Ay yall, I know its been a while since I put out anything..but I REALLY don't have time to talk to yall right now, so Imma leave this entry up here for yall to read. I know its long, but its worth reading. I got this off my boy Yuguru's page...if yall was wonderin. ENJOY!
The Making of a Thug
The BlackList Digest. Written by Minister Paul Scott.
In dealing with the patience that it took to deal with those brothers who
were less culturally aware during the Black Power Era of the 60's,
someone said that "every Negro is a potential Black man." In the 21st
century; "The Afrikan Power Era" our slogan should be "every Thug is a
potential Afrikan."
It is imperative that we look at this Thug/gangsta image that has been
held up as the essence of "black manhood" and more importantly the
ramifications that it has for Black men, Black women and most
importantly, Black children.
If we trace the creation of the "Thug" we must, of course, start with the
destruction of the black masculinity during the African Holocaust
(transatlantic slave trade.) Before the Africans were brought here bound
in chains, they had been stripped of their manhood through an intense
"seasoning" process, the horrors of which have never been fully realized
by this society. Upon arrival to America, the enslaved African was
treated like one of the animals of the field and was used for two
purposes labor and "breeding." It has been recorded that many Black men
were lynched right in front of their pregnant wives so the fear that she
felt would be transferred into the unborn child. It is also said that
the slave owner would sometimes snatch a black woman away from her
husband in the middle of the night and make the husband watch as he
brutally raped her; further stripping him of his masculinity.
After the end of "physical" slavery instead of declining, the attack on
black manhood intensified as the white man never would forget to "put the
black man in his place" by constantly regarding him as "boy" regardless
of the age. That is why we have so many "men' behaving as "boys" today.
Later during the Civil Rights era while the emphasis should have been on
regaining our manhood and culture, the mainstream Civil Rights groups
concentrated heavily on sharing a toilet or a lunch counter with white
folks. One of the main failures of the Civil Rights Movement was focusing
on integration instead of the social, economic and spiritual empowerment
of the Black community. We bent over backwards to love white folks while
all the while hating our black selves.
We made an attempt to recapture our Black manhood during the Black Power
Era of the late 60's and early 70's but that was quickly crushed by
COINTELPRO and other attempts by the white power structure to make sure
the transformation from boys to men would never take place.
All of this has led to an internalized anger which, when coupled with the
conscious or subconscious fear of white power, has produced the Thug
image of today. Where the fear was too great to challenge white
supremacy, head on, a pseudo-culture was created which allowed the Black
man to let out his aggression without becoming a threat to the white
power structure. It has also given him the ability to search for self
respect in material things, clothing with the name of a white man on the
label or gold medallions. The MEDIA (MisEducation Destroying Intelligent
Afrikans) has been a willing ally in this endeavor with the movies that
have degraded the black man from the pimp/player roles in the black
exploitation movies of the early 70's ( Super Fly, the Mack) to the
gangsta flix of the late 80's to the present (Menace to Society, Belly
etc)
The effect on the black community has been devastating. The reason that
you have 30-something year old men acting like teenagers is because thug
life has no age limit.
When I was a rebellious teen we would laugh at anyone over 21 still
"trying to be down" Because the bad boy image was seen as something that
kids did. Today, every other song on the radio is about grown men trying
to be Thugs/gangsters as if that is something to be proud of. Some of
the rappers have sons that carry the same Thug image as their fathers
(Lil Romeo and Master P) There is something very wrong with that.
Recently, I listened to a sister on the radio telling the DJ how she
needed a man with a "little Thug in him." It is sad that while the
sisters of previous generations wanted a man to give her R-E-S-P-E-C-T,
some of our less conscious sisters today want a man to treat them
thuggishly.
We are currently raising a generation of young people that has no sense
of black culture outside of the Thug culture. When asked to name two
black men who "died for the struggle" instead of naming Malcolm X and
Fred Hampton they will tell you quickly Tupac Shakur and the Notorious
B.I.G. Or if ask them the meaning of political prisoner they will say
"Yeah, that's what they tried to do to Puff Daddy."
What our community is missing is a complete analysis of the Thug Life
phenomenon in the context of the Afrikan Liberation Struggle. We cannot
let the "fear of blaming the white man for all our problems" or the fear
of "preaching hate" prevent us from giving our people a correct
historical analysis of the condition of Afrikan people. We must give our
young people a sense of culture. We must remove the red and blue
bandannas from the heads of our children and replace them with the
Afrikan Liberation colors of red, black and green. We must replace their
gang signs with Black Power fists raised proudly in the air. We must
replace Black self hate with black love for all black people, We must
replace the desire to be a Thug with the desire to be a strong Afrikan
man fighting for the liberation of his people. | 
