This Week’s National Disappointment

Jigga What? 

J, your new relationship with Roger Goodell, NFL’s Commissioner, “got me thinking, I’ve been thinking”. You say we are pass knelling but our babies are still getting shot in the streets. You’re moving different now you are in that billions club. But this piece won’t be about that. This piece won’t be about the long oppressive history of Black Folks either. It won’t be about how the “so called” Black Freemen was used to justify slavery. This piece won’t be about that. This piece won’t be about Emmett Till, in which I see you are ironically doing a series on or about Brother Fred Hammond murdered by the FBI under another J, Hoover that is. This piece won’t be about keeping Black Quarterbacks out of the NFL. It won’t be about how hockey still taunts and ridicules Blackness, like they do at a good ol’ “Make America Great Again” Rally. Naw, this piece will not be on that. This piece will not be on how Serena Williams’s beauty and masculinity is demeaned or how Kapernick took a peaceful knee, when nobody else knew what to do about these killings, about these killings. You was chillin’ with Hillary when they were talking about these killings, right?

Jigga What? 

Last week FB had a survey on the most influential Hip Hop artist. It was between you and Nas. You changed me when you said, "I'm not a businessman/ I'm a business, man." (Kanye West's 'Diamonds from Sierra Leone). So all I can say is you calling these shots. You making these choices. 

Jigga What? 

Whether anyone knows it or not, I am a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan. I lived outside of Philly, for many, many years. I knew some of the players at the time. I had great 8th row season ticket seats and I hung with my squad regardless of their many losing years. Even after moving to Maryland then to North Carolina, my children were forced to rock the Eagles jersey’s during school pride days. I’m that crazy mama. But all the while, the killings were getting intense. I wrote about Trayvon, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and football became less important to me. Yet the death that changed everything for me was Tamir Rice, beautiful just like my son, mirroring Emmett Till. And these stories passed through the media like skiers on a high slope and nobody knew what to do. Like, KRS-1 said, “Now tell me what the fu*% I’m suppose to do?” I wrote. Nobody listened to me. And you rapped, where you had the world to see. 

I regress . . . 

Like you, I’m from NY and the only thing that trumps football is Hip Hop. A quarter of my peers carried a football, another quarter carried a blunt, the 3rd quarter carried a gun but the last quarter carried a “pen and a paper, a studio tape of . . . ” Our heros weren’t the slaves or players on the field but the ones who had a mic. And the killings that were occurring in places like Howard Beach were only spoken by them. 

So Jigga What? 

We have devoted years to taking a knee against this racist NFL who our “oppressor-dant Trump”, called the players “Son of a Bitches”. The racist NFL watched Kap be taken down. It watched jersey’s being burned to remind us. I missed my Eagles winning the Super Bowl.  My love for them is worth millions but my son’s life is priceless. I will not have him die in the street. 

I voted for you J but I may have bet on the wrong horse. Jigga What? 

~ Dearest Price

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