I had a few years ago when my Mom, my Dad, and his friend Chucky were all eating at Sequoia on what happened to be a Sunday evening. Chucky’s from Cape Cod and is one of the few black people I know who can pull off a Massachusetts accent without a hint of irony. You know, like BAH-ston. Cape CAHD. Things of that nature. We were eating my mom began discussing the influx of people who frankly, didn’t look like they belonged there. The Element. I explained to my Mom, who’s a rural sociologist by training , and naturally thinks of these patterns in nerd terms, that around 5 or 6, there’s a shift change in the consumer base. The upper class whites and blacks finishing up Sunday Brunch dates or an early dinner with the family close out their tabs and vacate to make room for lower class negroes from Prince George’s county and Ward 7 and 8, and their middle class hangers-on who ascribe to emulate their hip lower class values and sense of style. Chucky, who lives a stone’s throw away from Martha’s vineyard mentioned that the same thing had been happening recently there. The Mom, being the little fireplug that she is, argued that we shoudn’t let them drive us out, rather we should stand fast against the tide and rally forth. We should take back this beach from these trespassers! It was a stump speech worthy of Winston Churchill. I invited her to stay around in that case. To which she replied, “I don’t need to be around these ghetto people. Tennis is on. I’m going home.” Way to abandon your troops, Mom.

So I had pretty much forgotten about this whole shebang but for the fact that a couple of articles came out recently talking about the ever-widening class divide that seems to be gripping Black America. One in the Root, was about the over-representation of foreign blacks in Ivy League schools. The comments show the schism as people argue for the many reasons American blacks underperform.  One in New York Mag, written by the insufferable Toure, was actually directed at the exact same phenomena Chucky was talking about two years ago: The Element invading Martha’s Vineyard and the response by upper-crusty blacks wearing polo shirts and eating cucumber sandwiches. The response wasn’t positive. But the strategic response was very effective:

“A series of community meetings were convened. “No one said ‘Where all these loud niggers coming from?’ But that was the vibe from black and white Vineyarders.” In 1997, a solution was implemented that was simple and subtle enough to fix the problem while avoiding charges of racism: The ferry from Woods Hole changed its policy to eliminate standby passengers and to make reservations nontransferable. Party promoters could no longer buy tickets in bulk, and most students wouldn’t think to make a reservation months ahead of time. The parties moved elsewhere, and the Vineyard went back to business as usual.”

So why? Why did they come to OUR places with their unrefined manners, baggy clothes, rude conduct towards women and loud cursing? And better yet, why are we so perturbed by this? Are we threatened, embarassed, annoyed? Why can’t we just get along? Here are some ideas I’ve heard:

1. You all like to start shit: As part of your general chip on your shoulder and obsession with swag and being tough guys, an unacceptable percentage of you didn’t come to socialize, you came to fight. An unacceptable percentage of that percentage came with guns. Now while you all can beat each other in the streets and shoot at each other all day with somewhat limited repercussions, the same isn’t true for us. A felony assault charge for us would throw a serious wrench into most of our plans. Which when we invariably run into you leaves us with some unpalatable choices:

-Get Chumped

-Fight you and lose. You’re probably better at it than we are since you have so much practice. Also, your freinds will undoubtedly jump us, and since a couple of our friends are kind of punks, you’ll have the numbers advantage.

-Fight you and win. And get hauled off to jail, incurring bail costs, legal defense fees and a potentially career killing felony. Great

2. You make it harder for us. People associate us with you because of the fairly obvious phenotypical similarities. So when you show up with your retrograde behavior, let’s face it, it reflects badly on us. Next time WE show up to the same place, we’re going to be subject to a certain level of suspicion because last time YOU were there, three people got shot.

3. You’re a bad influence As much as we would like to make our brand of unthreatening academic high achievement “cool”, it appears that you all with your casual nonchalance, shiny watches, and rollicking swagger have won the culture wars up to this point. Which means that you’ve done a magnificent job of subverting OUR youth to your way of life. Witness the piss-poor academic performance of schools in even high-income black suburbs and the fact that we all dress like you. You are a fashionable bunch, I’ll grant you that. But your seductive negative influence on too many of US has got to stop.

4. You judge us. Not unlike how we judge you, so I can’t really blame you. It’s called cass warfare, not class one-side assault.Regarding the vineyard, one person in the article said:

“It’s this mecca where you can be yourself and be with people who have so much in common with you. No one has to feign some street cred when they’re playing tennis.” It’s a source of communion and of pride. “When you see a beautiful black family with their kids, it makes you feel really good about being black,”

You all, not so much. We don’t really feel good about being black around you all for two reasons. One, your version of blackness is wack. It’s an infantile celebration of violence, materialism, mysogyny, and general underperformance. Two, you make us feel that our version of blackness is inadequate. We know we should be confident in our version and believe in it, but it’s difficult. We want to feel conencted to “blackness”, not have it questioned or ridiculed because we don’t engage in the more self-destructive aspects of your culture. We realize we can be  a little tight-assed sometime. We’ll work on it.

So am I totally out of line here? Was this just a rant designed to up the arms race of class warfare/ Or are wroking towards something of a resolution? What are your thoughts? I’ve only covered one side of the argument. Part II will discuss what the upper class is doing oh so wrong.