Have you ever felt the weight of expectations pressing down on you, dictating who you should be? Jamar and I peel back the layers on this very topic as we confront the complex issues of Black stereotypes and identity in our latest episode. We're not holding back as we lay bare the struggles of those who don't quite fit the traditional mold of what it means to be Black. From the bullying and gatekeeping endured by individuals who defy cultural norms to the intricate dance of moving in predominantly white spaces, our dialogue is raw and real. We share our personal journeys and the broader societal observations that call for an inclusive understanding of Blackness, far removed from the shackles of aggression, poverty, or any other stereotype.
Our candid conversation doesn't stop at identifying the problems; it's about shattering them. In this heart-to-heart, I confess my passion for white water rafting—a love that doesn't fit the stereotype—and express my own insecurities, such as not being the 'handy' man society often expects. Together with Jamar, we challenge the idea that Black identity is a one-size-fits-all label. It's a call to action to break free from generational curses and to embrace the rich tapestry of individual experiences that define who we are. We extend an invitation to you, our listeners, to join us in this important conversation, to reflect on personal biases, and to cultivate a space where diversity in thought and experience isn't just celebrated—it's the norm.
Support the Medium Ghetto Movement Funds allow us to consistently create great content. We also have a vision of "Medium Ghetto Game Nights" in a city near you.
Intelligent, hood conversations, so why don’t come hang with the gang
Relatable topics, form coming up broke to the nonsense that all come along with these dames
From trust funds to trappin’, we cover it all, and with laughter
So, why don’t you come grab you a seat
From o’s to Othello, you know that we Medium Ghetto, and nothing can even compete
Outro Lyrics
It’s Medium Ghetto
And we thank y...
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Taken it where we argue about the same stuff that you guys are arguing about.
Speaker 2:
My name is Jamar.
Speaker 1:
My name is Ebony Black and I am afraid to admit some stuff. My beef with the I'm Black and I'm scared to admit conversation is if somebody isn't being the right kind of Black or Black enough, they get bullied for saying anything.
Speaker 2:
You can't say shit.
Speaker 1:
Like I don't really. We preach every day that Black people are not a monolith and we're all different and have different backgrounds and have different cultures, but as soon as somebody that's not just I don't even know how to explain it. That's just not right.
Speaker 2:
If they don't, kick off enough stereotypes then they're not that black. They're not black enough to get to Black heart Right.
Speaker 1:
So now you're not part of the community and you can't address certain things.
Speaker 2:
You know what's crazy? You're seeing that you've got all these stereotypes. It'd be a harmful one if you're not an angry Black woman. So you've got to be aggressive somehow, and you hate aggressive women. Apparently You've got to be a hood Poverty Right. You know what's crazy? It seems to work somewhere. They make you poor if you're Black, some people, which is crazy. What else we got? We also have the token Black dude, the one dude. Oh, if you're token Black, that's the people.
Speaker 2:
they don't know, they don't think you're on Bangalore. You can be in a hood, grew up in the hood and be token Black at a location.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
And because you are, you're a diversity hire. They don't think you're Black enough. Yes, because you don't. You know people don't treat you when you got more money on a treat like you're. Black.
Speaker 1:
That's very true also. Yes, so I don't know, I have beef with a lot of people over this right now because this girl said that being in a hood makes her anxious and people took that and ran with it. Now I will address the fact that, yes, there were some non-melanated people.
Speaker 2:
Wait, so don't be. Not being in the hood does not make you anxious. So you are on 2nd Street at 9 pm, when it's 3rd, and you will wait for your car and you got to walk up a lot and you're not anxious.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
Are you anxious?
Speaker 1:
I am.
Speaker 2:
Alright, just make it short. I was like, wait a minute. I'm trying to follow this.
Speaker 1:
That's, that's. This is not the way, Because I know damn well.
Speaker 2:
I used to walk to my car in midnight and I didn't have no drill room on my own payback. Because it was it? Because, just to let you know, I'm in the hood and I'm in the hood, I don't want you to rob me. And you made it so easy While you're shit out. It made it easy, yes, and then one big. It really easy, because you're out here and they ain't like a purse.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's like a did snatch and go like y'all targets.
Speaker 2:
You're not helping and then I ain't gonna work a full time job to snatch like $500 for a free shit and I can sell the purse for another $500. I'm not helping, but it's okay to be anxious and it is well-blended.
Speaker 1:
Right, because I don't even have these thoughts. Yeah, it's like her pretty much. It's a feeling like she's whitewashed and she's anti-black because she doesn't feel comfortable somewhere, that she probably didn't grow up, which is why she feels uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:
Oh no, don't, let me not grow up and ask it. You feel the difference. It is even worse, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Mr.
