Highergroundonline Op/Ed- Angree Bruther Commentary: You Have Got to Be Kidding Me.

Greetings all, and Happy New Year. I hope everyone is well and ready to embark upon a New Year, may this year be your best yet.

I received an e-mail the other day, attached to the e-mail was the picture above, a link to the site (TshirtHell.com) where this shirt can be purchased and a couple of paragraphs about how racist this shirt is and how civil rights groups and celebrities such as the NAACP, Magic Johnson, President George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Tom Joyner, BET, The Urban League, The Brotherhood Crusade, Russell Simmons, Sean Combs and a plethora of others were being contacted to speak on this racist outrage.

My initial reaction was of course one of anger. Who in the hell who has a third of a mind would actually come up with something as tasteless as this? I was literally ready to rip a new @sshole into this site and its owner, but after settling down from the initial shock, I decided to visit the website that sales this tacky ass shirt. As I perused this site I saw many racist and insipid shirts all housed in the “worse than hell” section of the site. Some of the shirts that are being sold have titles such as “I surfed the Tsunami 2004”, “Love him or hate him, Hitler killed a ton of Jews, “Native Americans should have fought harder, you pussies” “My Mexican works for less than your Mexican” “Abortions Tickle” and last but not least “I (plane) New York”.

On some of these images you will see a message below them reading:

“These shirts are COMEDY people. Anyone who takes them seriously or who thinks that we are racist is ignorant. Are Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle the only ones allowed to do stereotype humor? There is no difference between what they do and what we do”

After reading that, I thought to myself for several seconds “What in the hell is REALLY going on in this society”, where someone can not only create such ignorance, but call it comedy? And to top it all off, AIN'T NONE OF THAT SH!T REMOTELY FUNNY!!!

Finally upon conclusion of looking through this site, surprisingly my anger was channeled away from the “Arrest Black Babies” shirt and directed towards society… let me explain. This site is racist without a shadow of a doubt, the “Black Babies” shirt wasn't the first shirt to be made, there are many before that one which are utterly offensive. With that being said, I'm wondering why all the fuss is being made now? Why is every damn Black celebrity and civil rights group being contacted now? I understand they are being reached out to because this one shirt is stereotyping African American males, but WE AS A PEOPLE should have stepped in long before when the Hitler shirt or when the Native American shirt was produced. The only way we can knock out ignorance like this in the world is if we all team together and help one another out.

Its fine and dandy for African Americans to stand up, fight and not take racist acts like this. I thoroughly applaud that. That's what my parent's and grandparents so adamantly did. It's only right and I would do the same thing. However, when I read that e-mail, it did not say one thing about combating for the other races or victims that are insulted.

I feel that we (African Americans) would have garnered much respect if we would have taken a stance against the bigotry, racism and overall ignorance of this site. See we all need allies, no one race or genre of people can win anything by themselves. However if we as a nation could become united and stand up for foolishness like this we would be too strong to defend. The late Tupac Shakur once said a line that will stick with me forever. He cited, “They can shoot one nigg@ but they can't take us all”. Let's substitute words here and say “They can defeat one but they can't take us all.” If we took that mentally into battle we wouldn't be faced with half the problems in society right now.

So ladies and gentlemen, I ask you now to reach out to this site and notify ALL your friends about it as well. Encourage them to call or e-mail this business, expressing their disappointments. Gary Cohen, the owner of TshirtHell.com phone number is: 310.403.2788. His personal e-mail address is: garyc@tshirthell.com and let's flood this inbox as well: info@tshirthell.com .

We as a people can do this. Until next week, get it together.

Peace