1. Amazing Animals: Harlem Man Raises Tiger in the PJs
Ming, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With this cat to call my own
My croc won't be alone
And you, my friend, will be
Star of Yates menagerie
(Star of Yates menagerie)
Ming, you're always hiding here and there
(Here and there)
Harlem don't want no tigers anywhere
(Anywhere)
If you're loose out on the street
And don't like the folks you meet
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go
(You've got a place to go)
I used to say "house" and "me"
Now it's "zoo", now it's "we"
I used to say "house" and "me"
Now it's "zoo", now it's "we"
Ming, most people they would euthanize
Me, I don't look with their frightened eyes
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ming
(a friend) Like Ming
(like Ming) Like Ming
Sung to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Ben"
The A-List, as regular readers can attest, is what you would call a real bunch of cynical sonofableep(s), but our black hearts were tickled — tickled, we tell you! — by the urban myth come-to-life that is Antoine Yates and his pet tiger, Ming. While Vegas illusionist Roy Horn was living through a showbiz tragedy that echoed Houdini and the Flying Wallendas — i.e., the life-threatening, on-stage mishap — away from the bright lights 37-year-old Antoine Yates, who neighbors have alternately described as "slow" and "different," was re-enacting another kind of legend as he recovered this week from his own set of less severe tiger-inflicted injuries. At once addled and amorous, Yates channeled borderline insane and iconic black manchildren from Michael Jackson, to, well Michael Jackson, as he pledged undying love for his misunderstood pet, calling the animal that had almost bitten his arm off "my brother, my best friend, my only friend, really."
Really!
Reporters, cops, and prosecutors scrambled for days trying to figure out exactly how Yates managed to obtain a pet tiger in the first place (not to mention the alligator that was also found in the apartment), leaving the A-List with little to do except salivate, animal-like, at the prospect of some curious and hopefully illegal goings-on, this until a more banal explanation surfaced: Yates had just gone out and bought his tiger. What's more bizarre, we wonder: That a dim bulb like Yates could have kept a tiger in a Harlem apartment for three-to-four years, or that he had just hopped onto the Internet bought himself a tiger, and then kept it in a Harlem apartment for three-to-four years? The answer, of course, is: "both." While initial reports tried to paint the picture of a man hiding a dangerous animal in the depths of the urban jungle, Yates' neighbors at 2430 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd laconically told the media a different story, one where everyone in five-block radius (except uniformed police and civil servants, of course) knew about the open case of man-cub love going down at the Yates apartment. (Harlem's drug dealers must all be keeping tigers as well.) The story of Antoine 'N' Ming 4Ever did have one tragic undertone: for at least two of the years that Yates shared his apartment with his tiger and alligator, he also shared it with his mother, Martha Yates and several of her foster children. While Mother Yates had the sense to eventually flee the apartment for Philly (seriously!) one has to wonder exactly what broke the proverbial camel's back and exactly how New York City places foster children in a house with a tiger in it.
2. Music: Did Diddy Do The Dirt?
Sean Combs (we'll use his gov'ment name in order to avoid any confusion) was right when he said "Mo Money Mo' Problems." In what could very well be a classic case of sour grapes, Kirk Burrowes, former president of Bad Boy Records, has been making the media rounds alleging Combs was behind the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Jai "Big Jake" Hassan, friend and bodyguard of Death Row CEO Suge Knight. Burrowes (who signed away an early 25% stake in Bad Boy under what he claims was duress) has reportedly sworn out a statement that Combs directly ordered the homicides, which were carried out by an elite group of bad boys known as, er, "The Enterprise." Burrowes' high-ranking position at Bad Boy may well have made him privy to incriminating info about Combs and assassination supergroups with corny-sounding R&B; names, but so far he hasn't done much besides repeat well-known (and discredited) hearsay for New York press. Conspiracies linking Puff and Biggie to Tupac's murder have been floating around forever, while published reports from here to Haiti have fingered Combs crony Anthony "Wolf" Jones as Hassan's alleged (and long un-charged and unconvicted) killer. Unless Burrowes can come up with a smoking gun — literally — he's looking at a mighty nice defamation suit. The A-List just hopes that this doesn't affect Combs' ability to run the New York Marathon for charity next month; babies in Brooklyn need that money! Read full story
3. New York: African Burial Ground Homecoming
The A-List remembers quite clearly when we first heard the news in 1991 that the remains of an estimated 20,000 free and enslaved Africans and African Americans had been found in NYC's Wall Street area. While we were arguably a pretty jaded collective even back then during the flower of our professional youth, we would not have imagined in our most cynical nightmare that it would be more than a decade before the uncovered bones of those ancestors were properly re-laid to rest.
