What Nipsey Hussle’s Death Says about Black Hypocrisy and Fake Hashtag Activism

It is indeed a very sad day when any black person is taken from this world before the age of 35 for any reason. It is even worse for those under 25 and 15 years of age. To acknowledge this in our community means sending prayers to the victim’s family and love ones.  It means extending a support that they may need honestly and sincerely. If one is a celebrity, then it means blessings in the age of twitter in the form of tweets lauding them as if they were the greatest and kindest person ever. Simple it means virtue signaling to the herd mentality.

This morning, as I sat on the toilet reading the multiple news feeds on my phone, I read that LA rapper Nipsey Hussle was murdered in a hail of gun fire in front of one of his businesses. As the word spread, virtue signaling in the form of 280 characters or less began pouring in. John Legend said “RIP Nipsey.  I just spent Thursday with him filming a video for a beautiful new song we created with Khaled.  We filmed in Inglewood, close to where he grew up. He was so gifted, so proud of his home, so invested in his community.  Utterly stunned that he's gone so soon.” “My spirit is shaken by this! Dear God, may His spirit Rest in Peace and May You grant divine comfort to all his loved ones” Rihanna tweeted. Meek Mill added: “we really fighting for our lives against our own kind and really have to take risk and match the level of hatred that we are born in I’m tired prayers for my brother and his family.” I could continue but you get the message. Any additional listing would only be nauseating but take it from me, everyone from LeBron James to Jada Pinkett Smith had something to say. My good friend and former colleague Rodney Carmichael at NPR described him as a “Grammy-Nominated Rapper and Philanthropist.”

It is true that Nipsey had turned his life around and had become a change for good. But I asked myself as I read the inundation of tweets, let us suppose he had been killed by a white policeman, what would the tweets may have said then, instead of an alleged African-American fellow gang banger? What virtue should be signaled then? I’m certain anyone wish prayers in the first scenario would be vilified.  Wishes of prayers for cops killing black men are useless and pathetic, but when we kill each other they are the right thing to do. Not to mention since he has changed his life for the better what he did before doesn’t matter and isn’t important in explaining who he is as a person, but if it was some other person, who may have dressed like Bruce Lee twenty years ago, or touched a woman on their booty, especially being non-black, it would synthetic hashtag outrage.

Now I am not bashing Nipsey and as a man feel for his family, but the thinker in me is attracted to hypocrisy. Think about it, no mass protest will be arranged for this man, but if he had been killed by a cop I am sure it would. Moreover, let us not forget that he was a member of the Rollin' 60s Crips (a life time membership) and openly demonstrated this on the cover of his Bullets Ain't Got No Name series in 2008. His new album continued his preoccupation with calling folk N*****, the drug game, materialism, street life and yes – set tripping. Take the lyrics from the song Succa Proof from his latest album Victory Lap: Look, I don't fuck what you niggas done, I don't give a fuck where you niggas from, For you and your mouth go and get a gun, Leave you slumped on the scene, that's a hit and run, Oh y'all Bloods, oh y'all Crips now, Fuck it, I'm big draws, I'm J. Prince now.”

Again, I repeat this is a sad lose. He was doing big things in the community and holding down his family like men should do, both being the images we as men should incessantly present to our communities. However, we have problems that only we can address. However, this requires us be honest with ourselves, leaving hypocrisy behind and acknowledging that they exist. Yes, racism exist, but it isn’t our biggest obstacle or problem, that would be us. We know that homes with two parents and fathers in them are likely not to be in poverty, have kids drop out of high school, less likely to have a daughter pregnant before graduation, are more likely to go to college and male children are less likely to get caught up in the criminal justice system. WE KNOW THIS, yet we act as if this is because of systemic racism.  Last I looked systemic racism had nothing to do with using a condom, keeping your legs closed, saying no to having unprotected sex, doing homework with your children and not using the television set as a baby sitter. We know that African American males represent about 6 percent of the U.S. population but commit almost 40% of murders and comprise nearly 60% of all murder victims (Another reason why our homicide rate is four times the U.S. average).

