Thug Ethos: Why Vivica Fox Crying Over 50 Cent is a Bad Thing, on a Few Different Levels

Listen I know that women that we think highly of in the Black culture that are supposed to be sophisticated and refined have a thing for thugs. For my generation this goes back to Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, for yours it may go back a bit further. But to see Vivica Fox on The Monique Show not just crying about 50 Cent, but telling us that he apologized, and that she forgave him, takes the cake. I know this happened a while ago, but I was thinking about it on the ride listening to some gangsta rap music and felt the need to talk out about it.

First off their relationship happened some time ago, now I can’t find footage of Whitney Houston, who is not just divorced, but back at it, waxing poetic about Bobby Brown, nor crying. Nor has she appeared in any of his new music videos, of all things. I just don’t get it; you know an upstanding Negro like me or you would not have had our apologies accepted, and probably never would have had a chance at it to begin with. I think that a number is being ran on us as a people, as a culture that has a rich legacy to uphold. Has it really come to this, where Black women are told, through subtle tactics and planting subliminal seeds like this one, that 50 Cent is what they have to look up to? I mean regardless of how “real” we keep things through other medium, through other genre, something like this always manages to peer through.

I’m not saying the emotions aren’t real, that the drama isn’t, but at some point in time enough is enough. What the rest of us geeks, nerds, and emotionally awkward Black men need to do is figure out what it is that individuals like 50 Cent and Lil’ Wayne are doing right, and why Black women, if they have to date Black men, would prefer them over us, and men of other races and cultures over us. Some of us are getting it right, in fact I think that a lot more of us are than the media is letting on; remember I told you before that this media is always, without exception, going to pit us against each other. If you do as you’re told and you do not challenge or attempt to change the status quo perhaps you get that same treatment but I wouldn’t loose any sleep over it, so what are we going to do about it?

You know we talk a good game about fighting ignorance and defeating the status quo. We’ll talk about how Bill Cosby was like the second coming and what a great job our public intellectuals are doing but when you see tomfoolery like you have in that aforementioned clip all of that goes out of the window because the underlying message, by Black people for Black youth, is that thuggish behavior is rewarded, encouraged, to be aspired to. All young Black men in training get from that clip, is that if they play their cards right, they can break a talented Black women’s heart the way that 50 Cent did.