The Boondocks as Black Public Sphere
- Tavis Smiley |
- satire |
- haters |
- Boondocks
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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball Ph.D.
Some folks are too dense even for cartoons – when they’re produced by Aaron McGruder. The Boondocks author’s political take on President Obama is too heavy for at least a portion of the audience, who tend to see the world as divided between those who are “hatin’” on Obama and those who are not. McGruder’s attempt to create Black political “space” for meaningful discussion confronts the empty spaces inside people’s heads.
The Boondocks as Black Public Sphere
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball Ph.D.
“If this is to be the last season of the Boondocks we need to be working to develop space for more public criticism of our horrific conditions.”
To all those who felt that Aaron McGruder had begun this season’s Boondocks with too much criticism of Obama you can rest easy, at least for now. Week two was quite a drop-off from the season-opener. After week one, where McGruder had set such a high-standard of criticism, less directly focused on Obama than on our reaction to the brand, some were actually calling him a replacement of Tavis Smiley as our “high profile… post-racial hater.” He was accused of airing our dirty laundry and was even asked why he had not felt it necessary to have Huey Freeman, his Black revolutionary “terrorist,” choose exile during the reign of Bush as opposed to only after the election of Obama. But what many seem to have missed was that Huey’s inability to pull off his escape of Obama being about having no ride was an allusion to our own political powerlessness and absence of a public sphere where these debates can actually take place. It was just as in Huey’s previous attempt at freeing political prisoner Shabazz K. Milton Burrow where he also couldn’t get a ride and where he also had no space to publicly debate or organize an end to the continued unjust imprisonment of a Black Panther Party revolutionary.
The “public sphere” has often been defined as space where a mostly bourgeois elite meet to openly discuss the politics of their time. The Black public sphere has been defined as one that challenges such class bias and which occurs in what are often considered alternative spaces but no less political or substantive in their exchanges. Churches, beauty and barbershops, street corners, parks and even – for a time – Black popular music all reflected the role of the public sphere. However, the impact on these spaces resulting from gentrification, to worsening economic crises and, most immediately relevant, to increased media consolidation among fewer owners has made these spaces harder to find. According to one scholar, if the public sphere is to be defined as that which allows for public critique of, and an offer of remedy to, the horrific conditions faced by African America, then, “A Black public sphere does not exist in contemporary America.” And it is this absence which has so many either angry at McGruder’s public airing of our dirty laundry or others of us so frustrated that this is as good as it ever gets.
“According to one scholar, ‘A Black public sphere does not exist in contemporary America.’”
Given our current media environment where else is critical public discussion to occur? Even those who dismiss Tavis Smiley as being too hard on Obama need to ask where is the more private discussion they claim they want going to occur? Huey wanted exile after Obama precisely because of the deadening impact the election has had on our own political activity, as voiced by his grandfather, “the Black struggle is officially over.” He had little to say because, as demonstrated by the angry mob, even disinterest or a lack of excitement, not to mention actual fact-based critiques of the president, is risky business. As Huey did say, “hope is irrational.”
And we need more haters out there. Why should only conservatives and apologists have access to any popular media? Where are the critiques of their routine and public bashing of Black people? Why isn’t Obama properly taken to task for publicly airing our dirty laundry, especially when he airs it so often and so out of context? The president just spoke at Hampton University and dared to tell those students to stop paying so much attention to media technology, calling them a “distraction,” when his own pre- and post-election strategy has been openly expressed to be one of branding and media ubiquity with the purpose of making him difficult to pin down and critique. This level of hypocrisy was only matched by this week’s airing of Radio and TV One’s Cathy Hughes with Minister Farrakhan where she actually joined him in lamenting negative popular imagery of Black people. Her own role in killing Black radio and furthering these negative images was left untouched just as Obama’s media use and branding was not mentioned to those unsuspecting Black students.
