Ten Things: I Wish Black People Would Stop Doing

1. Giving babies stupid names: Everyone wants their child to be interesting and unique and many times that starts with an interesting name, but there is a fine line between creative and destructive. If your name is Mary and your husband's name is Kevin....don't name your son Markevin. If you really want to give your children a gift they can realize when they grow up, give them a name that will allow them to get a job.

2. Being Ignorant In Public: In the confines of your own home its ok to be a lil Coon if you would like...in fact...nothing realizes stress better than breaking out some coonery. HOWEVER, the middle of a public venue is NOT the time to become a shufflin negro with no home training. I was recently waiting for a table at a restaraunt when a couple walked in and stood behind me for 15 minutes. The woman began to raise all hell because she was not being seated. Had she calmly inquired as to why...the coon would have realized that you have to go to the hostess and announce yourself and THEN they find you a table (I would have thought anyone who has ever been out to eat knows that, but you cant take coons anywhere).

3. Rapping and Singing To Yourself In Public: I know the lyrics...you know the lyrics and Lil Wayne and Alicia Keys still perform their songs a little better than you. Stop looking like a fool, this isnt the bathroom mirror and you're not anyones American Idol.

4. Rewarding idiocy: African Americans have a literacy rate almost as low as immigrants and the said part is we aren't trying to learn English as a second language. Parents please stop encouraging your children to talk "street" and then being surprised that the street is the only arena where they can succeed. Enunciation and proper syntax aren't being white. They are traits of intelligent men and women.
Celebrating the little boy who wants to rap but can't even write a sentence is pathetic. Instead of buying your son Jeezy the snowman shirts how about buying them a book. Instead of having them look up to lil Wayne how about a doctor or a lawyer. When I was a kid my Unt and uncles would ask me to say my abcs and then reward me for knowing them. Now kids get rewards for knowing how to do the "stanky leg"

5. Complaining: Slave ships came and got us...thats true...we spent years suffering the indignities of slavery...yes, true. We then have spent the rest of our existence as a people fighting against the outrageous injustices of discrimination and hatred...nothing is closer to the truth. However, the story we tell at the end of the day should be we succeeded "in spite of" not failed "because of". Black people need to recognize that our race is our strongest asset, not our greatest liability. Just like bodybuilding, added stress and repeated abuse only serve as a sort of natural selection that has made us a much more resilient people. Its why 200 years out of slavery we are some of the most fine tuned athletes, most talented artists, and most creative minds on the planet. If you open up your eyes to realize we all have our own struggles to overcome then you would know there is nothing to complain about.

6. Senseless Obama Praise: Now, I worked for the Obama campaign in CHICAGO where it all started. I know the man's policies, I know the man's ideas, I know how the organization works and I know just how great of a president he could possibly be. Like many, I'm not ashamed to say I fell to my knees and wept like a baby when he was elected because to black people across the world, we never thought the day would come when America allowed itself to truly be an equal country...even for a day. That BEING SAID....it is one of my greatest pet peeves to hear a black person talking about how great Obama is and then when you ask them for his policies they can't name ONE. In fact, very many elderly black men and women dont actually AGREE with Obama's more liberal thinking. I love the man and what he stands for as much as the next black/white/yellow/or red guy, but know WHY you stand behind a man before you stand behind him.

7. Wasting Money: On average we earn thousands less than whites yet spend thousands more. Jordans are nice shoes, but when you make 13 dollars an hour, your 9 year old son doesn't have to them. Having realistic priorities...thats what differentiates adults from children.

8. Being In McDonalds Commercials: Somewhere along the lines McDonald's ditched its iconic slogan "Have you had you're break today?" and replaced it and the smiling multi-cultural faces of its pretend staff and clientele with boombastic niggeriffic imagery. I'm tired of seeing black people poplocking and rapping why eating Big Macs. I have never been in McDonalds and ordered a #3 and then leaned back in a B-Boy stance nor as a child did was my DREAM to work at a Mcdonalds (like one commercial suggests of a 4 year old black boy and his older brother). Its pure racist madness and yet black actors keep auditioning for the role of Nigga #1 and Nigga #2. As a black actor myself I realize roles are hard to come and easy to lose, but integrity is even harder to come by and once you trade it for $300 dollars and a free lunch, you don't get it back.

9. Wearing any gold, platinum, or silver mouth apparatus that isn't braces: I dont really have anything against gold fronts and the like...i mean besides the fact that they make you look incredibly stupid. My problem is...I've never met a person with that crap in their mouth who's breath DIDNT smell like hangover vomit. *Forrest Gump voice* and thats really all I have to say about that.

10. WATCHING BET: Black Entertainment Television hasn't been black or entertaining for quite some years, but since selling itself to radically racist Sumner Redstone and his Empire of Evil (Which includes, but is not limited to: Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the most often gag inducing (both for her concrete like face and for the things that fall out of it) He-She, Greta Van Susteren), BET has been little more than a cartoon. A walking joke that depicts Black America in the most negative of lights. By cutting the nightly news program from the station, Redstone and Viacomm succeeded in stealing the station's last vestige of intelligence. Now, BET is little more than a cautionary tale of what can happen to a good idea when it is influenced by not so good of people. And along the way it has done more than its share to contribute to the de-evolution of young black men and women across the country and the deterioration of the black image. KKK members should pay homage to Bob Johnson and his cohorts for making such a powerful recruiting tool for white supremacists. The station is a celebration of coonery at every angle and is in no truer a representation of black life than gangsta rap is a representative of "the streets". It has spawned a nation of white children imitating what they think it is to be black, to the embarrassment of us all. It has given us a half hearted "Rap it up" campaign (one that disgusts me not only because they air the commercials right after endorsing videos in which artists are OPENLY TALKING ABOUT UNSAFE SEX, but also because they think so very little of their audience that they couldn't even spell wrap correctly. As if black men and women will only respond to "hip hop" oriented messages, making a complete mockery of the situations severity), "Coonery Hill" and a host of other blemishes on the face of black america. Recently, BET honored our greatest star at the BET Awards by wholly dishonoring him. A poorly run, uninspired, vulgar, mess of a show. Exactly the opposite of every SINGLE thing that Michael Jackson stood for. The only solace I take is that had Michael Jackson been alive, he wouldn't even have attended the awards ceremony anyhow. I wont be attending anymore either.