Is Your Dog Racist?

Posted on by toddpanther

key_peele_racist_dog

My friend Malik Russell told me about this, and gave me the following to print.

Black People, White Folks, Television, and Dogs
THE TRUE REASON WHY WHITE FOLK’S DOGS DON’T LIKE BLACK PEOPLE

By Melki

1269 words

Well, okay, Barack got elected and we all got a little excited until the deejay swirled the record backwards and in a flash there we were again staring 1950 straight in the face surrounded by a truck full of angry rednecks calling you every modernized version of the N-word they could think of and they could think of a lot.

Maybe I’m going a bit overboard but there have got to be some Negus just as tired and feeling bout the same I’m feeling about this mythical post-racial universe that we all supposed to be living in right now.

Just consider the following essay a PSA regarding all the BS that Negus will continue to deal with in the post-racial era-and now a word from our sponsor.

I had my swagger on in full speed as I headed through the beautiful suburban neighborhood, trees swayed in the wind and blending gently into sculpted lawns sprawling with freshly waxed Saabs and Volvo turbo in the driveways. I continued my walk smiling and waving gently at the joggers passing by.  I could smell the fresh somewhat pristine air tingling down my nostrils as I inhaled deeply. Although, I’m not a Buddhist, I somehow felt I was pretty close to a state of nirvana that many of them strove lifetimes for. Before I completely exhaled-I was traumatically ushered out of my near state of peace by the harsh loud barking of some miniature dog who rolled up on me teeth pulled out like the jump outs announcing to the whole neighborhood “Negus in da house,” as his white owner laughingly  and somewhat cavalierly chased after him, saying ‘oh he doesn’t bite.’

Flashes of Birmingham ran through my mind as I braced for the cold blast from the fire hose. In preparation, I stepped back and eased myself into the Crane style position ready to unleash a killer death blow should this miniature devil dog decide to try his luck and take a bite of the darker meat.

Luckily, his owner caught him in time and apologetically smiled. “He never does that; don’t know what got into him.” I smiled for just a second and continued walking thinking to myself, “yeah okay, he never does that. You mean he never does that to ‘white people.’

Since relocating to my lovely white neighborhood near one of the nation’s major universities, let’s say I have experienced white people and their dogs a little more than I am used to. I feel almost as out of place as a black person on Friends or some Black high school student in an advance placement class. Most Black people know that not too many people in the “Hood,” ever run up on you after their dog has escaped, smiling gently and saying “oh he doesn’t bite.” It’s more like “Negus, run fo your life biiiitch.” Let’s just say, anyone who has been chased by Pitt Bulls in a death race never ever truly gets over it. It’s like having someone pull a gun on you, you sometimes forget the fear installed in your psyche due to the incident, but never really forget how you shitted on yourself in front of your girl. Or was it that she never lets you forget? Regardless, of why you never forget these incidents you are permanently traumatized.  In your mind, each next person may be strapped and it’s a scenario of gatting before getting got. So, while many dogs in the suburban neighborhoods are generally not as aggressive as the trained to attack hood variety who will bite anyone and anything, you are still not totally comfortable with them being off their leashes-especially when you’ve realized that you are wearing the wrong skin color.

Of course there are some PETA loving white people who will apologize for and justify their dog’s behavior regardless of who the dogs bite as well as those who are more surprised than you that their dogs don’t like Black people. In this nice suburban Hood, I have been run up on by large, small, trained, untrained, black, white, part-wolf, and coyotes alike all with the same apologetic remarks and smiles by the white owners that of course their dogs never do this and they don’t know what got into them? Of course there are those who seemingly enjoy the process that allows them to gain one-upmanship on the only thing that has ever truly struck fear in the heart of the white man- Black men.

At first I thought, I assumed that maybe it was my cologne? I did have a penchant for buying cologne from one a many street corner vendor. Some of whom no doubt were also the manufacturers of those inspiring scents. Then I thought well maybe it was the new deodorant that I was wearing, it promised in its commercials to have women throw their panties at you, maybe dogs were sensing this and were like ‘oh hell to the no.’ They could look at my size and height and know immediately their access to food and freedom to roam would be immediately limited with me sitting on the couch jacking em for their tidbits and snacks when their owners were away. In a sense they were exhibiting a form of nobility by protecting the chastity of their owners?

After delving deeply into the latest dog psychology journals and finding no real answers other than wondering if I was in fact descended from an ancient tribe of dog whisperers? I decided to do what every other intelligent and highly educated person would do when confronted with one of life’s unexplained mysteries that made you feel strange and like a total social misfit-I Google’d it.

