…he also provoked that pause-worthy, neck swinging, finger waving rant that Little Bow Wow (yeah little) did on BET a while back when he had the show with Omarion. That was pretty funny. LOL!

I’m not a fan of Toure. But I don’t think he’s dumb. I think he’s snooty as can be and lacks humility in public domains.

Not being able to admit that you’re wrong without qualifying statements is elementary. For real, I did that in the third grade.

‘Socio-economic status, pedigree and skin complexion has been used to divide the black community for so long.’

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Yeah, and somebody decided it was a cool idea to blame it on a fake slavemaster called ‘Willie Lynch’ and even decided to irresponsibly incorporate this fictional idea into the movie ‘The Great Debaters’ as fact. The bottom line is that we have been hated so much for so long that we hate ourselves in many aspects and we can’t come to terms on how to overcome this disease…

I agree with you about the BIM series. It did not impress nor did it inform me about anything new. I really hope she does better this time because I really like her as a journalist. My favorite projects that she’s recently done are ‘Escape from Jonestown’ and ‘Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination’.

Good post and interesting topic. Great comments too. I heard about this article but hadn’t read it until now.

@ASmith: It’s interesting that Toure took the “Don’t shoot the messenger.” approach to this article. I agree that someone like him (someone who has been doing this for awhile, has name recognition and at least some credibility) has more wiggle/roaming room to work with and it could have been presented better. Now if it were a newcomer writer that no one had ever heard of and this was only his or her first or second piece, maybe then I would accept the “this is what they gave me to work with” rationale but even then I think a newbie would have organized his or her thoughts better than Toure did here.

@Natural Nubian: I like your grandma’s saying. Don’t grandparents have the best way of making things plain and simple? Love it.

@Tam: I agree that if there is no socilization and interaction people are not getting along “just fine”…they’re merely co-existing.

@jlbd: I know a lot of people don’t care for Soledad O’Brien and they definitely don’t like her Black In America (BIM) series but I like her. I first paid attention to her during the Hurricane Katrina & Rita coverage. Although I wasn’t over the moon about the first couple of segments of BIM, I do plan to watch the upcoming segments.

@BigMan I agree that no one should be so full of themselves that they can’t take any direction and refuse to stand corrected. It’s his (and anyone else’s) right to stand on their original opinion but everyone should at least be receptive and open to hearing another’s opinion and willing to be schooled in something we didn’t previously know. I know this is ideal and we’re far from an ideal world.

“learn how to walk with kings and talk with crowds.”

@damon: I love this quote. Everyone should strive for this. No one person should be so out of touch with reality that he forgets where he came from. Some upwardly mobile people are so out of touch they can no longer relate to issues, let alone help to resolve them.

@Mo’net: I agree that black on black segregation is real and still exists. I wish it didn’t and I hope (maybe naively so but still I still hope nonetheless) that one day it won’t.

Sidebar: It’s interesting that on the same day I read references to the paper bag test on two different blogs discussing two completely unrelated topics (one discussing upper-middle class blacks & the other discussing Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” video). Socio-economic status, pedigree and skin complexion has been used to divide the black community for so long.

This is all ironic because he just recently (like this week) said on Twitter the exact opposite. I quote “If I say s’thing on TV that you think is incorrect I don’t mind you sayin hey, you might need to rethink that and here’s why I say that…”

Guess he’s ok with you saying that, but he won’t actually do it…

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And, this is part of the reason why he annoys me at times…

I didn’t realize Toure wrote it until after I wrote my response. But, I wasn’t surprised.

A friend of mine once asked Toure about underrated rappers at a some music expo. My friend and I are both huge fans of Cee-Lo and my friend mentioned him as being criminally underrated. Toure said he didn’t really count because he only had one album. This was when Cee-Lo had two outstanding albums.
Now, being unaware of the second album wasn’t a huge crime, but when my friend pointed out his mistake, Toure refused to even admit that this might have to change his opinion and instead denigrated my friend for expecting him to know about “random” artists.
So the man is willing to express an opinion on topics but unwilling to take full responsibility for his opinion. He wasn’t just “given” the info in that piece. As a journalist i know exactly how much control we have over information, and I know magazine writers have more control than most.

‘I’m also always amused by how far “up” black folks will go and still be shocked that no matter how much they shun the rest of us, how fly their houses and cars are and how well they speak some white folks just won’t play with them.’

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This has been my argument all along. Sure it’s ok to strive for the best and achieve success and status but when people have these kind of snobbish attitudes they look downright stupid…