Nothing African About These Street Hoodlums, But…..

There is nothing African about Michael Brown. Sad to say, American Blacks and the young generation of inner-city Blacks are not only losing out and at the bottom of the food chain. African new immigrants resettling in America, more entrepreneurial, more motivated to work hard, from Nigeria, from Ethiopia, from Ghana, from the Caribbean, from Guyana, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic and from all parts of Africa, have superseded the native-born Blacks. Why?

I think Bill Cosby is right in underscoring that there is nothing African about these street hoodlums, many of whom come from dysfunctional broken families, lousy parenting, lacking in education and employable skills.... by adopting African names, these punks insult the roots from where their ancestors came from.

Yes, slavery has traumatized many Africans who were brought to America in chains. But today, the dynamics is such that the culture of native-born Blacks wracked by the malignancy and pathology of indolence, insolence, mendicancy, and mendacity.... It is a morass that is creating little monsters who will grow up to be big monsters and predators!

Bill Cosby writes:
"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English.

I can't even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.

$500 sneakers for what?
And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

ther? Or who is his father?
People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?
People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?

Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from??
We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa.....

I say this all of the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid.

I was born here, and so were my parents and grandparents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany, Scotland , England , Ireland , or the Netherlands . The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa. So stop, already! ! !

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap......... And all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.
People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.

We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job.

Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard..

We cannot blame the white people any longer.'
~Dr.. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed..D.'


I agree with Cosby position and I could situate it within the context of discourses I have had with African Americans about the kind of challenges that is faced by them within the broader context of American democracy which presupposes equality. While I have never been to the US, the impression I have is that the subtle media of racist expressions hidden under the one nation under God mantra is very much more dangerous than overt racism. It is exactly the outplay of the suppressed discriminatory practices encouraged by a system which largely discriminates that is leading to the impending implosion of the American system.

In other words, the way the American system has been defined and conditioned in practical terms of implementing supposedly equally applicable laws has always been unfair to the African American. I listened to Moses Ochonu in 2012 when he alluded to the kind of discriminatory practices against the African Americans and the high level state reception for government officials from Africa in the 50s and 60s.

What I could fathom from this is that colour may not necessarily be as important a factor as the political economy of relationships. Coming further down the cadre, African Americans are a direct threat to their fellow American citizens in terms of competition for their 'national cake' while other African immigrants do not necessarily have the rights to access what the country has to offer.

Also, while the ladies are proving to have casualties as well, what belies the trends of killings and victimization is that the male are the targets as would be expected in male dominant societies. This is not to say the African Americans are not culpable but the structuring of the state is a major factor in their culpability.

Blame those who cannot restructure their dreams away from gang banging and ghetto lives but they are the product of the kind of environment available to them. I am not a fan of the hereditary behavioral model which people flaunt as I believe the system can do a lot to create better meanings out of people's lives. What I am yet to understand is why people are treated differently based on bias due to their birth affiliation. Is it the same kind of treatments that the Caucasian, Latino, Asian and African Americans get for flouting the same laws within the same contexts or are there layers in meting out judgment based on ethnic affiliations?

Joseph Osei Oppong Brenya
Ultimate Radio, Kumasi
[email protected]
+ 233 0244587045