In the absence of a real Black public sphere we have to enjoy what little we get while we work toward its development. If this is to be the last season of the Boondocks we need to be working to develop space for more public criticism of our horrific conditions. I mean, where else can we find so many public references to Ronald Reagan as a “devil?” No amount of “N-bombs” in The Boondocks can dampen that or worsen the damage done by Black political discussion as it takes place in the Washington Post, New York Times or even TheRoot.com. If we are truly dissatisfied with The Boondocks it is only because we have not cultivated our own Black public sphere.
For Black Agenda Radio I’m Jared Ball. Online go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
Dr. Jared Ball can be reached at jared.ball@morgan.edu.
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Comments
Most blacks will never see the truth
Most black people don't care how bad Obama is for us because they want to hurt white people for hundreds of years of slavery and oppression but what they don't realize is Obama is hurting the masses of black AND white people. His continued support for Zionism and his Jewish administration are crippling this country even further. Israels owms Obama meaning they probably have some dirt on him from something lascivious in his past that he does not want revealed to the public. Who better to blackmail him than the Zionists since Jews own almost every aspect of popular media from radio to Hollywood to television to newspapers. The Zionist Jews know how to destroy a country and a people and that is what they are doing. Obama is just a pawn but his ego has him drinking the MLK Kool-Aid. No one would want to be president unless they had a massive ego. The Zionists know full well how to take advantage of that to control each and every president so there are no serious deviations from their global enslavement agenda for mankind as soon as the population is culled enough. Not only is Obama bad for blacks he also neuters us so that we do not complain about the injustices as we should. However the behavioral modification techniques being used on the masses out of tv and Hollywood work perfectly. Whites continue to spew their hatred on blacks and Latinos for the economic crisis and Zionist Jews, and Jews in general, continue to get a pass by teaching ahistorical nonsense to the world about the origins of Christianity and what really happened during the so-called Holocaust without any regard to the Holocaust still going on in black America and the African diaspora known as Maafa. These same Jews love to receive the white guilt while black people receive the visceral hatred from whites. It is a technique of control and division. At this point black people have little hope, barring some cosmic miracle, of ever awakening to the truth because we see everyone that tries to tell us as a hater.
A hard hit by Ball
Dr. Ball hit the nail right on the head! It is going to be difficult to wean our people off Obamism. It is probably impossible but that does not mean we shouldn’t try. My personal opinion is that we should “patiently explain” to use an old phrase from the Old Left. The last thing we need to do, if we ever expect to be successful, is liken any regular Obama supporter to a head-scratchin’-handkerchief wearing negro . Assume nothing, start off where those people are and take it from there. No leftist elitism.
Always on front street
The public character of our internal discussions is one of those unintended consequences of integration/assimilation. And certainly, our "dirty laundry" is both a favorite object of curiosity for lots of white folks and serves as a useful distraction from the dirtier laundry of this settler colonial society's exploitative relationships with the world at large and its own internal communities. Websites like Blackagendareport and voxunion may be the final bastions of a critical Black public sphere, which is unfortunate since one needs a computer and an internet account. But what else is there if the Black paper press primarily assesses every Obama decision as a definitive historic moment above critique? Haters, keep hatin'! We can't afford sycophancy!
HYPOCRITES NEED TO QUIT HATIN' ON THE HATERS.
If the former Goldwater girl (Slick Willie's wife) had become president, the hypocrites would still be hatin' on the haters. With them- it's all about trusting their leaders. Any critique that is not made in trust is just like a foreign language. It is hard for hypocrites to comprehend simple sentences at times, because the ideas that those sentences represent does not fit into their worldview. This is why they believe that shouting "hater" is an adequate counter argument. They can't debate the idea, so they debate the worldview (trust or lack thereof) instead. It's time for the hypocrites to learn a new, foreign language. It's time for the hypocrites to get involved with issue advocacy; then they will finally see that the haters aren't really hatin'. The haters used to be hypocrites at one point in time. They used to make excuses too until they realized that politics was and is bigger than the softball game between elite team A and elite team B.
There are no permanent allies.
There are no permanent enemies.
There are only permanent issues.
Learn a new language: http://stopthedrugwar.org/