I was over hanging out at The Marvelous View and I saw their take on Souljah Boy thanking the slave masters. This is what went he said to Toure as reported over at Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast:
Then came Soulja Boy Tell Em. I asked him, “What historical figure do you most hate?” He was stumped. I said, “Others have said Hitler, bin Laden, the slave masters…” He said, “Oh wait! Hold up! Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we’d still be in Africa.”
My jaw, at this point, was on the ground.”We wouldn’t be here,” he continued, having no idea how far in it he’d stepped, “to get this ice and tattoos.” The Daily Beast
He thanked the folks who systematically enslaved, raped, tortured and killed his ancestors. Somewhere his great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother is rolling over in her grave rotisserie style mumbling “I survived the Middle Passage for this? I should have jumped overboard”
I think The Marvelous View said it best:
Hip-Hop has officially died…this dumb@ss is head pallbearer.
19 comments ↓
I told my kinfolk at another board that it’s just like thanking my abuser for post traumatic stress syndrome. It made me crazy, yet stronger. *rollseyes*
Yep. Hip-hop at its finest. Black America at its finest.
We colored folks should be oh so proud.
(He may not be a representation of all of us, but…. hmph.)
NO, he didn’t…Amazing, even for an ignorant rapper.
Wait a minute, you would think that he is the only black person to feel this way. He isn’t.
Ask Armstrong Williams if he thinks blacks in America benefitted from ending up in America via slave trade. Ask Clarence Thomas? Ask Condi Rice?
Don’t blame the boy’s statement on youth and lack of education because he isn’t alone in his sentiment.
It’s not Hip Hop, just certain individuals. Hip Hop is alive look what Paris is doing.
http://www.guerrillafunk.com/
In defense of Condi Rice I don’t think she would say that. Clarence Thomas on the other hand definitely would.
Like Monica said there are many AA that think this way. It maybe the case that we have a lot of freedoms and benefits available to us because we were born in the USA; but, let’s not ignore the fact that the problems Africa faces are a direct result of Europe and America’s involvement in Africa.
sad, but true. even Pat Buchanan said some nonsense about white people in America have done so much for Black people in America. I think this whole “be glad we’re here in USA and not in Africa” is based on missionary logic. Slavery, though bad was ultimately okay because of saving souls and saving future generations from Africa. Providence Theology.
My beef – the assumption that Africa is inherently the place NOT to be and that as mucked up as Africa is now that it is the same Africa that would have existed if Europeans hadn’t screwed it over with colonialism… yeah, I’m working with the hand that was dealt, but I don’t believe tthis notion that I was pre-emptively saved 500 yrs ago from ‘evil Africa’.
I sometimes imagine a different world – One where each continent’s indigenous populations could have grown, advanced, developed, warred, and built societies absent of terrorist invasions from other nations and free of external colonialism that destroyed its native culture. What if the Native Americans put the Mayflower back on its boat in the spring or worse – killed all European settlers on site. How different would the world be? The Americas would be inhabited by the many tribes of Native Americans; Australia – wow, a totally different place.
Imagine how different the nations of this would interact in this century with one another if each continent’s native culture had been left alone, free from European meddling.
More coonery for us.
@Monica,
You’re right, I was already to get ‘upset’ at his statement when I sat and thought that, ‘oh, yeah, I have heard others – even friends and family members – say be grateful that you aren’t in Africa right now.’ A tacit acknowledgment of the benefits of slavery. So his statement is nothing new.
But dang! My palm still itches with a powerful urge to slap him for saying this foolishness! But in the interest of fairness, I will slap all who I remember saying this and all who say it in my presence in the future.
On a side note: Souljah boy just might have felt put on the spot in the interview, and in the hopes of being ‘funny’ gave this b.s. answer instead of a real one.
