Cold Drank

Ether.

… Maybe Janks Morton and them are right and Niggas are actively blaming our failures on white racism. Maybe we are waiting for the world to be pure of racism before applying ourselves. And maybe the key to moving into a post-race era is to revisit times in our lives where we actually were the misguided white racism-obsessed Niggas that Janks and Steele claim we are. Let’s see how that shit would even sound.

Testing, testing. Is this thing on? Ahem!

It is white racism’s fault that the most prideful accomplishment of my 33 year-old life happened during junior year when I was voted Class Wittiest. There was no daddy in my house when I celebrated this accomplishment so I could blame this all on him. But I must blame white racism. White racism, you are the reason for all of a Nigga’s mistakes. White racism, I wish you were gone to your hut in the Himalayas so I could make better decisions and finally apply myself.

White racism, you made me pride myself in being in a Remedial Math class in 11th grade. I don’t remember if it was Trig, Algebra 1 or Geometry. White racism fucked up my memory. The class might as well have been called Contemporary Mathematics.

Anyway, the dumbest motherfucker in the entire school was this white boy with nose like a tiny beak named “Buzz Bozack”. Thanks to the white racism of our coach, Buzz was quarterback of the football team even though he had a bubble gum arm and couldn’t even run the option right. Quiet as it was kept, Buzz was crazy sensitive about being the dumbest in school.

For some reason, on this particular day, all the Contemporary Mathematic dummies were in class with the regular minded Math kids when Ms. Ashy decided to give the dummies a set of tests back. Buzz got his test first and though he usually wasn’t embarrassed when it was just us Contemporary Mathematic dummies, this time he did that style where you turn the tip of your paper over the grade as soon as it hits your hand. But not before White Racism allowed my nosey fat ass to see that he had made a 7.

Not a 7 out of 10 or 7 on a 12 point scale. I’m talking about a straight 7.

Thanks to white racism, I said to some of my boys, who were all regular-minded math kids, “Told y’all! This how we do in Contemporary Mathematics. Motherfuckers be lounging in the single digits.” I tried to say it like I was escorting them through the plushest room of a beach house in Cancun.

So Buzz was looking really sad and sensitive at his 7, right? And Ms. Ashy had a look on her face that meant she wanted me to shut the fuck up. Thanks to white racism, I didn’t shut the fuck up and Ashy told me in front of everybody, “Keece, you should look at your grade before you start making fun of people.”

Ashy didn’t understand the stranglehold that white racism had on my dome-piece. In my mind, the best thing that could happen would be my scoring less than Buzz. You know how people say that they don’t give a fuck, when really it’s more a question of why they don’t give a fuck or some other existential rumination? Well, unless it was a class where I could help my Mama stretch her money from check to check, thanks to white racism, I sincerely did not give a fuck about Contemporary Mathematics. Plus, I could do division, multiplication, addition, subtraction and square roots in my head faster than anyone I knew, even faster than the brilliant young white racists who kept me down via mind control.

So I told Ms. Ashy that I know I beat Buzz. And by beat him, thanks to white racism, I meant that I got lower than a 7. And I started betting my Niggas that I’d beat him. So Ms. Ashy gets to me and I can see her trying to fold my grade over so no one can see my score, but as soon as that paper hit the desk, I screamed to my boy Lerthon, “Fo’, Nigga! I got me a fo’.”

I showed my 4 to the class and said in a quite direct inside voice, “How you gon’ beat Niggas when it come to fo’s. We invented the fo’.” That fo’ incident cemented my winning Class Wittiest later that year. Little did I know at the time that it wouldn’t be the last time I gleefully championed being an underachieving Nigga.

Despite the fo’ and graduating in the bottom tenth of my class, I won the award for best high school editorial writer in Mississippi. I didn’t go to my graduation because our racist Governor, Kirk Fordice, gave the speech. He had been holding me down all year, too.

Unlike Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Clarence Thomas and Janks who would have been successful without the structural protection of affirmative action, I slid into college thanks to government quota system for Niggas who blame everything on white racism and don’t give a fuck about personal responsibility. Affirmative action is the new lotto for trifling Niggas like me who even blamed white racism for the stankiness of my breath. 

Revisiting that experience in 11th grade has helped me understand the transformation y’all want black men to make. If we look back and see all the ways we blamed white racism and all the ways we underachieved due to the NAACP’s wretched reliance on structural impediments, maybe we can grow up to be rich Niggas like you. Then we, too, can tell the world the problems with what black men think. Thank you, Janks Morton and Shelby Steele, for helping me accept the source of my current Nigga-dly ways. I feel so white, I mean, light now. Still need me a wife, house and kids to reign over though! In due time …

Janks Morton, I’d like to show you a special token of my gratitude by creating a new word in your honor.

Jank – adj., feeding conservative establishment the story it wants to hear while manipulating statistics and methodically exceptionalizing self with little regard to black nuance, intersectionality or truth. Example: “Obama was being jank with that Fathers Day speech” or “If you’re colored and wanna get hired at Fox News or as a bank teller, you better practice being mad jank, Nigga.”

Ether.

 

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