Go to any barbershop, beauty salon, or HBCU in America and you’ll hear beaucoup Black folks chopping it up about stuff that’s Black. And what with Chili’s baby-hair line, the monstrosity that is the Basketball Wives show (why for come its called Wives when there’s only one actual current wife and she’s fixin’ to get divorced), and crime in the Black part of town, a lot of us are right. But, there are some things that we lay claim to that really ain’t as Black owned as we’d like to think.

Such as?

Glad you asked.

And it goes a little something like this.

1) Kool – Aid

Before the commercial featured a Black family singing red Kool-Aid carols and waxing poetically about cabinetry, it was a white family doing the same thing. Hell, there’s a reason they sell it 10 packs for a dollar.

White people are poor too.

In fact…peep this:

2) Soul Food

Maybe upnorf White folks don’t rock with Ceelo Green and Khujo Goodie, but down South, we all eat the same sh*t. Sure, some of the seasonings might be different but Becky Sue Ann and Quiltaynket Jenkins are both eating the same thing for Thanksgiving in the Mississippi Delta: chitlins. Or chitterlings for you bougie ninjas who manage to think you can be both bougie and eat pig intestines at the same time. Yousonasty. Oh, and you can’t.

Speaking of food…

3) Grits

While I personally can’t stand grits, I realize that it’s part of the Black national food trifecta of chicken, fish, and grits. And yes I just made it up. Lucky for you I’m still sexxy. Anyway, its a popular misconception that grits is a Black dish. No. It’s a poor dish. Poor white and Black folks have been sharing poor stories over grits for eons. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what started the abolitionist movement – some white chap wanting to make sure he could get as much grits as possible after he moved up North and made something of himself. And you thought the Underground Railroad was about freedom. Naw, son. That sh*t was about grits.

4) Ridiculous Names

Sure we tend to get WAY more creative with our ridiculous names than our white counterparts, but I’m saying, Apple? Moon Rocket? Chaos? Felony? You bet your ass those were white kids being named those things. It’s the same sh*t, different toilet. Us Blacks folks, we create names. White people just take something that’s currently in the dictionary and attach it to their kid, no matter how ridiculous. Moonbeam, I’m looking at you.

5) Taking on the “man”

American Revolution anybody? They big leagued the hell out of Great Britain, son!

6) Newports

Oh wait, that really is some Black sh*t. According to a poll, nearly half of all Black folks smoke Newports.

6) The Black market

Sure we like to bootleg movies Newports, batteries, Assistant Coach purses and Goochey, but them South Americans are on that real bootleg stuff. How about cocaine? That guy you know selling drugs, he’s small change compared to the dude in South America with the whole field. Shucks, they make whole movies about Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. Your boy BooBoo from 24th Street who just got locked up on a humble didn’t even make the 6 o’clock news.

7) Gangs

Despite the pesky insistence on the spreading of the Blood gang out to the East coast and the cache of the Bloods and Crips in LA, and all the gazillion gangs (under the Folk and Peoples umbrella) in Chicago and New York, Mexicans and South American cats are crazy with theirs. MS-13 is freakin’ everywhere. I hear they just started a chapter on the moon next to the University of Michigan Alumni Chapter. Add to the myriad Asian gangs in California and I’m wondering who in Cali isn’t in a gang? Well aside from Brandy, but she’s rapping now so…

Being dumb as being hot in the streets

Glad to say we don’t have the market cornered here since I went to high school with plenty of white kids who loved not being smart. I think we just go so hard with it. I remember sitting in English class one day and a classmate of mine trying to argue that he didn’t speak no English because that was some white sh*t. I’m pretty sure he never got the concept of irony. In a weird twist of fate, I hear Sarah Palin tapped him to be her speech writer since she’s talking that sh*t too. Yeah, I made that up. So what of it?

Hmm, I can’t have them all. Good ninjas and non-ninjas of VSB, what else do we always cite as being some Black sh*t that really runs the rainbow (no Hill Harper)?

Correction…I know your father.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3

Related posts:

1. Where Dey Do Dat At?: 7 Signs You Might Be At A Black Run Establishment
2. raw: the champ’s debunking of six commonly held relationship fallacies
3. It Is Til It Ain’t, Ain’t It?.

A few weeks back, I helped my homeboy move out of his apartment and of course, we rented a U-Haul.  Well apparently, my boy rented his truck from the busiest spot in all of Maryland AND given that it was the 31st of October (Halloween), everybody and their mama needed a truck to move from one apartment complex to the next.

$8,000 first time homebuyer tax credit my ass.

Anyway, we took the truck back at about 6:30 pm and the U-Haul locale was JUMPIN’ like the club.  I saw a chick who turned out to be a man dressed like a woman dancing to a Beyonce song, which was, like, so cliche.  Anyway, as we stand in line for what seems like forever, the clearly overworked ninja employees of the establishment begin loudcapping everybody but nobody in particular about people needing to get out of the store because it was basically closing time and how they weren’t getting paid enough to deal with these snippy motherf*ckers.

Being the college-educated and well-adjusted individuals that me and mi compadre are, we waited our turn and when we got to the front of the line, the phone started ringing.  Now you might think this was the store phone.  Nope, it was her personal cell phone and much to the surprise of nobody, she answered the phone…WHILE dealing with our order.  She proceeds to detail to the person on the other end of the phone how ninjas just KEEP showing up KNOWING that they close at 7pm and how she BETTER have some collard greens and chicken left.

And for anybody who went to Ray’s funeral last weekend, I’m sorry for your loss.  I didn’t know Ray personally, but I heard about all of the details from Bertha at the U-Haul on Chillum Road in Hyattsville, Maryland.

