
Only the White Man Can Profit from Pain
by author and activist Saab Lofton
http://saablofton.com/
Saab Lofton Channel on YouTube
“Nah, man, the government will never legalize drugs in America. The first reason they will never legalize drugs in America is because the government makes way too much money putting our brothers and sisters in fucking jail. That’s first of all. The second reason the government will never legalize drugs in America is because, God forbid, some brown people got wealthy. Can’t have that. ‘Cause drugs come from brown countries. We can’t have wealthy brown people. There are no wealthy black — or brown — people in America. We got some rich ones, we don’t got no fucking wealth. People go, ‘what’s the difference?’ Here’s the difference: Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his check is wealthy. ‘Here you go, Shaq! Go buy yourself a bouncing car! Bling-bling!’ I’m not talking ’bout rich, I’m talking ’bout wealth… One of the number one rules when it comes to acquiring wealth goes like this: The rule is, only the white man can profit from pain. So if you’re black or brown, you can make money in America, you can prosper in America, you can get rich in America, but whatever you decide to do, it better be positive. ‘Cause if one person is harmed, you will be destroyed… White man makes alcohol. Tastes great, I love it, you love it, we all love it. Kills motherfuckers every single day. Okay? Some of y’all ain’t even make it home tonight ’cause of alcohol… But it’s all right ’cause it’s all white. White man makes cigarettes, the most dangerous product known to man. Cigarettes are so fucking dangerous, it kills motherfuckers that don’t smoke… But it’s all right ’cause it’s all white. Could you imagine if the Philip Morris family was a bunch of jheri-curled niggers from Mississippi? Do you know how illegal a pack of cigarettes would be? You would get sixty years just for a carton of Newports!” –Chris Rock, from the 2004 HBO comedy special, “Never Scared”.
I can relate. I’ve been called “the Tiger Woods of science fiction” by Professor Sam E. Anderson (author of Black Holocaust for Beginners) as well as “the black Rod Serling” — not necessarily as flattery, but as dire warning, for as Serling himself once wisely said…
“Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of the sin of omission… Hungry for talent, desperate for the so-called ‘new face,’ constantly searching for a transfusion of new blood, it has overlooked a source of wondrous talent that resides under its nose. This is the Negro actor.” –The Twilight Zone Companion
“Overlooked” is an all too polite way of saying “passed over.”
I was asked to comment on systemic discrimination insofar as hemp/marijuana because I know for a fact it’s the case in science fiction/fantasy, so…
Let’s start with the basics: First, “white privilege” simply means the odds are on your side.
However harsh your lives may have been, Caucasians, the odds are, anyone resembling Halle Berry or Lenny Kravitz will have had it far, far worse and God help you if yo’ ass resembles Tracy Chapman or Yaphet Kotto (there’s also such a thing as “lightskinned privilege” amongst blacks).
Likewise, the term “black tax” is similar in meaning to “the glass ceiling,” whereby, again, the odds are you will have worked harder than your pale, male rivals in order to prevail.
Far harder.
Second, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance because history tends to repeat itself whenever it’s forgotten, so don’t, as in, do not wait for some “Age of Aquarius” moment whereby color will forever be barred from conversation.
If you’d never tell a survivor of World War II’s Jewish Holocaust to “let it go,” then refrain from telling that to African Americans. Silence slows (or halts) the solving of societal problems, and countless lives are on the line, so no one cares how embarrassing certain subjects are to discuss
In order words, black lives matter more than white feelings — so much more, it’s now become all-important to remember that merely being accused of racism is insignificant next to actually suffering from it.
Finally, Negrophobia is the fear of ethnic miscegenation (what accounts for, say, Obama looking more like his black parent than his white one) or of being surrounded by dark skinned Humans who’re (presumably) harboring revenge for past atrocities.
Negrophobia is in fact a form of criminal insanity (as I explain in my lectures, the Joker will kill over a joke, the Cracker will kill over a skin) whether or not it’s actually acted upon (in either event, its protected by the First Amendment just as the Flat Earth Society, the nonsense of Alex Jones, et cetera) and it manifests itself in a variety of ways.