To my surprise their were hundreds of posts on Google relating to white people wondering why their dogs incessantly bark at, attack, or chase Black people? They questioned whether they were racists and the dogs picked up on it? Some thought it was just exposure-they (dogs) don’t know Black people, so black people scare them. One guy thought it was because of the fact that black people were so dark that the dogs couldn’t see their expressions and this frightened them as well. Some said they thought it was because at one time those dogs were treated bad by a black person and now held all black people in contempt, which might explain some instances or merit life as one of those urban myths about unemployed black men breaking into white people’s houses and terrorizing their dogs in a way that Guantanamo Bay prison guards would envy and then leaving before white people returned from work? The only evidence found was a NFL Mike Vick rookie card.

After the some additional hours of searching online, I think I found the answer on YouTube (http://video.aol.com/video-detail/dog-barking-at-black-man-im-not-racise-dont-think-me-bad/3908521475) where it in my opinion fully explained the main reason why white people’s dogs hate Black folks–television. In the YouTube video, the dog didn’t have to actually run into a Black man, all it had to do was see one on television and it started barking in a way that seemed like he was saying  ‘yeah that’s him, get that Negus,’ in some distant dog-speak dialect.

Think about it, if you raised your dog like a human being and when you leave and go to work; your dog is sitting there alone by themselves with nothing to do. Don’t think they are going to waste the entire day just waiting for you to show up hours later and turn on the lights in a dark house acting like you love them, only to do it all over again the next day. No they are watching television when you are gone. Either that or on the “‘Dog Net” dishing dirt of their owners .Yes dogs are some of the smartest animals alive and they watch television. They use a subtle form of mind-control to convince you that those adult videos were something that you actually decided to order. I recently stayed with a family who had one of those miniature mutts and when they went to work and school he did what most people home at that time do-watched Jerry Springer.

One day, I left and hung around the corner and waited about thirty minutes. I saw him peek out the window to be sure I was gone and then when he thought the coast was clear he picked up the remote in his mouth and hopped on the couch and turned on the TV. By the time I snuck in the back door, he had just finished Oprah and was leaning back on the couch, remote in paw with a bowl full of freshly popped popcorn and a diet soda watching the Black History month back to back broadcast of Soul Plane 2 and a bootleg copy of Precious.

We all know that most people who have no real contact with Black people get their image and views of Black people from television and movies. This means that 7 out of 10 ten times every Black person they see is a pimp, hooker, homeless, criminal, or drug dealer, or reality-show psycho-crazy loud mouth. I’ll never forget the damage watching continual episodes of “Ten-speed & Brown shoe” and the Martin show did to my psyche. I’m just glad that I don’t have to endure the pain of trying to explain to my daughter who Flavor Flav is? When I’m in the Burbs some white folks still expect me to beatbox my way into McDonalds. The dogs see the same portrayals of Black people that everyone else does. Maybe dogs watch cop shows and realize that they can pretty much do whatever they want to Blacks and violate the rights of innocent Blacks just to solve a crime that someone else may have done or that a Black person may be thinking of doing? I mean who cares about due process, certainly not Hollywood? Maybe they all saw the OJ trial when the dog broke down and admitted lying after being cross-examined?  Image is everything in America, and even in the 21st Century, little Black girls still prefer White dolls over the Black ones. Of course things are changing some since Barack Obama’s election, but with the rate he’s getting beat up and attacked we’ll see whether he still looks “presidential,” after a few years of Black quarterback intensity criticism from his detractors, especially the overweight pill-popping radio hosts types who live in neighborhoods that most Negus still can’t legally move into.

Now if I’m a dog who believes I’m human or a human suffering from self imposed personality dyslexia has become a dog that happens to do what most dogs who consider themselves human do during the day when everyone is gone-watch television-then whenever I see a Black person-I’m going to attack. I mean what do you expect? I can’t help it, it’s just the dog in me. ©

Peace

Melki is a writer, journalist, activist and the author of 21 Hustle: The Funkyhoophipnautic.