Speaker 2:
Axley, where are you from? Let your car be over 2008. Right, younger than 2008.
Speaker 1:
They don't. Yes, definitely watching.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, they like it.
Speaker 1:
Or yeah, I've been pulled over coming off my block simply because I drove with a car, so police assumed I had to be by.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, or you like stolen.
Speaker 1:
You won.
Speaker 2:
That's crazy. I used to live with a little picture of me. Right now they assumed that Axley owns. It's not my car. Yeah, and I'm almost got arrested because I didn't have the address on my driver's license yet going to a nice neighbor.
Speaker 1:
I believe it. Yeah. What's happening? I believe it, yes. So I've seen time and time again black people get together and attack another black person. That's, lady long about something that you is now every day. Plain case, last year there was one girl sitting in her car talking about a bad experience that she had with a hairdresser. Every day, on every social media platform, black women complain about their hairdressers. Every day. They say we need to go back to the OZs, we need to go to the Africa shops, stop messing with the Instagram hairstylist every day. So this girl says it and she says I'm just not used to this. I'm used to dealing with white businesses. They don't do this, which, in my experience, largely, is a fact. They usually open when they said they're going to be open and close when they say that they're going to close and you can get a refund. Whatever, there's rules that they follow.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
These independent hairstyle is following those rules, so everybody else gets to complain about it.
Speaker 2:
But since she has a proximity to right next, she's not allowed to complain about it.
Speaker 1:
But it happened to her, so anyway. So they gas litter for a week to her alive. I felt so bad for that. And this girl I feel like the same things happening to her, because if she's Anxious in the hood, then she must be from suburbia and therefore she's allowed to address any of things that we talk about every day. Mm-hmm, I don't like that. I don't like that for you. Be for him. I Don't like be honest. How much time are you spending in the hood that you are anxious?
Speaker 2:
Oh my god, they be talking match other hoods too. Most people eat at the restaurants in the hood. Where you gonna go on a date outside the hood Right dining areas, they got in the hood.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
Many businesses. They got in the hood where you could like shop at. I don't want to shop. I want to shop at my course or if I like buying the white clothes and the white image, but you don't like when people but you don't like being called out for it. Pretty much you, or like you, devalue someone because they might come across a little bit more white than you.
Speaker 1:
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:
It's crazy, but you value in white things is even more crazy. So I'm trying to say right, I agree.
Speaker 1:
Yes, I watch people go back and forth arguing about this all week. They say the girl said hood. She didn't say anything about black people. You assume black people because you have your own Idea of what the hood is.
Speaker 1:
They do meh-wad blew up like two years ago, literally, and they're like no, don't play. We know what she meant by who. We know that she meant black people. Either way man goes, I've been in hoods, whereas primarily white people and, yep, I was anxious because they scared, I don't know how to put it poverty and misery. It's not fun to be around, it's not. The hood is a place full of poverty and anger and resentment and mental illness. If you're not anxious, we go to the US and I sign on the hood. You're not paying attention.
Speaker 2:
It's not desperate people, exactly, and desperation.
Speaker 1:
Still a lot of shit. All right if I had.
Speaker 2:
Let's say, you get arrested, right, you got to pay for your PL, but most time you can't get a job, so you're gonna pay for your.
Speaker 1:
PL Right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I gotta do stuff to pay for my PL. Yeah, you get the money, mm-hmm. So guess what I'm like Smite, still a little bit right. You know saying or if you're a kid, you can't get a job if you will hustle on the block you might also a little bit. You know me and like what else?
Speaker 1:
No, I feel like the internet. The black community, specifically on the internet, has like this large influx of people who spend so much time on the internet. Not enough time. In reality, people that pay 2,023 under dollar rents, like being the first one to address something like oh, it's on. The first one to address this girl, then I have the moral high ground. Yeah, I'm the right one. She's anti-black and this is why because she talked about this stuff. That's actually real.
Speaker 2:
If you're against poverty, if you're against crime rates rising, you're not anti-black Right, if you're against drinking and smoking right.
Speaker 1:
You're not anti-black right.
Speaker 2:
You're even against, let's say, vulgar music. If I say it on the internet right now, I hate vulgar music. You don't think I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:
They're immediately down the right.
Speaker 2:
You know like people be right, big country music's crazy.
Speaker 1:
Exactly.
Speaker 2:
Maybe he talked about the same thing. We talked about shooting, sleeping with someone who's not a significant other, dancing, getting high, getting drunk, driving drunk mostly truck. Oh, these trucks all talk, driving drunk so much. Yeah, in your truck that's worse than our. Our small those dance. If I ask you a 4f 150, you dead, you surviving. My, my, uh, little malohonda.
