Okay, so my wife has been forcing me to watch gymnastics as well as eat my words that Gabby Douglas is no Dominique Dawes. Come on, now. Dawes still has the better nickname. Would you rather be Awesome Dawe-some or the Flying Squirrel? And just as I am about to lay aside my notion that gymnastics is an artform not a sport because the decision, outcome, victory, and loss is decided completely by judges and not by the athletes themselves (Let me be clear; gymnasts and cheerleaders are athletes, but gymnastics and cheerleading are artforms not sports), my celebration and pride in Douglas’ accomplishments are being bombarded by nationwide black self-hatred.
From what my wife tells me, the blogs have been on fire with people, mostly African Americans, complaining about Douglas’ hair. My first response, of course, was “really?!?” My next response was “are you serious?!?” And, my third response was “seriously people?!?” But, as reality set in and attempted to cover the sunshine of Douglas’ accomplishments with a heavy familiar fog, I know that these people, these self-hating black people, were all too serious.
Unfortunately, if you continue reading, I’m going to piss off a good number of you who may agree with me because I’m tired of the manner in which African Americans, due to our desire to integrate, assimilate, and ingratiate ourselves to the white power structure, have failed to resolve this issue of self-hatred, which today is one of the two major issues destroying the African American community, the other being poor parenting, which is a direct result of self-hatred and selfishness.
Essentially, as slavery was finally terminated by the Thirteenth Amendment because the Emancipation Proclamation did not do a thing for African Americans as it was mostly a military strategy to cripple the South economically, African Americans initially embraced education and economic development as the tools to become first-class citizens. The problem has been that over the years, especially after the 1954 Brown Decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Act of 1965, African Americas began to marginalize the importance of cultural self-discovery in formalized education, especially any self-discovery that connected African Americans to their African heritage.
Link: http://www.nathanielturner.com/gabbydouglasblackselfhatred.htm