Where is Charlemagne tha God and The Breakfast Club?
Where is “Isiah Factor Uncensored” and the “What Were They Thinking” segment?
The interracial couple who had a slavery theme to their pre-wedding pictures do not even deserve “Donkey of the Day” on “The Breakfast Club” radio program.
That couple needs “Donkeys of the Decade” for their tone-deaf photographs that disrespect the Black community in levels I have never seen.
In the pictures, the Black groom-to-be is shackled in chains and the White bride-to-be is his master that falls in love with her Mandingo man.
As one would expect, Black Twitter, Black media personalities and Black publications went off, especially on the Black man for obviously thinking such pictures would go uncriticized.
Black Enterprise reported, “An interracial couple is making headlines for their unique pre-wedding photos, and it’s not because the pictures stand out for their beauty or ambience of where the photos were taken.
“In fact, the Internet is having a field day slamming an engaged couple for the absurd idea to dress the Black man as a slave and his White fiancée as a plantation damsel in distress/slave owner who seemingly has saved the big ole’ Negro from a life of bondage.
“And the man’s got shackles on to spice up the mood acting in the pictures!”
While some media members like the great Madd Hatta of KTSU 90.9 FM in Houston hope that the pictures are a hoax and many others think the pictures are a call for attention, it should not matter.
While the bride is obviously as wrong as the day is long for posing as a slave master with her Negro lover, the main responsibility must fall on the “brother” to allow this to happen in the first place.
My ancestors who survived slavery like Solomon and Celia Huff would be turning over in their grave right now if that was their descendant in those engagement pictures mocking the brutal institution of slavery that they had to endure.
If I was tone-deaf enough to allow someone to photograph me as a slave, while my White fiancé acted as my master, I would not even be mad if my White friends slapped the mess out of me and disowned me.
Therefore, I would more than expect a roasting from my folks in the Black community.
In the current climate that we live in with poor race relations, it is more important for the Black community (if we so choose) to educate the uneducated on the realities of Black history and the current Black plight, which still includes systemic racism, police brutality and voter suppression.
Like many Black people, I understand if many in my community do not feel the need to educate some White people on race relations when the information is readily available for anyone who wants to learn about America’s original sin.
But no Black person on Earth should be encouraging any White person to act as if slavery was just some period in history and therefore no big deal.
As a matter of fact, even White people who are not Black history buffs, or history buffs period, know that mocking slavery will come across as ignorant and insensitive.
Furthermore, it does not take an expert in history to see that race relations are at a boiling point in this divided country.
And those divisions began with America’s original sin, slavery.
Black Americans are still dealing with the realities of slavery when it comes wealth, land ownership and other things.
And as a matter of fact, Black people still endured the horrors of slavery well into the 20th century when it comes to major American corporations purchasing prisoners from penitentiaries as slaves.
Long after slavery, Black prisoners built many Fortune 500 companies for free because the 13th Amendment allowed people to be enslaved if convicted of a crime.
Unfortunately, for Black people a crime could be not having a job or quitting a job without the White man’s approval.
As a result of that reality, many Black people still endured the harsh conditions of slavery in this country almost a century after the Emancipation Proclamation.
It was just slavery under another name.
And I know what racists will say.
Slavery happened decades and centuries ago.
Let’s move on.
It’s no big deal.
As a matter of fact, I do not even see color.
Well, what would the reaction be if the shoe was on the other foot?
What kind of reaction would occur if the Black man was featured as the slave master and the White woman as his slave?
What if the brother held a whip to his White female slave?
Furthermore, what would happen if a German man proposed to a Jewish woman and their engagement pictures took place in a mock concentration camp?
What if the engagement pictures had a gas chamber as the backdrop instead of a plantation?
Well, that German brother’s career would be over, and he would have to deal with being called an anti-Semite his entire life, and rightfully so.
One of the biggest problems with the current generation is the need for attention, the need to go viral on social media and the need for clout.
What should have been one of the best times of one’s life, getting married, will probably be an episode that this couple will never live down, and rightfully so.
