by Edgar Miraculous Dyer
Consider that Star Trek's beautiful Lieutenant Uhura (played by actress Nichelle Nichols), one of the first African American women with a major role on an American television show, is positively ADORED by sci-fi fans. Furthermore, the television show, which spawned an immeasurably more successful movie franchise, is an American television and film genre institution.
What does that have to do with VIDEOs like the one that I just watched, posted by Afro-American YouTuber and wellness enthusiast, Ruth Whitfield?
Well...the peculiar tone of pushback, resentment, dismissiveness and hostility to any identifiably Black American rallying or showing care for their ethnic group (not race) is unmatched by what we typically find in responses to videos shared by any other group. It is particularly nasty, when the Afro-American content creator is trying to right a wrong or offer help with a problem, specific to other Afro-Americans.
I don't think I'm wrong in understanding that 'black' in this video means 'Afro-American', as in descendants of the survivors of American slavery; hence, her references to American slavery.
If an American son of Nigerian, Jamaican or Honduran immigrants benefits from this information, very good for him. If an American of Puerto Rican or Belgian extraction benefits, good for them also - nobody shewing you away. This is a 'cultural' dialogue of an elder of a select group of African-descended people with her community.
Not racism. Not anti-anything.
Anybody can eat homemade oatmeal cookies or a home-cooked egg breakfast instead of Hershey, McDonald's, Frito Lay or Starbuck's. Nobody's hurting anybody or locking anybody out of anything in this video, and anyone, who bothered to watch it, can see that.
If you want to shove a dozen donut sticks down your throat, every morning, and shoot your blood pressure and cholesterol levels into the hospital, help yourself. So let's call the nasty comments here what they are: pathological and weird. If you have a problem with something going on here or who it's going on with, whatever nationality you are - yes, some of the resentful parties here are other black people - you deal with that.
That's your problem.
Certainly, we can find a questionable assertion here, entangled with the best of what Ruth Whitfield is sharing in this video. We all know the mysterious "They" weren't baking Oreos during slavery, and so what? What do you want for pointing that out, ..a prize? Do you want to see us all reject or ridicule her...knock her down a peg or two, maybe? Well...you failed. 'Slavery Oreos' doesn't discredit the rest of this video...
And I suspect mythical cookies isn't the real problem some of us are having with it. Maybe, the problem is who she's baking those cookies for...who isn't feeling served, while feeling entitled to service by certain races or nationalities.
Consider again that Star Trek's lovely African American actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura, is adored by sci-fi fans, and I am inclined to assume that, as long as she's serving the white captain - that's James T. Kirk (my favorite) - of the United Starship Enterprise, ..she will continue to be so adored. If you're having trouble imagining what would happen, if Lt. Uhura suddenly got her own starship to captain, ..just take a look at what happened to the universally panned Will Smith sci-fi outing, After Earth.
Swept up in the anti-black media hatefest launched against Smith's film in its first week, even some African American critics and moviegoers alike, typically applauding Afro-representation in places we least expect to see it, ..couldn't resist taking a swing at After Earth for silly, inconsequential things we've seen in almost every space adventure film ever made.
Keep in mind that After Earth and Star Trek are both fiction, but we can only imagine the animosity an audience that turns on American cinema's black buddy, Will Smith, had reserved for poor Nichelle Nichols. Stay on your starship, Uhura, ..where it's safe.
The expressed resentment or pushback, online and everywhere else, always seems particularly acidic, when the target is an Afro-American woman; so, we're keeping Ruth, without your permission or approval, ..just to annoy you. She's helping us do what you apparently resent the most: survive, thrive, excel. In the video, hers is a culturally motivated message; not black nationalism, racism, reverse racism or anti-American or whatever righty BS you can toss over here, hoping it'll stick. It didn't, and we're keeping her...slavery Oreos, unsupported assertions and all.
You lose. You fail (again). Bye, Felicias.
Watch Ruth Whithfield's wellness video, right here, on YouTube.com
Edgar Miraculous (Mel) Dyer, Capicostia's publisher, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio), the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill and the Board of Directors for both Total Care Services, Inc. and YMCA Capital View.
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