You’re welcome.

Anyway, the craptastic service and all around ri-damn-diculousness that I witnessed reminded me of something that I both love and adore…SERVICE AT A BLACK RUN ESTABLISHMENT!

While I love my people dearly, there definitely are some Black Run Establishments (BREz) that be on that bullsh*t.  Sometimes…they just suuuuuck.

So quickly, here are 7 sign that you might be at a BRE.

1)  Lots of employees but no work getting done

SEE example from up above.

2)  Employees make you feel like they’re doing YOU a favor by dealing with you…despite the fact that you’re paying for a service

There’s nothing worse than a motherf*cker treating you like you should thank them for being there and getting paid to do their damn job.  I hate ninjas like this. Really.  Like really really.

3)  Folks are talking on their personal cellphones, about personal business

I don’t know about you, but I don’t even need Bossip or TMZ.  All I do is go to my local Popeye’s and I can keep up with all the local and Hollywood gossip when Boomshakalaka and her cousin get to talking about who Ray J is REALLY f*cking. Yay!

4)  Hard to tell the employees from the friends of employees

I’ll never understand why folks will go visit their homies at work FOR HOURS.  Jesus be an unemployment check.

5)  There’s always a lingering threat of violence between…somebody(s)

You ever just notice a palpable anger in the air but can’t tell where it’s coming from or who it’s directed towards but if a fight broke out you wouldn’t be surprised?  Yeah, you just might be in a BRE.

6)  They play the versions of songs that include Plies and/or curse words

Plies = curse words in my book and neither are allowed on Sunday anywhere NEAR me.  Seriously though, perhaps I’m just getting old but I get downright soccermom-ish when I hear a song playing in a store and it’s the dirty version.  I just want to shake a stick at people and make them feel bad with vicious rhetoric.

7)  You have to check your bag at the door

I think it’s so funny that you have to check your bag in a store where you can literally see the entire store and everybody in it from the front door.  Then again, in this time of economic depression, I guess the ninja at the front door checking bags is just happy to have a job.  Either way, they don’t do that sh*t at the store NEXT DOOR.  And chances are, I’d rather rob them anyway.  But I can read.  So I won’t.

So good folks of VSB, I KNOW I missed some things.  Educate the people, people.  How do YOU know you might be at a BRE??

Inquiring minds would like to know.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3

Related posts:

1. Things Drunk White People Do That Black People Don’t Do…Unless We’re Being Black
2. This or That: Signs That You Might Not Be Compatible
3. Still Black: 7 Things I Learned While Watching CNN’s Black In America 2

You know, I used to say that I refused to date a(nother) woman with “daddy issues.” Though difficult to define, “daddy issues” are as easy to spot as Shaquille O’Neal in a swarm of midget Spanish ninjas. Or porn. With absentee fatherism and all around Blackness at an all time high, the complaints of neglect or the constant testing to prove one’s love linger as remnants of a past failed parental relationship surface.

Something I’ve learned, however, is that even women with fathers who are present and accounted for in their lives still manage to have these “daddy issues”. This has always confused me as I’d assumed that women with present fathers just had to be more balanced and more emotionally stable than those without. Right? Right?

Wrong. Who knew? And here I thought relationships in the Black community were going the way of the condor because of rap music. Who knew that parenting had as much to do with one’s development as hip-hop. Damn you LL.

But I digress.

Apparently fathers have been wreaking havoc on relationships for eons. And unless Obama wins the Presidency, will probably continue to do so.

And let’s be clear here, I’m well aware that many men out there are screwed up when it comes to relationships. And a large part of it is the lack of a positive male-female example. Many men don’t know how to treat women and its because there was nobody to actually show them (us) what to do. Men have both mommy and daddy issues. Hell, the whole concept of being a mama’s boy is a “mommy issue”. If your mother becomes your wife, and you’re not in West Virginia or Montana, you likely have a problem.

Or our lack of emotional communication. I don’t ever actually remember my mother ever telling me to be more open and communicative. Then again, my dad isn’t exactly a big talker. No wonder I can clam up when it comes to having to express emotions and feelings. Sorry baby.

Obviously, children’s faults in life are largely the sum total of all of our parents mistakes. There’s no way in hell that our future relationships don’t suffer when all we have to witness of relationships are the failings of some of our parents. Most of us meander through life trying to figure out why we think the way we do or why all of our relationships have the same issues. We usually are able to figure out at some point that the very problems we bring to our relationships are the same things we witness our parents going through.

It sure as hell is hard to figure out how to go right when all you’ve seen in life is wrong. Now I know that it’s wholly possible to enter into and maintain a substantial and positive relationship even if you’re the product of a home that’s more broken than the prosecution in the R. Kelly trial.

But I have to wonder, people of VSB.com, how hard do you think it is to overcome your own family while creating a new one? Do you believe in the concept of “daddy issues?” I’ve had women tell me that they don’t exist, while exhibiting every possible issue I’d associate with the term. More importantly…

…who has more of a direct impact on our relationships in the future, mommy or daddy?

-VSB P

P.S. Every now and then we do get serious around here at VSB.com

P.P.S. Also, I’m in cahoots with a clique of people reppin’ that Exchange Blocc of the Muxtape Set Gang. Check out our muxtape online at http://exchange.muxtape.com. This week’s topic was Teenage Love Affair so all the songs reflect all the participants favorite songs from our lovestruck teens years…ya know, before cynicism set in. Check it out…

Related posts:

1. I’ll Be Your Pappy: The Silence of the Daddy Issues
2. Emailed Link-of-the-Week: I Got The Hook Up!
3. how lebron reminds us that dudes have “daddy issues” too