There was NO reason we as a community and nation should have lost such a prosperous soul as Nipsey Hussle. But if we do not address why this type of senseless outcome keeps occurring, whether rich or poor or famous or joe citizen, we will never make any progress.  We should be equally upset for Nipsey as we do Darion Strong. We should be equally upset for HeavenSutton as we are Oscar Grant. But none of this will ever change if we put out in the universe that the death of a black by a white person is more valuable, interesting and important than a death of a black person by another black person. The more these liberals hypnotize blacks to keep on virtue signaling (the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue), the less likely we will have the desire and power to acknowledge and solve our own problems, and the more we live in areas like Baltimore where only 13 percent of city students are considered proficient in In fourth and eighth grade reading and one-third of High Schools in Baltimore, last year, had zero students proficient in math. RIP NIP, we will make something good out of this.

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Manufactured Synthetic Outrage

The veil of hypocrisy is best seen when one looks in the mirror.  It is opaque and empty until we accidentally see it while we are putting on our makeup, or a tie to adorn our image. Our hypocrisy is so consistent, especially here in America that it should be used like a scientific constant similar to Planck’s or Avogadro’s number.

It seems as that President Trump’s recent announcement of a temporary ban on immigration from several specific countries got a lot of folk upset, 99 percent of them who presented no real outrage to the policy or even the ban, but rather the man who implemented it.  They are out in mass protesting at airports on behalf of these individuals as if their life depended on it.  Now I too disagree with Trump’s implementation but not the policy. But unlike most, I am rational and have been consistent, in my views from president to president, but I will never evince the fake and cosmetically contrived outrage band wagon revolutionaries show whenever they get their feelings hurt or do not get their way.

It is comedy at its best and more life-like than anything Hermippus or Eupolis could have ever written.  And I say this honestly, because although I have been pained by the refugee crisis for more than six years now, I was more upset at the Obama administration for its continuous bombing and destruction of these humans homes and murdering their families, for creating this outcome from Libya to the South Sudan and equally the lack of concern partisan progressive neoliberals, allowed him to carry out his inhuman slaughter without protest.

You see, when Obama was droning weddings in Afghanistan, or providing Saudi Air force with targeting direction to drop US supplied cluster bombs and White Phosphorus on schools, hospitals and Yemeni markets using US F-15s, few of the many at the airports across American cities currently said a single world.  Since it was Obama, it was “all good.” Even still, there was nothing said when in 2011, then President Barack Obama and the Clinton state department stopped processing Iraq refugee requests for six months imposing a similar ban as Trump’s. I say similar because if you take the time to read the EO (as I have) it is nothing like these idiot pundit talking heads describes it as being.  Instead, they play the herd-like public, so distraught with emotional indignity and desecration so eager to accept what they see from TV without question.  A more accurate representation of the EO is that it specifically focuses in on Syrians (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen are not even declared, stated, cited or listed in the EO specifically). If they were, we can thank the past administration for this policy shift for these visa restrictions for these seven nations exactly, which was put in place by the Obama administration in 2015 for cats who had been in said nations after 2011 (ironically it was in March 2011 when a multi-state NATO-led coalition began a military intervention in Libya and at the same time the Obama administration instigated the civil war in Syria).

In all accuracy, if one read it, the only mention of the other nations are as follows: “For the next 90 days, nearly all travelers, except U.S. citizens,traveling on passports from Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen will be temporarily suspended from entry to the United States.“  It also goes on to state: “I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.”

If you read the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington post (and I can only imagine mainstream TV/cable  news), all I am seeing is messaging pushing the narrative that seven mostly Muslim nations are targeted from entering the US over the ninety day period.  But this isn’t true.  Don’t believe me, again read the EO yourself.

