Jack & Jill Politics

According to Racewire, “Black” Entertainment Television is producing a show based on the popular website “Hot Ghetto Mess” which basically exploits pictures of black people looking foolish to make money.

Their explanation:

“Hot Ghetto Mess” is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek examination of the good, the bad and the ugly of Black popular culture.

Utilizing comedy, man-on-the-street interviews, video clips, pictures and music, “Hot Ghetto Mess” aims to shine a spotlight on prevalent images in pop culture and examine what role they play in American lifestyle. “Hot Ghetto Mess” goes where most shows fear to tread.

As host Charlie Murphy guides viewers through shaking booties, thug life, baby-mama drama and pimped-out high schoolers, “Hot Ghetto Mess” will explore what these images really mean to all of us.

Cutting edge, original, relevant and irreverent, “Hot Ghetto Mess” is like the traffic accident you can’t look away from. Viewers will laugh. They’ll cry. They’ll think. They’ll learn, and hopefully they’ll recognize they’ve GOT to do better.”

How convenient. It’s not that BET is perpetuating demeaning images of black Americans to make money, like they do in talk shows, music videos, and…wait, that’s all they have on BET.

No, the real reason that BET is producing the show is not to make money off of making black people look stupid, but to raise social consciousness. Which is the aim of precisely none of the shows now airing on BET.

As for the proprietor of the site, well he’s covered his ass with a few faux nationalistic appeals for black people to “do better”. Brother, wouldn’t that put you out of business?

Back in the day, everyone lived together, the doctors and teachers and plumbers and lawyers and housewives and whinos all lived in the same community—so you had standard bearers– role models, people for the kids to look up to. But now, with our cities economically segregated, there are areas of concentrated poverty where kids have no idea what opportunity is—not because there are none, because there is no one to show them what it is. The black middle class has moved to the suburbs and too often don’t have time to tutor or mentor an underprivileged child because by the time they get off work and brave traffic back to their McMansion, where has the day gone. Now we all bear part of the blame, the middle class has moved up and out never looking back to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters, and some of our less fortunate brothers and sisters conduct their lives like idiots.

And money isn’t always the answer, just because you are poor that doesn’t give you license to live any kind of way. You can pick up the trash in front of your damn door.

Just because you are poor doesn’t mean you don’t have to support your children, respect women, live in a pig sty or you can have 5 kids by different fathers. To say that we shouldn’t expect strength of character from a person because they are poor is insulting to all the hard working folks scratching and scraping to get by but know they must set a high standard for themselves and their children if they ever want to change their condition. Look at black folks in the 20’s and 30’s when we didn’t have two nickels to rub together but we had pride in ourselves and our image. And you’re just as bad if you ARE making money and not helping somebody else along the way.

So again, I ask what are we doing to help each other because as Farrakhan said recently, “the days of the benevolent white man are over.” Power concedes nothing. All we got is us people. We can’t afford to live like we’re living. From school, to clothing to music, to our children—where have our standards gone? And if our own can’t come out and rally for change, who can? Why do we so often condemn the people who point out what’s wrong instead of condemning the behavior?

And I will say again, to all of you who are angry at me for airing our dirty laundry—good I’m glad you’re angry, now maybe collectively, including me, we’ll be forced to finally go wash it. This site is the beginning, the ending is up to us.

I don’t really like hustlers. But I can respect a hustler who admits he’s a hustler (Jay-Z) as opposed to a hustler who pretends like he’s doing you a favor. Brother “Jam Donaldson” of Hot Ghetto Mess falls into the second category.

Given that his primary concern in hosting his website and collaborating with BET is change in the black community, we can expect to see Brother Donaldson making his website a non-profit and joining with BET in donating most of the proceeds from the show and the website to needy schools, prison to work programs, and urban hospitals and clinics right?

Right?