A Thug is Not a Man

A thug is not a man.

Today, many Black males identify with the thug culture. Over the past twenty years it has been seen as a way of life in many Black neighborhoods. Fathers have passed these ideals on to their sons. And now their sons are passing it on to their grandsons.

Which is why a thug is not a man.

A thug is a concept.

The thug has always been a concept. A concept made up by White people to exploit young and vulnerable Black males who have no sense of identity and no understanding of their history.

African-Americans need to understand that Thug culture is a set of values and ideals made up by rich white males in Corporate America, Madison Avenue, and Hollywood to undermine the African-American Males of Generation X and beyond. This was part of a long-term master plan to keep African American males from competing in the United States economy and achieving financial independence in large numbers.

Thug culture did not come from the streets of the Black community. No, it came from a boardroom. Mixing concepts from prison, hip-hop, pimping, and gangs, rich white businessmen created the Thug and Thug culture and promoted it as a religion of values, beliefs and ideals to program the thinking of impressionable young African-American males 15 and under in the mid-1980s.

If one looks closer, the Thug is nothing more than a modernized repackaging of the coon and brute caricatures, amalgmating the two racist stereotypes into a brand new stereotype for a new generation. The ideal Thug for White America is a lazy shiftless Black male who looks for ways to avoid work through hustles and drug deals. He is an inarticulate buffon who can only speak in a string of profanities and street slang. Moreover, like the brute he has a voracious appetite for sex and a savage lust for violence. Like both caricatures, he is known for wearing brightly colored loose-fitting clothing and walking in an ape-like stance which some call a swagger.

Many African-American males who imbibe thug culture have no idea that they are just acting like coons and brutes, racist stereotypes that originated in the Antebellum south. They have no idea that they’re doing just what rich White people want them to do: destroying their lives and the lives of the people around them.

Before thug culture emerged as mainstream in the late 1980’s, most young Black males were just regular hardworking people, no different from Whites. Thanks to the progress of the Civil Rights Movement, a large majority of Black boys were starting to follow the path laid out by older traditional Black males in the job market and role models they saw on shows like Benson, The Cosby show and A Different World, and many were making inroads into the middle class. Before thug culture overtook the Black community, Black men finishing high school and going on to college was the norm.

Those who didn’t’ finish high school were working towards GEDs and plans for college. Others were working towards military careers, careers in civil service, and long-term employment in union jobs at factories, docks and other good-paying jobs.

Corporate America, Madison Avenue and Hollywood didn’t like that. Why? Because if large masses of Black males became educated and started to compete with them they could create their own businesses. Moreover, they would create their own economic and political systems which would undermine their power base in America. So they sought to sabotage that progress.

And the first salvo in undermining that progress was NWA’s Straight Outta Compton. With this music video, and the accompanying CD, the Thug had a visual image that children and adolescents could see as “cool”, A rebellious male that was fighting against the establishment. These forty guzzling criminals with foul mouths who ran from the cops and carried guns were nothing like the clean-cut images on television shows like The Cosby Show or the articulate clean-cut east coast rappers like Kid N’ Play, Heavy D, or Big Daddy Kane.

These rebels with a cause they became popular with many black males. As large masses of Blacks began imbibing the culture of thuggism spread like a virus. It permeated hip-hop music, clothing, art and film. Movies like Boyz N The Hood, Menace II Society, As thug life began infecting Black culture, pitchmen like Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Suge Knight, Tupac Notorious B.I.G., Nas and Jay-Z glamourized and sold “Thug Life” as the way African-Americans should live.

But many brothers and sisters couldn’t see the insidious plan to undermine the progress of the Black community behind the luxury cars, baggy clothes and the swagger. In interviews Rappers like Nas, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G often bragged about how they dropped out of school in the eighth grade and how they didn’t need the “White Man’s Education”. This mantra became imbedded in the minds of young Black males and their mothers. Soon Education, which was the cornerstone of Black progression since slavery was seen as “Acting White.”

Going to work and having one’s own business began to be seen as dumb and drug dealing and hustling was the only way to go for a Black man in America. Crime was glamorized as the only way a Black man could achieve success.

The propoganda of Thug life was designed to program a way of thinking into a majority of Generation X. The values they took in subconsciously watching this media would impact the next generation, generation Y and the millenials and their children. And this is where the devastating impact of Thug culture can be seen on the Black community.

Notice how over the past 20 years since thug culture has permeated the Black community as a consciousness, the dropout rate in the black community has skyrocketed. In cities like New York the number of Black males dropping out of school is 70 percent. Nationwide the dropout rate among Black males is now over fifty percent.

Also notice how over the past 20 years African-Americans are more illiterate and undereducated. Those rappers who told teenagers from my generation and beyond that they were “Acting White” and that they dropped out of school in the eighth grade had a hand in inspiring a generation of young males to think they could do the same. After all, they became millionaires (LIE) without school so could they.

Also notice how the number of 18, 19, and 20 year olds with arrests has skyrocketed as well. In some cities like Washington DC, there isn’t a single black male under 25 who doesn’t have a case in the criminal justice system or an encounter with the criminal justice system. Again, those same entertainers had a hand in inspiring young males into thinking they could do the same. After all, they became millionaires with felony convictions (LIE) so they could do the same as well.

Those entertainers took blood money at the expense of the overall Black community. These Uncle Toms preached the religion of Thug culture poisoned the minds of a generation.

A Black male under 25 today is more likely to have a prison record than a High School diploma. He is less likely to have a college degree. Less than five percent of Black males attend college today. Why? Because being a thug is Black and college is for White people. Moreover it’s not cool for Black people to be educated.

Thanks to the false teachings of Thug culture the Black economy has collapsed. Over the past twenty years many of our businesses have either left the black community, were sold to Whites, or just went out of business. Because so many of our young men and women decided not to pursue entreprenurship to replenish the Black economy, instead choosing to become drug dealers , hustlers and gang banger, the overall infrastructure of the Black economy has collapsed.

Black America needs to wake up.

Brothers and sisters need to realize that a Thug is not a man.

A thug is a concept. A group of ideas, beliefs and values created by rich White people to destroy Black people. Moreover, a concept created by those same racists so Black people will destroy themselves so the racists won’t have to soil their hands.

Today Black America isn’t fighting a Black man or a group of men called thugs. No, it is fighting a group of ideas, beliefs and values. A group of ideas, beliefs and values that White America seeks to establish itself as the dominant culture in Black America. A new generation of coons, bucks, jezebels mammies and other old racist stereotypes White America feels comfortable with.

And the sad part is everything is going according to plan. In another 20 years there black race will be worse off than it was during slavery. Unskilled, uneducated and scavenging like dogs for scraps.

Brothers and sisters you must deprogram yourself from the false teachings of thug culture. It is a state of mind meant to destroy us as a people.

Brothers and Sisters, there is no such thing as a Thug. What you see people participating in described as Thug life are a set of false beliefs made up by a consortium of White racists and Uncle Toms.

Our slave ancestors weren’t thugs. Our Grandfathers and grandmothers weren’t thugs. Even some of our mothers and fathers weren’t thugs. No, they were hardworking men and women who took pride in building businesses and supporting each other. They adhered to conservative ideals and beliefs such as education, thrift, sacrifice employment, and entrepreneurship that allowed us to compete with the rest of America and have our piece of the American dream. They would be ashamed to see the people of this generation turning their backs on the traditions that built Black America and kept it strong for a false set of beliefs made up by a group of racists that destroy all they worked for.