Over the last twelve years it has taken the efforts of countless activists and civic organizations to prevent the site from being completely desecrated and built over, proof positive that the devaluing of black life doesn't end with death. 419 skeletons (a great many of which belonged to children) and over 1.5 million artifacts were taken to Howard University for study, and the resulting data challenges the misperception that slavery in the North was somehow less inhumane and severe than slavery in the South. Many of the men, women and children died from malnutrition, disease and exhaustion, while the sheer numbers buried at the site repositions New York as the second largest slave-owning city in the 18th Century. When the Howard study was complete, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture organized a Rites of Ancestral Return to return the 300 of the deceased to the Burial Ground in New York City. Thousands turned out in New York to honor the ancestors, and we hope the ceremony brought a little bit of peace to a part of the city that has seen its fair share of death both then and now.
4. Branding: Beyonce's Name is on Your Behind
Hold tight girls and boys-who-like-to-dress-like-girls: pretty soon you'll be able to look just like Beyonce!
Okay, we lied. You will never, EVER look just like Beyonce. But besides treating your hair to a whole bottle of Feria and mainlining Pepsi, you will soon be able to lip sync to "Crazy in Love" in clothes purportedly designed by Miss B (or at least purportedly designed by her mama). How can this be, you ask? Well, in hopes of ascending ever higher up the peaks of brand name superstardom, Beyonce recently announced plans to launch two clothing lines with mom, Tina Knowles. The 22-year-old Star Search alumnus is, of course, far from being the first pop tart with a startup clothing line. Fashion world darling and blond bombshell rapper Eve's recently launched Fetish label appears off to a good start, while the Olson Twins have gone beyond day-into-evening wear into the murky land of jailbait-into-barely-legal with a line of their very own. Savvy clothing companies have obtained permi$$ion to use the names of everyone from Jenny from the Block, to Jay-Z and to even Venus and Serena, with Puffy the only celeb to date to go beyond the cynical licensing game and create an actual couture line. Since she's gonna go ahead and follow suite — this despite the fact that clothing is difficult biz where margins can fit on the head of a pin — all the A-List can do is pray Ms. B doesn't pull a Kathy Lee or Michael Jordan and get in bed the sort of company that violates the human and labor rights of young brown or yellow girls in Third World countries by paying them pennies a day to play with dangerous machinery and toxic chemicals.
5. Games: Monopolizing Clichés in Ghettopoly
The A-List's inbox has filled to capacity with complaints about a new game called Ghettopoly. In this rip-off of the board-game favorite, Monopoly, ghetto iconography — street corner drug dealers, graffiti-covered subways, and crack houses — replaces the street repairs, railroads and hotels of yore, the standard money-earning gameplay turned inside out by inane stereotypes and caricatures of black icons like "Malcum X Blvd" and "Martin Luthor King, Jr." (The get-out-of jail-free cards are, naturally, retained.)
When asked about the game, Michael Chang, the Asian American creator of Ghettopoly, protests that when it comes to racism, we're all in the same gang in 2003: "Should I boycott every single black comedian who makes jokes about Asian Americans?" he asks. "Is Jay Leno a racist because he made a comment about Asian people eating dogs? How about Dave Chappelle, is he a racist too? Do you think the puppets they use on Crank Yankers are stereotypical too? How about Snoop dog, is his show on MTV racist?"
Very post-modern defense of your business, Mr. Chang, but while the A-List can't help but feel that marshalling the civil rights troops to protest a board-game is a bit, well, wasteful in a time of illegal war, official malfeasance, imposter presidencies, economic collapse and the election of cartoon characters to major offices, we do understand where the critics are coming from. No matter how you flip it, frame it or even try to forget it, the urban ghetto of 20th and 21st Century America is strongly associated with black people and our experiences in such neighborhoods, making any game (or art, for that matter) about said neighborhoods about us in profound and usually troubling ways. For younger African Americans who came of age around racial categories that are significantly more fluid than those our parents faced and inhabited, balancing free-and-easy post-black cultural cosmopolitanism with wariness at the persistence of stubborn, undying negative images is difficult work, and our own complicated relationships to some of these images (Pimp nostalgia: Harmless fun or dangerous stereotype?) makes it easier for outsiders to appropriate and recombine them in ways we might not appreciate
At its core, the whole Ghettopoly fracaso is less about a deliberate insult to African America and more about how easily a calculating commercial scheme can use the heat from the still boiling racial pot to produce quick profits. While we may not exactly share the outrage of some of our elders, we do feel a more matter-of-fact version of the sentiment conveyed by Naughty By Nature's 1991 "Ghetto Bastard:"
If you ain't never been to the ghetto
Don't ever come to the ghetto
Because you wouldn't understand the ghetto.
So stay the f_ _ _ out of the ghetto.