 

1ne¡gus                        

Pronunciation:

\ˈnē-gəs, ni-ˈgüs\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Amharic nəgus, from Geez nĕgūša nagašt king of kings

Date:

1594

: king —used as a title of the sovereign of Ethiopia

http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/negus

 

GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS

1.     My dog barks at almost all black people, is she racist? It is very …

May 11, 2006 … Did you get your dog as a puppy? It’s possible that before you got her she was abused by a black person. This can also occur with men, people with …
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This sounds a little like an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” but I notice that my bigger dog (Addison) is more likely to bark at a black.
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Feb 26, 2003 … He was a good dog, a sweet dog, people are already biased against pit bulls, … If the dog barks and the person recoils, the dog registers a victory. … (My friends had serendipitously hired a black trainer for Percy, …
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Want A Government Job? Don’t Be Involved With Mumia!

Posted on by toddpanther

By the way, “Writing on the Wall,” the forthcoming Mumia book Fernandez is editing, will be Mumia’s eighth. Here are the previous seven, in chronological order.

And here’s Mumia’s response.

And here’s the Mumia biography filmmaker’s response. Here’s the text, in case the blog moves on:

Behind the Flash mob Attack on Obama’s DOJ Attorney General Nominee Debo Adegbile

There is a story that lies behind the Adegbile partisan fight on the senate floor.  If you want to understand why the Republicans are using Adegbile’s association with Mumia Abu-Jamal to try and block his nomination, take a long hard look at ‘Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary”, www.mumia-themovie.com.  This will give you the measure of the man.  It chronicles Mumia Abu-Jamal’s evolution as one of the world’s most notable public intellectuals.

Today’s stage is the floor of the U.S. Senate where a cloture vote on Adegible’s nomination takes place in the wake of his clearing the Judiciary Committee.  According to an OP ED in the Wall Street Journal Adegbile’s representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal when he headed the NAACP LDF is reason enough to derail his nomination.  The Fraternal Order of police, Fox News and bipartisan derision from Pennsylvania politicians republican Senator Pat Toomey, and Democrat Bob Casey has fueled the impending drama.

It is a drama where U.S. Senators and political pundits regurgitate blatant lies that seek to demonize Mumia because they face zero accountability to the facts(1).   Just one fact: When Terry Maurer Carter, a court reporter came forward and sworn in an affidavit that Albert Sabo the original judge said of during the first week of Mumia’s trial”  “I am going to help them fry the nigger”,  Philadelphia Common Pleas court judge Pamela Dembe ruled it “irrelevant”, and that it was not an indication that the case was racially biased.

The media and congressional pundits deplore that Mumia’s death sentence was overturned and he was removed from death row. They repeatedly attribute this result to advocacy lawyers who put forward fabricated tale of racial bias.   Come now, really?  Racial bias in the U.S. Criminal Justice system and Philadelphia is a fairy tale?

They also conveniently ignore that Mumia’s death sentence was overturned by a court: the U.S. Third Circuit and that decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme court- hardly a liberal bastion by any means.

But why is Mumia relevant at all.  Why are they concerned that he lives or dies?  What does he represent?  Why must he have remained silent.  The answer is because what he says and has been saying for over thirty years is relevant.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, is an internationally acclaimed intellectual who writes in the tradition of Franz Fanon and Noam Chomsky.  That he has done his work from an Pennsylvania  prison cell for over 33 yrs.  (30 of which were spent in solitary on death row) is remarkable.   His weekly worldwide radio broadcasts and bestselling books have been translated into nine languages.

Nelson Mandela, the European Parliament, Maya Angelou, E.L. Doctorow, Amnesty International, Danielle Mitterrand, Danny Glover, among many others have called his trial a miscarriage of justice and lauded his incisive writing.

Abu-Jamal through his radio essays and writing directly challenges the false but convenient “we have realized the dream narrative” that everyone from  Time Magazine to Obama is promulgating as we  honor Martin Luther King and celebrate Black History month.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is the conscience of America.  And the backlash is swift.  The level of vitriol and outright demands for his death/silence reminds one of the terrorist label put on Nelson Mandela for a quarter of a century.

Certain revolutionary ideas were not meant to survive the U.S. state sponsored “programme” that targeted Black freedom leaders such as Martin Luther King and ultimately for the last fifty years, black life in America.

The “dream” was assassinated whether it is comfortable to admit that or not.  Mumia Abu-Jamal survived.  And he is one of the many U.S. political prisoners, who are the living witnesses to the true struggle to realize the dreams of freedom and justice.  The United States government through CointelPro and other repressive means has consciously and deliberately attempted to suppress the hopes and dreams of many African Americans.  Listen to Mumia Abu-Jamal www.prisonradio.org.

Noelle Hanrahan, Producer “Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary

globalaudiopi@gmail.com