No, Homeboy Sandman, Black People Are Not Cowards

A lot of people are going to attack Homeboy Sandman this week without much, if any knowledge of his music, so I figured I’d get in here and chop it up as someone who’s been a fan of his work for a few years now and recognizes him as one of the more vibrant left-field lyrical minds working in modern rap (and a cheerleader for the New York underground, as lively rocking a stage as showing support from the audience). On Monday Sandman wrote an editorial for Gawker about the doddering wreckage that is L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, revealed for a racist for the umpteenth time via recordings of him dressing down his girlfriend for daring to be seen with black friends and athletes in public.

The Clippers’ response—warming up for Sunday’s playoff showdown against the Golden State Warriors with team logos defiantly obscured and playing the game proper wearing black sleeves and armbands—was a prickly attempt to leverage their displeasure with Sterling’s behavior with an obligation to fans to show up for work. But it wasn’t enough for Sandman, whose Gawker piece, woefully entitled “Black People Are Cowards” (bless your heart if you can make it all the way through without destroying everything within arms reach like I did), took the Clippers and black America at large to task for what he presumed to be cowardice in the face of prejudice, even going as far as to sneeringly disinvite black people to his own shows.

It’s an initiative I’m considering taking him up on. If in the face of a prickly discussion on racism, his knee jerk reaction is to rebuke the people on the receiving end, I’m not entirely sure his is a brand I want to continue devoting energy to. Many seemed to want the Clippers to throw Sunday’s playoff game to spite their owner, but they neglected to consider the tens of thousands of fans who paid money in good faith to see their team play, who may or may not have been aware of the weekend’s developments by game time. And a cold boycott of the team would hurt more than just the badman courtside, starving innocent third parties like stadium vendors of revenue.

It’s okay to have held out hope to see someone stick it to the villain on national television. We all did. But expecting the Clippers to figure out how to navigate the situation on the spot was lofty, and using their behavior at Sunday’s game as an indictment of the state of modern civil rights and an indicator of black complacency—no, Sandman (who, stop me if I’m wrong, is Latin?) called it cowardice—is playing fast and loose with reality. Yes, the black community seems starved of the race-conscious thinkers and leaders of the last century, the Martins, Malcolms, Jesses, Stokelys, Hueys, even the Sharptons. Yes, social media goes a long way in exhausting real outrage on sloganeering, often leaving young firebrands satisfied with marginal goals like getting a topic trending nationwide while the underlying issues go unresolved. But fuck anyone who denies this generation’s fire.

Last July I hit up lower Manhattan’s Million Hoodie March in honor of Trayvon Martin. Protesters in the thousands rallied in Union Square in the afternoon and marched a mile or so to Times Square around sunset. I parted ways with the crowd early to head home to Harlem, watched some TV, ate dinner, lounged around, etc. Around two in the morning, the crowd I’d left seven miles uptown came marching by my block, only a couple hundred strong, and tired, but no less down for the cause. We all watched a few years back as the disaffected college students fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement set up makeshift camps around the country in protest of corporate greed, foregoing creature comforts and risking arrest to picket the one percent in their faces even as autumn gave way to a brisk winter. The activism of the 2010s doesn’t have to look like the activism of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It can’t.

Social media can be a distraction, but can also be a tool of empowerment and organization. “That woman who fired a warning shot” that Sandman notes has been released “no thanks to us”? Her name is Marissa Alexander, and mere months ago she was staring down a mandatory 20 year sentence for firing a warning shot at an abusive husband approaching her door. Marissa’s story only became national news after youth activists disillusioned with Florida’s treatment of the Trayvon Martin murder took up her cause. Youth activism got George Zimmerman arrested when local law enforcement didn’t seem to want to do so. Youth activism also turned up the heat on Alexander’s jailors. Sandman would know that if he had a Twitter.

More appalling than the editorial’s insults and untruths is its self-serving respectability politics. Sandman’s suggestion early on is that racists might feel validated in their opinion of blacks as uncivilized or worse because of the popularity of certain TV shows and strains of rap. While the moral compass of mainstream black media hasn’t pointed squarely north in a while (barring Tyler Perry, whose work Sandman should note is annoyingly severe in its moralizing), it doesn’t excuse anyone outside the culture thinking ill of us. There’s media out here making everyone look terrible; I don’t get to trash Southern white folks because I’ve watched Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and heard Miranda Lambert plot a murder on record. It’s not up to any group to shuck in lock step with the rest of the country for acceptance. It’s up to each and every one of us to own the fact that people who live differently than we do are just as American as we claim to be.

I understand Sandman’s desire to “wake up” a generation that seems too complacent in its dealings with matters of race. But he could’ve done it without insult. And he could’ve waited a day and got the justice he was looking for. Today Donald Sterling stands publicly embarrassed, banned and fined, stripped of everything the NBA could possibly have taken barring his ownership of the team. And his peers have insinuated that they would’ve taken that too if they could’ve. Sandman flew off the handle, though, and spouted a bunch of Real Hip-Hop truisms without taking into account the delicacy of the situation or giving it due time to resolve itself. He watched racist behavior go down on a Friday and jumped out blaming black people for giving truth to the assumptions made about us and sheepishly accepting them (sarcastically or otherwise) on a Monday. We already have one Don Lemon out here reminding us to pull up our pants and throw our garbage in the proper receptacles so white America will feel more comfortable around us. I don’t have the time or patience to humor another.

Craig Jenkins is a writer who lives in New York. He's on Twitter — @CraigSJ

--

SEE MORE:

Why Kid Cudi Doesn't Get to Write the Rules of Hip-Hop

You Don't Like Childish Gambino's 'Because the Internet' Because of the Internet

Nicki Minaj Should Never Apologize for Going Pop