6. South Africa: Steve Biko's Alleged Killers To Get Off
Sometimes justice is just denied, denied, denied, and you may as well not even hope for it. Such is the case when it comes to the murder of South African activist and writer Steven Biko. Killed in 1977 during the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, Biko became a potent symbol of that freedom fight - he was immortalized in Hollywood's Cry Freedom by Denzel Washington - but hero status means little when it comes to the South African justice system. Sadly enough so do truth and accountability. News comes this week that the five men who killed Biko are going to continue to elude justice for their acts. Biko died after being tortured and interrogated for his acts against the apartheid state - acts that primarily consisted of writing and publishing essays about freedom - and his death was a serious public, as well as personal, loss. All of which makes it unforgivable that his killers still walk free. Read full story
7. Politics: Bugs Found in Philly Mayor John Street's Office
The A-List has been feeling echoes of the '70s lately, and they're only getting stronger. High unemployment, daily body count numbers from overseas, and an unsettling sense that the government scandals we hear about are only the tip of a conspiracy-filled iceberg - yep, freaky days are here again. The news out of Philly reminds us how when paranoia strikes deep, it strikes deeper when you're black. And you know what they say: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. In the case of Philadelphia's African American mayor, John Street, it would appear he's got reason to feel suspicious. Not only is he locked in a close electoral race with Republican challenger Sam Katz, but aides found bugs in his office this week, the FBI confirmed that they placed the bugs there as part of an investigation. Who are they investigating, and why? The Feds aren't saying, but Street's people suspect the bug and inquiry are related to either a Black Muslim Street supporter, Imam Shamsud-din Ali (whose allegedly no-show adult ed classes have already been a target of investigation), or to Street's involvement in a big contract for airport renovation (which is already under grand jury investigation). Hey, big city politics are complex - few are the major urban mayors who haven't been under some kind of investigation at one point - and we have no idea how this'll play out. But the news of the bugging, the whole gritty, shaky, The Conversation-esque vibe to it, has us feeling itchy, man. Read full story
8. Racism: An All-White Delivery for Racist Parents
Despite the evidence of Butterfly McQueen, as Sissy in Gone With the Wind, fluttering her hands, rolling her eyes, and declaring she " know nothin' about birthin' babies," countless thousands of white folks have relied upon black domestic help to assist in the birth of their young'uns. We're not talking just during slave days, when the circuit-riding country doctor arrived just in time to share a congratulatory cigar after some longsuffering housemaid did the real work, but even today, in big hospitals whose staffs are stacked with black and brown help at the scut-work level (while white doctors and executives serenely preside). It's not usually inconsistent with white racist values to let a black woman help you push one out - which is why we're so surprised by the news this week of a hardcore racist couple in Pennsylvania who requested that no black workers assist in the birth of their own little Damien. What upset us even more was the hospital's willingness to go along with this request. We guess good help ain't that hard to find, in today's crappy economy - but the hospital that alienates its black nurses is gonna have a hell of a time functioning efficiently, because in the hospitals we've seen, that's who gets things done. We hope the local NAACP protest, which extracted promises of changes (including diversity training), has the desired effect of changing, if not hearts and minds, at least policies. Read full story
9. Hollywood: Ice Cube Replaces Vin Diesel in XXX Sequel
Black folk in Hollywood sure love them some Vin Diesel leftovers! First Tyrese took Diesel's place as minority man-of-the-minute in 2 Fast 2 Furious, and now Ice Cube replacing Diesel as furloughed-convict turned super-agent in the sequel to XXX. The A-List is happy to see Ice Cube getting that raptor money, but anyone who saw Ghosts of Mars already knows where this film is headed if it's not seen early carefully: straight to video. (Has Ice Cube ever been in a successful action flick, anyway? Three Kingsdoesn't count because he was following Clooney and Wahlburg's lead, and Boyz 'N'The Hood is more properly understood as a drama. But we digress. ) More important is why Cube was picked for this movie at all. The A-List is almost positive that posters and old CDs of Cube's mean muggin' days as a Nigga With an Attitude are prized accessories in the smoke rooms of half the male exec under 40 in Hollywood, which means that when they get to thinking of black men to cast as tough guys they're gonna be looking further and further away from acting schools and closer to Billboard. Thespians beware. Read full story
10. And that's all for this week, folks! If you like what you read here, forward it. If you think the A-List is a hater, forward it to all your friends and tell them to complain. If you don't understand our sense of humor, send it to every civil rights org in America and demand that they PUT A STOP TO US
But:
If you want more A-List, come back to www.Africana.com, same A-List time (Friday), same A-List channel! If you want the A-List stopped, come back to Africana, same A-List time (Friday), same A-List channel so that you can collect more information for your anti-A-List prayer circle. No matter what you do, just keep coming back and forwarding those links!
First published: October 10, 2003
About the Author The A-List loves our kitty named Oakland, and we hug him and love him and kiss him all day long, we do!
Your Privacy
Register
