Bleek on Activism, Politics and Socio-Political Discourse

Why ICE -T Why?

In a recent interview with 'Complex Magazine', rapper and father-to-be Ice T from ‘Ice loves Coco’ show talked about why black men prefer white women - and I find myself screaming, why Ice-T, Why!! He seems to have some brains up in there? why stereotype women black and white?!!!

This last post by ICE-T has done me in - I've shared this with the white women in my office, one of them said "he's basically called us a bunch of servile fuckholes" - I laughed, but only because she expressed what we were all thinking. I think ICE-T genuinely thinks he's being complimentary to white women, when any woman with half a brain would be insulted - and that line about the names is just straight up racist, imagine he said the same thing about names like Ascencíon, Consuela, or Fidelia?  This attitude towards white women is antiquated, insulting and I feel like I've been dragged back to the 70's when it was alright to sexually harass women in the workplace by giving them a 'friendly' slap on the ass. His comments reveal a his blatant sexism - "You can basically do whatever, wherever with them. And they’ll smile through it all."

Thankfully I've read Eldridge Cleavers 'Soul on Ice' otherwise my reaction would have been as it was when I was a teenager, tears and feelings of emptiness that I'm not worth as much as white women. From 'Soul on Ice' I was able to understand this attitude in the context of Slavery and the following John crow era - the black man is acceptable as long as he is a 'stupid' strong man, a tool to be used by the 'brainy' white man - see the shift in attitude towards Mohammed Ali when he started opening his mouth.

The black woman was given ALL the work of the white woman, the domestic duties, washing cleaning, looking after the children to name a few, leaving the white woman free to dress nice, fix her hair makeup etc essentially everything to make her desirable to men as was the trend in the 50s. While the black woman was left with all her work plus her own domestic servitude, essentially making the black woman the work mule, stripping her of femininity, and pushing the white woman further into this idea of a soft feminine creature, indeed she was often portrayed as helpless, prone to fainting and could not function without her black maid to help her with everything.

The strong black man, hyper masculinised by the white master is automatically attracted to its polar opposite the white woman. The black woman by contrast, was hardened and was often forced to be independent or was abused at the hands of the whites, while her 'strong' black man was reduced to a boy, effectively castrated in front of her, by the white master time and time again, the seat of power with the 'brainy' but weak white man - her choices, the cruel but weak white man or the 'strong' (but not for her) black man. It's all I could think about when reading ICE-T's comments.