Speaker 1:
Pancakes.
Speaker 2:
But yeah, so anyway.
Speaker 1:
I'm just trying to let's be social media, the hood, less like these social media and like, be romanticized, like what it is to be in the ghetto and live in the ghetto and Be ghetto, be black where a lot of poor black people live. That's miserable. I don't know, I don't.
Speaker 2:
I think people, I think you're black, we associate me with struggle, but black people, we own social media as in we create all the trends. So a lot of trends we have is out of struggle and if you keep hearing our black voices on these social medias, sometimes you hear struggle. But you don't need to struggle to be successful. That's a lot of you think. A lot of people think we're good because every time, let's say you had a lot of hardship, you had crazy hardships. You don't even think you're good enough. That has success because you didn't have hardships. Yes, like sugarculture is a big thing in the black neighborhood as well, it is that doesn't get addressed, though.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, somebody said that being around it makes them anxious. That gets addressed. I don't know. I like I feel like they're just like pretending that all those things don't exist. Like I, I have literally sat had a busy intersection at three o'clock in the afternoon and watched a man Shoot into the intersection in broad daylight and skip away.
Speaker 2:
That's what happens every day when you skip, like he, literally, well, he skipped and smiled and skipped away. I don't know why. I thought Like a flamboyant man.
Speaker 1:
He was a flamboyant.
Speaker 2:
He had.
Speaker 1:
He had it plants in his hair and he saw what it's. So, whatever, whoever he was looking for, and Shot two feet for me and skip the way. Why cuz? We're in the hood and that's shit that people in the hood do. That's true. You want to argue and bully this girl, but the people who really need to be addressed aren't one tick tock watching you complain about them. They're not gonna be held accountable. They don't care. They don't care about the white people arguing and agreeing with inside blackness in the comments. They don't care about it. Not only none. It gets paid to be trust when ignorant on TV every single day. You're not addressing her.
Speaker 2:
She don't care she may be paying the white people paying her to be that black people pay her to do it too. Don't do nothing. Bother who's the most. Most managers are white.
Speaker 1:
Yes, the managers are white, and but what people watch it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, they watch it every day. I was a white manager and I'm like y'all can make money from this. I'm gonna keep bitter in the shitty situation. Really, I'm gonna keep doing it and she's not the only one.
Speaker 1:
There's people who do it for free every day, for fun.
Speaker 2:
She was about to be summertime, seven degrees, and ratchet out some right anyway, if you look.
Speaker 1:
If you're in the hood and you don't have anxiety and you're not scared, then you're not paying attention, you're not, and if? Somebody points out that being in the area that is not familiar to them Triggers you, then that's for you to talk about what you let it be known.
Speaker 2:
If I'm in a car and feel in the country alone, I'm triggered. That's it. That's like the it's like the alleyway for that. It's like the alleyway for that car feel a lot of natural. Or that was a drill in the corn. Yeah, I honestly never walk into tall grass or corn fills them because they move never. I'm scared.
Speaker 1:
Anyway, I feel like you're in the guard side says grass. Stop telling people how they can feel about things. Stop telling people that it's anti-black to be against anything that you feel like is synonymous with blackness.
Speaker 2:
She was an anti-black. To drink the drink like diet juice.
Speaker 1:
You can do whatever you want, because you're just black doing something I did. We're not a monolith, remember that that's true, All right.
Speaker 2:
So I enjoyed kayaking and I'm black right, I like going white water rafting quite happy, you don't?
Speaker 1:
black water rafting. Nope, I only do the white car.
Speaker 2:
Well, you know, that's the end of the black stereotype. Yeah, oh, my parents are like a black. I'm black I'm afraid to admit that because my father was in my life. I had learned how to use tools at work and people laughed at me because people, I'm the only man that doesn't know how to use a screw gun or drill man.
Speaker 1:
That's what we're expecting, that, apparently, everybody learned different than that and that you know, I was like yeah, my dad taught me how to use this. Dad part of it. Just you just make sure you break the generational curse.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but anyway, I'm black and I'm afraid to admit that sometimes you guys gaslight and delude yourselves into thinking that some things, some stereotypes, some things that don't make us look good, they're real and they exist. And and just because somebody isn't your version of black, that they can't say whatever they want to say, they can't. I want all of us to be able to feel comfortable saying whatever, addressing anything. That's all. So, to wrap up, I just want to say I want the best for us all and I want all of our voices to be heard all the time by each other and tell us what you think. Tell us what you're afraid to admit. Safe, we're on YouTube. Nobody's gonna tell anybody.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:
Let us know in the comments what you think and thank you for watching taking it.