Brown Sugar Is Broke

One of the problems associated with being of African descent after the birth of Columbus is that your resources and surplus have been plundered (often before you were born) and you are eternally close to the edge of poverty. Bob Marley said, “They make the world so hard every day you got to keep on fighting.” Even when you think you have money—you can even be a millionaire—being Black means that you have more than a few crazy cousins who don’t have a dime. For too many of us there is no middle class—too much extremism. Now let’s DJ mix Chris Rock in this mufukka in “Chris Rock—Wealth”…

It should follow that when the freelance writer(s) behind Brown Sugar announces she is broke, it should—statistically speaking—be no surprise. However, because of the Hollywood-ization of human consciousness, what Brown Sugar has announced is indeed rare—and followed up by posts like “Dollars and Cents—My Bills” and “Dollars and Cents—The Soap Debacle” takes it right out of the ball park.

You see, ‘traditionally oppressed’ peoples like we Black people, have trouble with shame. I grew up very close to Hollywood in LAUSD schools where shame was avoided at all costs. Some thugs from my neighborhood were even willing to kill to avoid being ashamed. There were three areas of shame that pushes weak-ass Black buttons: (i) having skin packed with melanin and being reminded of it, (ii) having head-hair that does not dangle when shaken and (iii) being materialistically poor. The super-sad irony for modern Black people (born after the rise of crack cocaine in the 1980s) is that there is no shame at all about being “spiritually” poor—just materialistically (this is the essence of “keeping it real”).

The Brown Sugar woman has, to my knowledge, violated iii—which is huge. She has admitted publically that she has no money. Now here are some random points I have collected over the years about this situation:

• Most Americans “hate” math—but math in particular and the sciences in general ‘protect’ Black people from racism more than the non-sciences. The previous sentence says that we need more real Black people in the sciences. For some reason I am still operating under the assumption that there is more job security in a sciences-related career (Dr. James Hansen may disagree with me—and almost certainly because of politics I could lose my sources of income tomorrow). Brown Sugar probably does not want to hear this math shit and I am past tired trying to relate to people who pretend to respect (but not implement) what is being said here so let me move on…
• There is a real, tactical reason why seasoned Hollywood veterans deliberately pretend to let you know that “everything is fine.” This is done for business reasons because market value is based on perception. You can’t reveal that you are having any trouble because it makes it harder to negotiate price or even reach talks for the next deal. So it is better to pretend that you are doing an obscure documentary in Tibet instead of hiding out in a 400-square-foot studio in Culver City. What’s sad is when these real business tactics become a way of life—a thoughtless habit of lying.
• Non-Black people may wonder why Black people seem so ambivalent or even cold toward so many “of their kind” in financial or other deep troubles. The issue for Black people like me is triage. I have blood relatives in similar straights so the burden of support is often filled to capacity. There can even be deep complex webs of anger woven by the self-described victim of sudden impoverishment because we are not helping them enough. This often pisses me off because me and my homie started in the same *f’*ed up place and the help that I received was very little in the way of material support. It is the non-material support that my person values most. But this metaphysical talk is often dismissed as a bunch of bullshit by the penniless one. This deeply angers me… another one is lost to the real…So, to keep this real, do send donations to Brown Sugar to instantly gratify the situation and drive it towards a classic Hollywood ending… “keep hope alive”… By the way, according to technorati.com, Brown Sugar has a higher authority and higher rank than kintespace.com! So she and her crew has gots to be doing something right! This is just a temporary thang!

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