Notwithstanding the fact that two very smart brothas (Damon Young and Patrice O’Neal) have instructed me to never trust a Black man without facial hair — we (Black people) collectively stopped messing with Taye for a very different reason. Taye made headlines and our shit list when he said he doesn’t want his biracial son to be referred to as “Black.” I’m always bewildered when stars feel like they need to trumpet their half-cocked opinions to the masses like anyone is checking for real talk from Taye Diggs. Personally, I was tired of hearing all of my homeboys constantly wonder when the dude who was friends with Brown Sugar-era Sanaa Lathan—but never tried to hit — would finally release his philosophies on race and ethnicity. I can logically believe that a man with a white wife isn’t necessarily filled with self-hate, but when that man effectively says, “I don’t want my son to be viewed in the same way the world views me, and my father and his father…” I think someone should step in and say, “You know they’re recording this, right? People can hear you.” We heard you loud and clear, Taye. That’s why we stopped messing with you.
Anyway, thinking about the Diggs made me think about who else would be on this list. Who else did the Congregation of Negros Collective decide to boot off the island this year?
Meek Mills He got bodied by a singing nigga. That’s it. That’s the reason. I know it’s shallow and petty, but if you get beat down by anyone, and that person’s next move is to release a video doing the white-boy shuffle in an empty room wearing a cardigan and Dockers, we can’t fuck with you anymore. I’m gonna reveal a secret to you all: Drake’s beatdown of Meek sent the dark-skinned brother community into a tailspin. First, Steph Curry wins the NBA MVP, then this. One minute Meek was the hottest, hardest rapper, on the biggest tour in hip hop (or his girl’s tour), and then, poof he fucked it all up. On Twitter! It’s almost like his homey Will Smith waved that light pen from “Men in Black” in front of our eyes and Meek was erased from our memories and Nikki Minaj’s vagina history. Meek, you’re from Philly, dog. You’ve dropped below Will Smith on the totem pole of hard-ass Philly niggas to somewhere between Charli Baltimore and Lee Daniels. Speaking of Philly…
Bill Cosby This was a hard year for Pill Bill. When decades-old allegations of rape resurfaced, it seemed like Black people were going to ride with Bill for a minute. Those of us not offended by his “pull up your pants” rants were going to stick up for the man who laced our childhood with memories of Mushmouth and fine-ass Lisa Bonet and pudding pops (niggas wasn’t fucking with pudding before our Uncle Bill made it cool). The Black narrative was, “They” were trying to set him up, because he was going to buy NBC, or start the first Black-owned network with Oprah, or resurrect the corpse of Michael Jackson and Sojourner Truth or some other unbelievable shit. We thought it was just another conspiracy until allegations started coming out of the woodwork like roaches when you turn out the lights at Wiz Khalifa’s house (I don’t care how clean he is, or where he lives, Wiz just looks like he has roaches at the crib). After Jill Scott took back her Twitter rant, the only people left standing in Bill’s corner were Camille, Theo and Rudy (I know, but to Black America those are their real names). Even Vanessa abandoned ship, although it’s still just a case of He said/She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. (Add 42 more)
Donald Trump This list is not just limited to Black people. We used to love Donald Trump, because, like many people we fuck with, The Donald likes gaudy gold shit, owns a lot of flashy cars while living in an apartment, and he loves to brag about how he’s getting money and bad bitches. Now that I think about it — Trump might be a gangster rapper. Anyway, Donald Trump ran for President and went full Pat Buchanan on us. The truth is, Black people are used to finding out their white friend is secretly racist, but Trump went from walling out and rounding up Mexicans to registering Muslims to okaying the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester. Say what you will about the Orange Fuhrer’s lack of a plan for immigration reform, but his racism is comprehensive as hell. We just can’t fuck with him anymore.
Future If you tied me up, held a rusty knife to my penis and told me you’d cut it off unless I named a Future song, I couldn’t do it. I don’t even know if Future is a rapper or a singer. The only thing I know about Future is that it’s widely agreed that he’s a fuckboy. I can’t say what I would do if I had to listen to Ciara sing every day, so I have a place of sympathy for Future, but having Twitter fights and throwing baby mama shade in the press seems very bitch-nigga-ish to me. Plus, you have to have impeccable fuckboy credentials for a woman to leave you for a man who’s giving her no D. But, you know, they say it’s not the size of the boat…
Thats what I’d have to keep telling myself after my kidnappers found out I didn’t know any Future songs.
Stephen A Smith We liked Serial-Sayer-of-Stupid-Shit Stephen A. Smith (that’s his official title) before he started building his collection of I’m-smarter-than-you-stupid-niggas idiotic quotes and hyperbolic synonyms. Stephen is one of those people who thinks that intelligence is determined by the number of syllables he can cram into a sentence. First it was his statement that some women get their asses beat because they provoke men. Then it was his Cosby-esque defense of Martin O’Malley and “All Lives Matter” by pointing the finger at Black people. He finally hit an all time low when Kevin Durant called him out for blatantly lying, and Smith’s only defense was to threaten Durant on live TV. Black people took that offense like when a bully picks on the quiet kid in class: Why is he picking on KD? You know Kevin don’t bother nobody, so Black people don’t fuck with Stephen A. Smith.
Raven Symone - Raven’s ghetto pass was actually revoked in 2014 when she told Oprah that she wasn’t Black or African American, but we kinda let her slide because she was Olivia on the Cosby show, she hung with Mr. Cooper and she was so Raven. We gave her the “Great Value” brand version of the benefit of the doubt we gave Cosby for forming so many of our childhood memories, but she couldn’t stop herself. We had our collective side-eye watching and waiting for her to — in the words of her very own father — say “some dumb shit” and she didn’t disappoint. After saying she would discriminate against someone who had a “Black name” and then defending the news anchor who said Michelle Obama looked like an ape, we crossed her off the list of friends who can come to the cookout, and the list of people we fuck with.
Ben Carson - Remember when Cuba Gooding, Jr. — another dude we sorta don’t fuck with - played Ben Carson in Gifted Hands and Carson became Black History trivia? We liked the soft-spoken medical genius then, but we didn’t know Ben was a right-wing conservative who went around trying to stab people in the dick while concocting theories about the pyramids being built by historical Jews as self-rising flour. Ben’s litany of falsehoods have been well-catalogued, but after Ben tried to convince us that free health care is worse than slavery and that he saved white people during the 1968 race riots, we left Ben alone. Personally, I cut him off after he threatened my penis when I didn’t know any Future songs. Thank God I was wearing that belt.