In my case, Negrophobia assumes this form…
“[White supremacist Milo] Yiannopoulos bragged about how rudely he behaved to the ‘top execs’ and was as surprised as anyone when he landed a reportedly large advance of $250,000, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which broke news of the deal: ‘I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions. I thought they were goingto have me escorted from the building — but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.'” –Jenny Pierson, AlterNet, January 4th, 2017.
M E A N W H I L E . . .
“Because Saab Lofton’s A.D. is one of the most exciting books to emerge from a young black writer in years, its obscurity is all the more shameful.” –Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 16th, 1997
ALL THE MORE SHAMEFUL
“Lofton’s novel deserves a far broader audience than it has accumulated thus far.” –Darius James, New York Press, November 12th, 1997
DESERVES A FAR BROADER AUDIENCE
“It’s been hard to ignore the mounting evidence — the friends who were pushed out of jobs… even if they were eminently overqualified … Most of all, it’s the small moments of discrimination that are so insidious, they’re hard to pinpoint. In my career, I’ve been excluded from key projects that were given to white women… often made fun of and called ‘defensive’ and ‘difficult to work with’ by white men and women.” –Ruchika Tulshyan, The Seattle Times, September 20th, 2018
So a known enabler of the alt right tried to shock publishing executives with “lewd jokes” and was given “a wheelbarrow full of money” while my black ass is sleeping in the garage of a house with NO plumbing/electricity for the second winter in a row. The odds are, someone as pale skinned as Milo will be given quarter of a million dollar advances even as I’m constantly told to “tone it down” by the civility-obsessed. It’s the system’s fault; it’s bigger than any one man.
And there’s no, as in, less than negative zero reason to assume the hemp/marijuana dynamic is supposedly free of such irrational duplicity.
In anything, I’ve been informed recently of at least one phenomenon whites and blacks will perceive very differently: Cannabis start-ups employing former policemen as frequently as security firms?!
Presumably this sick practice is designed to “confer legitimacy” upon cannabis businesses; to “assuage community concerns” whenever new locations are opened, which sadly places white feelings over black lives once again…
“I’m bothered by the fact that the government’s current plan is to bar people with pot convictions from participating in the huge marijuana economy that is now emerging. We have the expertise. We know how to grow high-quality plants. We have the distribution networks. The government’s policy is unfair, punitive and discriminatory. If it really believed in amnesty*, it would let people with non-violent records for possession lead the way … The government has turned the pot economy over to the people who lost the drug war: the cops and politicians who were responsible for destroying so many lives by turning pot smokers into criminals. They’ve been given the keys to the vault. They’ll be profiting from the same activities they used to prosecute. The hypocrisy is staggering … Amnesty* is not enough. It should include an apology for ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of people for no legitimate reason. They should be asking us to forgive them.” –Rosie Rowbotham, a former producer at CBC Radio, The Guardian (UK), June 6th, 2018
Rather turn the pot economy over to those “responsible for destroying so many lives” than turn it over to a bunch of niggers, huh?
Only the white man can profit from pain.
Saab Lofton was born in South Central Los Angeles, raised on the road as a “military brat” and graduated from Olympia, Washington’s Evergreen College. He’s also a cartoonist, an award-winning journalist as well as a novelist — in fact, his first novel (A.D., 1995, III Publishing) was endorsed by Professor Howard Zinn and it’s responsible for a Republican (Jon Hatchell from Alexandria, Virginia) becoming a socialist … As an “internet troll,” he personally led the charge to save Uganda’s LGBT community from certain death (thus saving half a million lives), fought past a fleet of libertarians in order to cattle prod the FCC into voting for net neutrality in 2015 and cyberstalked white supremacists since then until the Ku Klux Klan itself lost over fifty subsidiaries, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center … A documentary based on him — Saab Lofton: The Movie — is available on YouTube.