So when Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth “full-blooded Indian” Warren, or media pundits whom proclaim to be objective journalist yet clearly do not know how to read or either comprehend processes that allow for the extraction of semantic meaning from words, express their OFFENDEDNESS at President Trump's action, I have to question their sincerity, as I do with all these protestors.

I question if they care so much, then where have they been and why have they been silent.  As I noted earlier, they didn’t mind when Obama did it for a period of 120 days, nor complained when upon leaving office ending a privilege bestowed among Cuban migrants and immigrants of being allowed to enter the U.S. without a visa—and to remain with benefits. They were uncommunicative and closed-mouth even prior to this for when Obama  approved policy designed to destabilize governments (neoliberal interventionism’s), allow for the bombing countries (undeclared wars of aggression),  and arming  jihadist extremists , no one complained then even when we saw the massive outflow of people from Niger, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria among others. If you never complained about the Obama administration accelerated/enhanced drone policy, you are really in no moral or ethical position to complain about Trump's refugee policy. Look in that mirror and ask yourself, what's worse: Trump not allowing refugees to enter the US or Obama droning and bombing  these peoples’ into oblivion and creating an environment for fundamentalist cats that cut off heads, enslave women and girls, and burn people alive in an effort to control their communities? But no now we have a responsibility to refugees.

It is nothing wrong with caring and having compassion for others, but when it is phony and falls along partisan lines it borders on fascism.  Such hypocrisy has no moral footing to stand unless you are willing to take these migrants in your home or have refugee camps built across from where you live, but I doubt you have that much care and sincere interest to go that far. I mean we have homeless people right here in America who many of the anti-Trump EO protestors drive past, don’t help and even lock their doors and roll up their windows when they approach their car. Take San Francisco for example.  Liberal democrats all over the city protesting for affordable houses but when plans were made to put that housing in their liberal democratic neighborhood they fought and still are fighting against it. I guess it is okay to protest for affordable housing for the poor and homeless as long as it isn’t put next door to me

Clearly these protesters like to say it is an all-out Muslim ban when fact dictates these nations only account for 12 percent of all Muslims in the world – nations that have had similar bans against Israel but proffered no protest.  But this is cool, but some aspects are not.  For example, Starbucks announced it plans to hire 10,000 refuges but when it comes to former inmates or young black youth in America, they are content with them remaining unemployed. But like I said before, where was this activism when Obama & Hillary were creating refugees by dropping bombs on the homes they once owned in the places in which they hail from? And don’t forget about the celebrity Hollywood cats that politicize the #Muslimban yet never mentioning that in the majority of their movies they portray Muslims as terrorist (which can be interpreted as progressives protesting under the claim that they are tolerant, but they are not).  Tolerance for them only means accepting views comparable to theirs for reason and compassion is thrown out the window when you disagree with them. One can only speak your mind if you tow the same ideological line.

Something must change, it is as if you don’t agree with someone, instead of listening and using reason and pragmatism, folks would rather just yell, call names and argue.  This isn’t productive. I will not point fingers but there is enough hypocrisy to go around feed the world indefinitely.  Strange there's so much outrage over Trump's refugee ban compared to Obama's disastrous regime-change policies in Libya, Syria and Yemen. I know what trump did was idiotic, stupid and in American but for you fake outrage and not put in work in your back yard is equally stupid. This is what I meant by such being comical for the hilarity of the herd mentality cannot be ignored.  And this is sad because as one writer pointed out describing all of the anti-Trump protest: “…marchers aren’t waiting for the policy fog to lift. Their anger is directed at people, not policies. [These] protests [are] intended,above all, to express the protesters’ moral superiority to the president and those who voted for him…. Why complain now, when no decision has been made? It delegitimizes the future protests and exposes the bias of the opposition. . . .An opposition focused on personality.”

I just ask, is this you? Are you as loud when Israel already has a wall?

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