There’s been a generational shift in consciousness, Nas is right. The younger generation in this country are going out and taking what they want, not waiting for the Jesse Jacksons of the world to convince “someone” to give it to them. They are making their own reality. They are becoming truly colorblind, and if anyone wants to relentlessly hold up the old racist touchstones of the past, they will hear none of it, nor should they. Young people of color will benefit from the positive results of the old civil rights struggles, but they don’t owe anybody anything for it, and they should not let older peoples’ perceptions of the world hold them back at all, ever. Learning history is one thing, reliving it for eternity is another. Jesse’s generation is holding on to some ideas that are almost entirely irrelevant to an 18-year-old in 2008, ideas that become less relevant with each passing year. They need to get with it or get the hell out of the way. That’s Progress. Each generation decides what Progress is for them, everyone else can eat their dust. Let the young people decide how to live without the influence of old fucked up ideas about race and hate. STFU, old people, just STFU.

Obviously you don’t speak for most of White America. Y’know, like those people in West Virginia who said on camera that they wouldn’t vote for a black man? Those white women who claim they’re voting for McCain because Obama beating Hillary was some kind of slight against them? The people who will say they don’t like the “attitude” of Michelle Obama and use that as some kind of retarded reason to not vote for Obama? Yea, those kind of assholes. They, and you, can claim whatever it is you wish, but actions speak louder than words.

You’re about about Jackson, though. He is a symptom, but not of what you think. Why is it, do you think, that people will pay for his and Sharpton’s support? Simply: white people don’t give a shit about black people who don’t have that support. I’d have bet a stack of money that the Sean Bell shooting and following trial wouldn’t even have made the noise it did in the press if Sharpton hadn’t wrapped his serpent body around it and brought it to the attention of white America.

Also? I’m so sick and tired of ignorant people berating black men about a problem that isn’t even endemic to black people. Y’know what this issue really is? Hype bullshit. Do you know when murders were the most highly reported during the past 20 years? During the 90s, when the murder rate in every large city in the country was shrinking. Ask yourself why that is (or better yet, read a goddamn book about it) and you’ll know why believing everything you hear isn’t very intelligent.