By now, you’ve heard the song that is in the top twenty on iTunes or seen the video on YouTube which features Antoine Dodson—an upset effeminate brother voicing his anger at the attempted rape of his sister. The song has become so popular that even the lauded NC A&T marching band has arranged and is now performing a version of it.
While I’m sure that we have all shared quite a few laughs as we listened to the parody of the on air interview at WAFF 48 in northern Alabama, there are sad truths festering beneath the humorous video, primarily produced by white hands.
Haven’t we seen this before? Black people splashed across the television exploited for embodying plantation stereotypes, doo-rag or handkerchief atop their heads. Abrasive and angry, their thoughts easily dismissed…dismantled because of a perceived lack of sophistication or education.
Isn’t this a mediated message...one that many people of African descent are trying hard to run away from? Black folk have seen this image all too often as the singular image in news reporting. Too, aren’t the deplorable conditions of the “ghetto” real? Isn’t that what Antoine Dodson is saying...that the dispossessed don’t have the same access to goods and systems as the “bright and the beautiful,” even in the famed Obama era. Dodson’s commentary hearkens back to Public Enemy’s “911 Is A Joke,” in the sense that it reminds us that the poor are still forgotten. However, this time we are rolling in the aisles, rather than paying attention to Dodson’s message.
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