obyno on "The Prophets of Negrology"

I received this comment from a blogger from Nigeria, obyno, in response to my post on “The Prophets of Negrology“. I found it very interesting and wanted to share it by posting it. Here it is:  

Two of the issues you raised in this post, namely, the Don Imus brouhaha and the Duke Lacrosse players comedy show, are threads that have been leading me to the bolstering of a theory that I have had for a long time. It is one I consider to be utterly horrible and whose entertaintment really qualifies one to go on and be cut, drawn, quartered and if possible set ablaze.

It goes like this. All races are definitely not equal. Some are truly more equal than others. Equality however is not a function of certain ineluctable, genetic differentiation, but a result of the development or lack of a habit of intellectual introspection. Intellectual introspection in this case is dimensioned into levels whose effect is measurable by:

1)All phenomena is measurable by their effect on you and you alone.
2)Its inclusion of your fellow beings in the evaluation of phenomena.
3)The consideration of your fellow beings and other less animate beings such as are found in your biological environment in the evaluation of phenomena.

All three taken together, in my view, work to establish an individual’s position on the ladder of progress. Enlarging the set, they can point to a people’s position on this same ladder and therefore become a measure of racial progress. However I have taken certain liberties in setting these measures. Because the theory is still largely that, a theory, and hardly anything better than a series of observations looking for an overcoat, I have elected to suggest that at any point in time, arising from an alteration of perspective and attitude, a person, and indeed a people can hop up or down from one level to the other as the case may be. Sometimes I fear that I have introduced this caveat as pressure valve to prevent the attacks which such a theory probably deserves, by people who might consider themselves victimised by it. So here goes:

As a fact it is a non sequitor to infer that a group of people have the capacity to think together in a certain direction. Having established this, it is then only true to indicate that they therefore cannot all be lumped together for any measurement on the level of their thinking. Rather it is safest to generalise on this by focusing on trends and seeming trends which their opinions when trolled for appear to be revealing. Even the aftermath of this does not yield the toga of truth to whatever ideas appear to be in prevalence.

However there are some affects which if taken altogether might put hands together to reveal an objective that one might say is generalized, and not necessarily in statistical terms. It is this objective that when used as a prism can yield treasures about how they regard themselves, their environment and their place in that ecosystem. The almost palpable sound of a sigh of accomplishment rippling through African-america as evidenced in its blogs, newspaper columns, radio/tv interviews given, before and after the Don Imus firing proper, left me confused about the evolutionary stage of much of our intellectualising as a people. All through the farce (I use the word, farce, without disrespect to the women in America who were the recipients of the Imus’ radio slur), Pillars of African-american opinion like the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson attempted to negotiate Don Imus surrender with their backs turned, all the while, to the fifth columnists, the enemies within, who had afterall given Don Imus the go-ahead to violate those women – I mean the purveyors and arch-angels of hip-hop culture.

I have followed the careers of Imus and the other so called shock jocks in america’s radio journalism and have come to marvel at the fact that they have created a profession and in so many cases, fabulous fortunes out of stealing popular elements of American culture, sharpening them by adding a layering of their own particular inimitable talent and personality, and then returning same to the American people. The fact is that their success is original only as much as they have excelled at looking at everyday things in a sharply new way. There is probably no word more everyday in popular American English grammar than the word “Nigga” or “Ho”. Together of course, with all the neccessary verbal paraphernalia, that go with being able to add tragic and monumentally heartbreaking meaning to those words.

That is why I took painful issue with people like Russel Simmons, (who by the way I have always respected and admired for the symbolism I always believed they represented by their ability to break out of the cycle of poverty that for centuries have imprisoned and ground to death hundreds of millions of other African-anericans), whose best defence seemed to be that since a rapper was born into violence and crime and hate and so much disrespect, then we should expect them to afflict all of us with the fruits of their antecedents and no more from us all. In the racial progress theory I am working on, that equates only to the first level. Obsession with how your behaviour is limited only by your own limitations. 

I haven’t read or heard anything faintly suggesting to me that Don Imus is racist. He took words out of the lips of the hip-hop cultural vanguard, at least in the music genre, and flung it right back at America. That Mr. Sharpton et al did not see this (or if they had, was announcing that vision by only just now, going after Don Imus) was for me the real tragedy of the whole thing. Don Imus has completed his hand-wringing and been busted for his mistakes. That he apologized equates to a hoping around on my ladder of progress, albeit in an upward more rewarding direction, something the Russel Simmonses and Jay Zs and Snoops and The Games are not doing yet. And about being busted…well his perspective, if not his attitude has suffered alteration. It would be a travesty to now not go ahead and engage all the other bastions whose inspiration pushed Don Imus to what in effect has been his waterloo. If not the objective of the whole exercise would have been to smoke out Don Imus while the supply lines to the other Imus{es} remained vibrant, waiting for the next time another fire would flare up.

And as long as this continues to be the objective towards which all of our arguments and  observations about ourselves and the world around us, for and against, propel us, then that manic hopping back and forth up and down the ladder of racial progress would continue to enervate us.

Sick, right? But it was only you who got me thinking.