To Be Young, Black and an Olympian: What that's got to do with Three 6 Mafia and Jason Whitlock

“You know it’s hard out here for a pimp. When he tryin’ to get this money for the rent.”

Lyric from: It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp from the album Hustle & Flow Soundtrack

Written By: Jordan Houston, Paul Beauregard and Cedric Coleman

Performed by: Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson

Three 6 Mafia, Getty Images

In 2006 Memphis’ Three 6 Mafia made history with the first hip hop performance ever at the Oscars. They immediately topped that historic feat with another. The group’s song, “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp”, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song that evening, the first ever win for a rap group in the category.

As a native Memphian, this was a big deal for me.

At 15, I was allowed to go on my first date and, my boyfriend’s car was outfitted with all of the southern-favored, bass-heavy stereo equipment that made the trunk rattle and the passersby stop and stare. How better to showcase one’s sonic investment than with Three 6’s bass-laden tracks. Their music was a fixture in his ride. Therefore, as our relationship grew so did my appreciation for the group.

On that night in 2006 that win meant a lot to me as a woman for whom her roots as a little black girl who had grown up in North Memphis were a source of pride, who had “bumped out” to Three 6 Mafia in the car with her boyfriend on her very first date.

As group members Jordan “Juicy J” Houston and Paul “DJ Paul” Beauregard made their acceptance speeches that night I tried not to notice the faces in the crowd. But I couldn’t help but notice. The mostly white faces in the audience that evening were wearing expressions that were mixed in countenance from horrified to angry to annoyed to smiles filled with trepidation.

Terrence Howard probably anticipated those haunting faces and maybe that’s why he chose not to perform the song that evening or at the very least, why he may have been advised not to perform.

Those faces became the cause of my discontent and in a mere moment I went from “YAY!!! Three 6 won an Oscar” to “Oh Gosh, Three 6 won an Oscar”. 

Ah yes, the dichotomy of being black.

It is the great divide we experience as descendants of an oppressed people. We must balance at once our pride in our differences and our desire to be accepted as the same.

This is not an easy cross to bear.

The pride is nearly automatic at this point, again, a mostly knee-jerk reaction to a unifying but horrifying history of oppression. The acceptance, most blacks would say however, is still a work in progress.

The burdens of this work have often played out in two ridiculous, costly presumptions of Black Americans. The first being that every black person represents the collective state of the entire race at all times and secondarily, that the actions of every black person, more often than not, directly correlate to the fact that they are black as if a cultural mainstay.

And both blacks and non-blacks alike have bought in to this conjecture.

This is why the media insisted on Gabrielle Douglas speaking for an entire race of little girls hoping to become gymnasts. And why her broader historic achievement as the first American gymnast ever to win gold both in the team competitions and the individual all-around at the same Olympics has nearly been overshadowed by the fact that she is the first African-American gymnast to win gold in the individual all-around competition.

It is also why some black women were likely the loudest critics of Gabby’s hair throughout the events. We hold our race’s star-turned delegates to the highest standards because we can’t shake the notion that with our still limited, even in 2012, opportunities to shine in the national spotlight we must look, speak and act in a manner that would not confuse, offend or turn off whites.

Growing up as black girl in the South I am painfully aware of the nonsensical opinion that lighter skin is prettier. This theory was no doubt rooted in the slavery-old estimation that the closer one’s skin is to white, the better the experience on the plantation and the better the lot in life. Unfortunately, that theory was not thrown out with slavery’s bath water. Its remnants persist in black communities all over America today.

As such I am painfully loath to admit the possibility that more than anyone else, blacks are likely in favor of and more comfortable with   Lolo Jones' designation as media and marketing darling instead of her darker skinned teammates.

I must strongly disagree, however, with Jason Whitlock’s allusion in this piece that Ms. Jones’ lighter skin is the primary driver of the reason her USA Track and Field teammates, Dawn Harper and Kellie Wells who took home silver and bronze medals respectively in the 100 meter hurdles final,  have chosen to despise the fourth-place finisher. Despise is such a strong word and, this declaration fits right in to the foolish notion that because Ms. Harper and Ms. Wells are black that their possible frustration with Ms. Jones is best defined as a “black thing”.

Could it simply be that as medalists they are irritated that a non-medalist is getting so much, if not more, attention than they are? As childish as you may think that is, I would implore you to consider it a more reasonable explanation than the one offered by Mr. Whitlock.

After all, no one myopically claimed that female tennis players despised Anna Kournikova simply because she was a blonde bombshell.

And white Americans probably weren’t squirming in their seats when Eminem won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Lose Yourself”, the first ever win for a rap artist in the category, three years before Three 6 Mafia’s win.  

They likely weren’t relieved when he was a no-show for the event because they had been concerned about how his actions or words might have influenced the overall perception of the white race.

They had no great divide with which to contend.

As far as this dichotomy goes, blacks are on our own and it will never be an easy cross for us to bear.