My FORMER pastor Bishop Carlton Pearson came one step away from saying this. He would say that it did not matter how we got here but the fact that we got here was in God’s providence or something similar. His twist on us being blessed because we were in America. It was his church where I decided NEVER to attend another black church. He was absolutely insane and had a obvious hatred for blacks (his own race) in general and bw in particular. Sad to say this insane attitude is not unique.
hi there-
thanks for this post. i mozied on over to Toure’s spot and there was an interesting comment posted by a man there. he asked if black men listened to black women? he suggested that if black men would teach black boys how to be men, our circumstances and world would change. he addressed the awful lies that are used to justify the assault on black women, like we are difficult to deal with. needless to say, not a single soul bothered to answer his questions. instead, the conversation turned to racial profiling, police brutality, and how hard it is for black men.
hopefully my comment won’t be censored. it is my belief that the hatred of all things black is why black women/girls are experiencing in more cases than not…hell on earth.
blessings all,
focusedpurpose
i meant hopefully my comment won’t be censored over there. thought i should make that clear:-) i thought his great questions deserved to be acknowledged and answered!
focusedpurpose
my theory as to why some thing slavery is an act of kindness.
This is the kind of stuff we get from folks like LaShawn Barber.
We would not be in Africa if slavery didn’t happen. We would simply not exist while the population of Africa would be nearly identical to what it is today. Folks don’t think sometimes.
focusedpurpose you are right on target! And why are people defending a young black man just for being a youg rapper when he’s saying stupid things and not even thinking about what he says halfway through?
Stop feeling like you have to defend every rapper. You blame someone like Clarence Thomas or whoever else who says stupid things like ‘we should be grateful for slavery’ but you want to defend a young black guy just because he raps for a living?
That’s dumb. The rapper’s a jerk and if there are a billion jerks in the world well he just made that number a billion and one.
Why do black people always defend young black men especially once they’re rapping and ‘famous’?
And you all should ask any dumb black fool saying ‘we should be thankful for the slave trade and slavery’ if they should be thankful for the Jim Crow laws and era too.
Hardy har har then. Put THAT question to the older black people you meet especially if they sound like ignoramuses that is!
Well in how many ways can you look at this comment of Soljaboy?…… When I look at his comment I can most certainly see his point and I can also see why others can be upset, however lets take a look at the point he is making. You see all things happen for a reason and all things happen in Gods time. This has nothing to do with Hip Hop or any other culture of music but what an individual may think on his or her own
Lets look at the question:
“What historical figure do you most hate?”
In a very sarcastic and narcisitic way the young man, instead of saying how much he hates anyone he chose to thank the ones who actaully hated his ancestors and for those ancestors who hated ours have a liniage even now that may very much have a disliking for us.
So he took the high road thanked them for our trip to the USA and now we have the opportunity, after all of what we’ve been through as a nation to vote for an “African” first then “American” man as a president. He also thanked them for all of the other opportunities that we as African Americans have today as a result. It is what made us all stronger as a nation.
Now SoljaBoy does not have any ties to Bin Laden or Hitler so there is no reason for him to have any hate, but he may and perhaps will have ties to slavery. What happen here is what was expected from the youn man and because he did not meet that expectation but chose to look at it the other way. Now I am not a fan of SoljaBoy by no means however looking at this comment from a non-partisan perspective. Please VOTE and make your voice heard! And this has nothing to do with what anyone has done for the Black Man but its what we can do for ourselves
We can continually hold on to our past and mentaly be enslaved in our minds or we can let go of the past but use it to catapult us to the future of our dreams. We’ve go to many examples!
I gave my thoughts.
Thanks for listening.
LarLve I like your last sentence but to the first part of it I say:…..HUH?
And LarLve I think you’re giving too much credit and ‘mental gold stars’ to a dumb young Knee-grow.
Dr. Na’im Akbar makes a similar point in his book/pamphlet: Light From Ancient Africa.
Not so much that we should be thankful that we’re here, but that Black folks may just be fulfilling the prophecy of Osiris (IIRC, I haven’t re-read it in over a year, so I may get the names incorrect) who was killed, dispersed, found again (by Isis – inside his oppressor’s kingdom) and then reformed to re-give the world knowledge.
BTAIM, I sincerely doubt Soljah Boy had that idea in mind when he spouted off.