Pants On the Ground, Racism, Dignity

Pants On the Ground, Racism, Dignity

by Jim Barton on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 10:02pm

       
    When Crescent Moon assistant Panther tried to venture into stand-up comedy last month with a routine based on local ethnic humor, I winced.  Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory or George Lopez understand ethnic bias, much as some of the current "red neck" comedians comprehend regional and geographic bias.  Panther, just a few months in Brownsville from "up north" simply wasn't qualified to differentiate and call out the layers of social, economic and ethnic variations in Brownsville.  Panther even referred to local Brownsvillians of caucasian descent as "whites" while the commonly accepted term as been "anglos" for generations.  Actually, my late father-in-law, Nena's father, used the phrase "the English" to describe people like me, although he was not referring to subjects of Queen Elizabeth, but simply people who spoke English, not his native tongue.
    Nena has been reading excerpts to me almost daily from the book "Who's Afraid of A Large Black Man?" by Charles Barkley.

The book confronts and explores racism without calling out any particular group or person.  Barkley interviews and quotes victims of racism and those who have unwittingly perpetrated racism.  Nearly every page adds something to our overall understanding.
     Reverend Jesse Jackson makes this comment on why kids wear their pants so low as to expose their underwear:  "I ask these kinds why they wear their pants so low, why I can see the crevice of their asses because the pants and the shorts are so low.  I say to them, 'Tell me who designed those jeans.  One of y'all, tell me real quick.'   And of course," he said, "nobody can tell me.  And I tell them, 'I'm going to tell you who designed them: somebody who just got out of jail.  In jail, you can't wear a belt.  You can't wear a belt or a rope around your waist.  You just wear what they issue to you.  And it doesn't fit so the pants fall down around your ass.  They take the strings out of your shoes because you might try to hang yourself.  So here your are, walking around with your pants down, like you can't have a belt, and your shoes without the laces, as if somebody took them away.  That's jail culture.  Nobody designed that.  It's jail culture, that's all it is.'"
   That's just one quote from the book.  George Lopez, Morgan Freeman and Barkley himself along with many others add legitimate insight into the disease of racism.
     Religion, in my view, fosters racism, rather than deters it.  As simplistic as it sounds, some of the more fundamentalist religions are the biggest haters of people different from them.  Since the belief system they endorse makes them "God's chosen people" that leaves others different from them in Satan's stables.
     Included in this story is a picture of Bill Russell.

It could just as well have been a picture of Nelson Mandela, but Russell is American and perhaps easier for some to identify with.  Many reading this will be too young to remember Russell but he won eleven NBA championships with the Boston Celtics, while playing in an essentially racist city.  He never gave the racist element in his community the satisfaction of knowing that their taunts, break-ins to his home, racial epithets and hate had any effect on him.  He protected his family, but carried himself as a champion and MAN.  That is why, to this day, if you ever watch a Hall of Fame presentation, a seminar or anything conducted by the NBA that includes Bill Russell, you will notice one thing:  When Bill Russell speaks, everyone turns to listen.  He knows where its at.