What happend to black folks this weekend?
Did I miss the memo? Was this "Go off on random White Person A " holiday weekend or something? I mean seriously folks. Black folks are demonized enough in this society. We don't have to add fuel to the fire. For those of you not in the know, besides wondering if you've been hiding out in Bin Laden's bunker,
I'll explain what happened. Two *extremely* high profile black celebrities made complete asses of themselves and, with their actions coinciding within the space of a 24 hour period, consequently, blacks in general.
We’ll start with celebrity #1: Serena Williams
Serena Williams is finishing her last set vs. Kim Clijsters, a 26 year old mother from Belgium who hasn’t competed since the U.S. Open in ’06. Clijsters had already beaten Venus, the other Williams sister and she and Serena had already gone through some serious sets. The match was only as close as it was due to some 14 unforced errors on the part of Serena. She’d gotten so pissed that she actually threw her racquet to the ground. It bounced up and she caught it only to slam it against the court again cracking it and mangling the frame. She got docked for that.
So Serena couldn’t take her frustration out at her racquet (an inanimate object that she can by truck loads of with her money) so no place to go she blew up when the line referee (that’s the person who stands at the back of the court to see whether a ball is in or out, your feet are in or out when your serve etc.) made a blatantly bad call on Serena saying that she’d crossed the line during her serve. That put Clijsters a point away from winning.
Well… Serena got a mite angry at that.
“If I could, I would take this f#$%ing ball and shove it down your f*#&ing throat", Williams said.
Serena then returns and is about to serve when the intimidated judge runs to the umpire (the person sitting in that high chair by the net) and tattles. Williams sees the interchange going on and sees the tournament referee come onto the court. She joins the conversation. Due to the constant booing it’s hard to pick out everything that’s being said but a few stand out.
“Sorry, but there are a lot of people who've said way worse." Then the line judge said something to the chair umpire, and Williams responded, "I didn't say I would kill you. Are you serious? I didn't say that." The line judge replied by shaking her head and saying, "Yes."
Serena received her second code violation for the event costing her a point at match point and thus by default making Clijsters the winner.
The video can be seen here.
That’s one. Now for Celebrity #2: Kanye West.
Sigh. If you took the time to watch the video of Serena, well, I should probably take back the comment about acting like an ass when it comes to her. In fact when she’s meeting with the event referees and they decide against her, she’s remarkably cool and collected. She even goes over and shakes her opponent’s hand. Yet what happened with the line referee looks all the worse when you place it alongside Kanye’s actions.
Now those of you who know me know I’m a Kanye fan. I mean, our names even have the same number of syllables and start with the same letter. I was rocking his style even before he went to Rockafella… maybe he’s been rockin the KShaw? In any case this weekend Taylor Swift, a little 19 something country singer wins the VMA for Best Female Video. The travesty follows below (if you can't see it, you can always catch it here):
Wow. Now, to tell the honest truth I was pissed for Serena after I heard and was absolutely bewildered how cool she became after they practically stole the game from her. Then when I heard about Kanye I laughed… until I saw that it wasn’t staged, it wasn’t planned. Home-slice actually got up and interrupted girlie’s speech. You tell me he couldn’t have used a Wrap It Up box instead? She commented on The View about it and was pretty gracious. She stated ”I was like, ‘Okay, don’t trip. Thank the fans. Oh… Kanye West is here, nice hair. Then Oh. Um… oh.’
I felt horrible for the girl. After Kanye was done she’s just left standing there. I mean seriously, how do you go on. Dude, you had to do that to the first Country singer to *ever* win a VMA? Plus… country? Like Rednecks don’t have enough reason to lynch us… we and our uppity black president, you go ahead and mortify a little white southern girl? This is the one time in my life that I’d feel safer living in the Inner City.
So what happened this weekend? There are a few ways of looking at it. First the isolated view.
Serena went off on a referee. Kanye is overcome by grief for his mom (one year since she died) or is just that damn full of himself, and goes off on this little girl. Second we have the conspiratorial Reverend Jeremiah Wright view: White folks have grown a back bone and launched a counter campaign against successful Black America. We have a Representative of the House calling the President a liar during a joint address to congress, we have conspiring to steal a match from one of the greatest female tennis players to ever grace the sport, and more conspiring to steal Best Female Video from Beyonce. Consequently the black individuals are reacting to the situation. What ever the cause I think it culminated in Kanye’s outlandish reaction and has set the view of Blacks in the media back a decade or two. Hopefully we’re not back to the pre Will Smith days, just the pre “Denzel Winning and Oscar” days. So that means that established black actors will have to go back to being thugs for a while and no new actors will make it in the biz unless they’re already rappers. (a la Ice Cube and Ice Tea).
It’s a sad, sad day. Although… Kanye could always get friendly with Taylor Swift and get the little heffa pregnant. That could be seen as a “bring the world together” action… or massively back fire and set us back 160 years.