A White Conservative Educates Me About BET

After a discussion with a white conservative today, some things have come to my attention about BET, and it's purpose that I was not aware of.  I'd like to thank you, Ryan Cracka (@RyanCracka on Twitter), for opening my eyes.

It was always my belief that, for all of its faults (and there are many), BET was created to fill a void in the black community.  At the time of its creation, there was no programming that was controlled by black people.  With the exception of "Soul Train," the shows that did star black people back then were created, controlled, and owned by white people.  In addition, we are only 12% of the population.  Even if we managed to get a show on the air, every black person in America would have to watch it to keep it from getting canceled, which is impossible, unless the show is called "Good Times."  So that means for a show featuring black people to stay on network TV, white people had to like it, too.  It's the reason why almost everything from "Living Single" to "My Wife and Kids" got canceled. 

This is all stuff I believed. 

I also believed that BET wasn't created out of hate for white people, like so many white conservatives think, because that would be a breathtaking level of stupidity.  Watching TV to make white folks mad?  I'm pretty sure they would have taken us up on that.  I guess we'd just give that James Evans glare to the TV, and they'd keep running the world, guilt-free.

My thinking was that it's a numbers game.  It's harder for black people to get and sustain a show on TV that doesn't have white support, because our 12% is smaller than their 55%.  So, instead of fighting to get shows on channels that won't support them, why not start a channel just for us?  I figured white conservatives would like that, considering how much they talk about us not being self-sufficient.  Some might wonder, though, "What's wrong with having shows that cater to everyone?"  The answer is, "nothing."  But I believed that a black channel would be good, because we don't always like the same stuff, which is why there wasn't a large influx of black people watching "Friends." 

(Yes, I know, there were black people watching "Friends."  But usually, they were the only ones in their entire family and circle of friends who were.  Seriously, anyone know two black people that watched "Friends?"  The first time, not reruns.)

So, that's why there was a need for BET, or so I thought.  Black people wanted to watch stuff with black people in it, and white people didn't always want to deliver.  And it isn't because of racism that we don't always have shows.  It's economics.  I didn't understand all of this backlash, because no one give Latinos this kind of grief about their channels, and that's probably because no one understand what the fuck they're saying on Telemundo.  Hell, they have their own cable packages that include Spanish Disney Channel, Spanish ESPN, and Spanish CNN.  If we had our own Disney Channel, they'd probably riot. 

That what I was thinking.  But thanks to Ryan Cracka, I see the truth now. 

. @ThadOchocinco No, Thad. It comes from a fallacy - instilled by The Left - that we want to exclude you in the first place. #Colorblind
— Ryan (@RyanCracka) July 21, 2013

Brainwashing.  The only logical explanation.  And if I know anything, it's that a guy named "Ryan Cracka" is gonna have his finger on the pulse of Black America.  He continues: 

. @ThadOchocinco You are likely smart enough. But conditioning and brainwashing are poweful tools even against smart people.
— Ryan (@RyanCracka) July 21, 2013

He couldn't finish educating me, because he said I was putting words in his mouth.  I was only trying to interpret his words into a form that I could use, because we're not smart enough to figure out shit on our own.  Here I was thinking that black people wanted to see themselves represented in television, media, and politics, but that's crazy talk.  The simple answer is obviously 30 to 40 years of training freethinking human beings to succumb to the will of your political enemies in an attempt to gain voter loyalty.  Obviously. 

The best part is, it's not even our fault.  It's Nancy Pelosi's fault, evidently.  Or, uh...George Soros, I guess.  Whoever keeps getting that thoughtful Sean Hannity so worked up.  I would be more familiar with Fox News, but I've been brainwashed to segregate myself by watching BET.  In fact, I gotta wrap this up, because there might be some reruns of "The Game" on.

And only conservatives care enough about us to fight this injustice.  After all, you don't see them taking on Asians or Indians for segregating themselves, and they've been doing it for longer than America's been in existence.  So, the next time you see a Republican on TV using coded language like "thugs" or "welfare queens," trying to roll back voting rights, editing all of the slavery out of history books, or cutting spending for funding at HBCUs, just remember that they're doing it for you, to make things fair for everybody.  Because once we all hit rock bottom, we're going to look up and see the white conservatives standing over us again.  Just like they think it should be.

You bleeding assholes.

Texas: Electing Retards Since 1845

It's not that Texas is great; it's that it's okay to be stupid there. It's a state that doesn't let a little thing like intelligence keep you from governing over others. Look at the retards you guys keep putting in office.

There's George W. Bush, whose clear and unfettered stupidity had me wondering exactly how much money George 41 paid for his son's "C" average at Yale. There's Sheila Jackson-Lee, the US Representative who's only claim to fame is suggesting that the US Weather Service start using stereotypical "Black" names for hurricanes, so as not to appear racist. The Texas Board of Education voted to ban schools there from teaching the theoretical age of the universe just two weeks ago. Chairman of the Board Don McElroy says that "someone has got to stand up to experts," with all their knowing stuff and reading. He then accused all experts of being "witches."

Now, we can add Texas State Rep. Betty Brown to the list for the statement she recently made. She told Chinese-American lawyer Ramey Ko that Asian-Americans having trouble with voter registration should choose new names, "easier for Americans to deal with."

Because it's just too much to ask for Americans to learn to pronounce something that's not in English. Only in America would someone say something this stupid. Really, the only question is, "Who's dumber: Brown or Jackson-Lee?"

She had to have been doing this on purpose, because outdoing Sheila Jackson-Lee's battle against hurricane bigotry took some work. She had to dig deep in the bag to get on that level, because what Mrs. Jackson-Lee said was so stupid that it offended the Earth. That's why Hurricane Katrina came in and wrecked shit like it did.

But I think Brown might have a leg-up in this "Battle of the Stupids." Her comment was not only stupid, but racist, too. On and unrelated note, she's also a Republican, the same party that supports a woman who's so dumb, she can't even tell you what she reads (Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin), a man who wouldn't accept extra unemployment funds and suggested his constituents use prayer to keep from becoming homeless (Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina), a woman who's always in the news for saying something insane (Google 'Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann') and another guy who apparently agrees with selling out his heritage, because he changed his name from "Piyush" to "Bobby (Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal)."

Just because it worked for one of your party members who was looking for some mass appeal doesn't mean that everyone's okay with that idea. Who would I be to suggest to another human being that they should change their name just because I'm not smart enough to say or spell it? It's not the same thing as changing your shirt or pulling your pants up. This is their family name, which means way more to Asians than it does to us. It's a link to their parents, their grandparents, their ancestors who shared that same name through the centuries. But, no, Betty Brown thinks that they should change it just because she can't get her ass off the short bus.

Really, going by her rationale, I should have changed my name, too, because it's been a bitch going through life named "Thaddeus." People can't be expected to say all of those syllables all in the proper order and stuff. There's like, eight letters in my name.

So what I did was, I went to the Betty Brown Name Generator and got a new name. I will now be known, henceforth, as Billy-Ray "Wal-Mart" Brown. But only in Texas, where I know the residents have trouble with multiple syllables, subject-verb agreements and are not allowed to know that the universe is roughly 14 billion years old.

Now that's change you can believe in.