The Black People's Karate Show

A white male friend of mine wrote the following:

• TNT had a special hosted by Wesley Snipes on the Martial Arts last night. Interesting program, obviously a two hour version of a full day or weekend event. Worth watching.
• As a side note, as per our Pseudo racial discussions, there were no white boys in the Masters category, by guestimate 70 percent were black, 20 percent Asian, 10 percent mixed or other. Extremely amusing is a black man I had never heard of was given the title of father of American Nijitsu, which normally is held by Steven Hayes.

The guy that wrote this is not a bigot, believe me. In fact, I thought it was strange that there were very few white people at Mr. Snipes' award ceremony. However, I was informed by my friend and my wife that Mr. Snipes has issues with white males and black females.

The Response

I wrote back the following:

• To put it in Ebonics: An' now you knows hows we's be feelin all da tyme!!!
• Didn't I tell you we live in two worlds of Karate, one Black, one White, which is probably three, one Black, one White, one Asian?????
• I've seen plenty of times where art forms that I know for a fact were started by Black people (like damn near every form of American Music except for Country and Heavy Metal, which have their roots in Blues which was created by African Americans) are portrayed in documentaries or have awards and not a Black face is praised. Perhaps mentioned, but not given it's just due. Despite that, I honestly DID notice that there was something missing, and after about 5 minutes I realized: there weren't any White people on the stage!!!
• There were Tai Chi acknowledgements without mention of Robert Smith. I've seen Smith refered to in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts many times!!! I also didn't see any TangSooDo people or Taekwondo people--unless they were mentioned in the first half, which I didn't catch. What about Chuck Norris?? I know he's been doing a lot of anti-drug work with kids.
• There were some Black arts neglected, as well as other non-black people. I don't recall anybody who practiced Capoera getting any awards. Or any mention of the Gracies. And he also left out Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore--a black comedian that had Martial Arts in a lot of his movies).
• Judging from the looks on some of the faces of a few of the white people in the audience (the ones you could find) I'd say you weren't the only Caucasian who felt Neglect's abrasion. I think Snipes just dug up the people that HE knew.
• The good thing that came out of this is that Wesley Snipes brought attention to a lot of people who otherwise would not have gotten any recognition. I enjoyed hearing about the work some of those guys did with children. I liked the clip on female martial artists as well. I also loved the Bruce Lee interview, but if you've read the Tao of JeetKuneDo, you've heard it all, 99% word for word.
• In addition, my wife was pissed off when she found out who sponsored the event. She hates Snipes because he said in an issue of Essence and/or Jet that he doesn't like Black women "because they're too argumentative". (Editor's note: I read the supposed article. What he said was taken COMPLETELY out of context. He does NOT imply that all black women are bad. However, I have been informed that he has made his views known on OTHER occasions. We shall see.) So she argued with me about watching the rest of the program--lending support to the stereotype. I laughed and pointed out to her that by getting so angry she's proving him right! Luckily she was in a good mood, and I didn't end up on the couch!!

Bringing It Home