Okay, First Of All, Money Over Everything Is A Real Concept
Clearly Michael Cohen is a bona fide scapegoat for denialists now, but…
During Michael Cohen’s second sensational Congressional testimony this past Wednesday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R, North Carolina) was in the zone — a sociopolitical twilight zone — when he topped off his reality show performance with showcasing Lynne Patton, a former Trump family aide, now turned offical at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Trump seems to like hiring Blacks for this department) as a witness to the circumstantial evidence and his patent counterargument to Mr. Cohen’s claims that President Trump is a racist.
But they know, they know and they know.
Ah! the vanity and insanity of whiteness.
Again the motivated ignorance surrounding whiteness conflates the resiliency and pseudo profound tolerance of certain blacks with their proactive coping mechanisms utilized in protecting and securing self-interests in the remarkable presence of racism as a means to an end.
House Negros, as they are known colloquially and disparagingly have acclimated to this survival technique, and apparently in the modern sense our double consciousness has gotten this down to a cultural science when employment, which is necessary to stave off destitution, is crucial to our mental and physical health. So when Ms. Patton issues this screed via Instagram, I take it with a grain of salt.
Because they know, they know, and they know.
lynnepatton As someone who considered #MichaelCohen one of my very best friends for the past 10+ years — virtually inseparable during our tenure at the Trump Organization (and even before) having personally introduced me to the Trump family, leading to my subsequent employment therein, and arguably, my current job — the only word that truly comes to mind this week is sad.
I am sad that Michael has elected to leverage his own personal illegal activities into nothing more than political theater this week with the sole partisan purpose to embarrass a sitting President with unfounded personal or professional gossip.
I am sad that Michael would turn his back on a man to whom he has repeatedly said he owes everything in the hope of a reduced prison sentence.
Lastly, I am sad for myself.
Sad that I have wasted so much time and energy caring, supporting and loving a man I now realize I truly never knew.
If Michael Cohen had anything of substance to offer against the President of the United States, Mueller would not have rejected his plea for leniency and Cohen would not be going to jail. Period.
Above all, I am sad that Michael would — once again, on a world stage — levy unsubstantiated claims — particularly those of bigotry and racism — against a man who has single-handedly helped raise five of the most unbiased and open-minded children I’ve ever known. Four of whom I count among my very best friends, to date.
I stated this in my viral video back in 2015 and I’ll say it again:
As the daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, there is no amount of money in the world that would make me work for a man who I thought harbored bigoted or racist ideologies.
People who have known this man far less than I have have been offered over 7-figures to write best-selling works of fiction, yet the thought has never crossed my mind. So I truly mean it when I say there is no amount of money in the world to make me either work for (nor sell-out) this family. Zero.
The bottom line is that, much like Omarosa Manigault Newman, it does not take someone 15 years to figure out someone is a racist.
Unless, of course, they’re not one. 🙄
Racism may have deleterious effects even when the target does not consciously perceive the maltreatment or attribute it to racism.¹
Yes there is that amount of money and it has made you overlook racism!
Racism is more so structural and less so performative — despite the uptick in overt racism on display with the growing sentiment— in the U.S. today, whereas in the past it was equally and intensively both excruciatingly distressing.
There is remarkable evidence in the economic data measured and determined when evaluating the racial disparities of the distribution of economic wealth which coincides with economic opportunity for wealth empowerment here in the U.S. It should be of no surprise learning how systematic inequality can lead to certain Black’s own denialism in order to climb or avoid falling down the socioeconomic ladder. In other words you literally have to trick yourself into believing that there is no racism when applying for that job. I do it all the time, because you know, and you know, and they know. 😐
The Center for American Progress has put this into perspective in their report on “How America’s Structural Racism Helped Create the Black-White Wealth Gap”
- African Americans own approximately one-tenth of the wealth of white Americans. In 2016, the median wealth for nonretired black households 25 years old and older was less than one-tenth that of similarly situated white households.9
- The black-white wealth gap has not recovered from the Great Recession. In 2007, immediately before the Great Recession, the median wealth of blacks was nearly 14 percent that of whites. Although black wealth increased at a faster rate than white wealth in 2016, blacks still owned less than 10 percent of whites’ wealth at the median.10
- Black households have fewer and are in greater need of personal savings than their white counterparts. For a variety of reasons, blacks are more likely to experience negative income shocks but are less likely to have access to emergency savings. As a consequence, blacks are more likely to fall behind on their bills and go into debt during times of emergency.
- African Americans face systematic challenges in narrowing the wealth gap with whites. The wealth gap persists regardless of households’ education, marital status, age, or income. For instance, the median wealth for black households with a college degree equaled about 70 percent of the median wealth for white households without a college degree. The gap worsens as households grow older. In 2016, blacks between 50 and 65 years old and near retirement had only about 10 percent of the wealth of whites in the same age group. This is down from the approximately 24-percent gap in 1998, when the same groups of people were between 32 and 47 years old.
- African Americans have fewer assets than whites and are less likely to be homeowners, to own their own business, and to have a retirement account. The most recent data available, from 2016, show that when blacks owned such assets, they were worth significantly less than assets owned by whites.
- Black households have more costly debt. In 2016, blacks with debt typically owed $35,560 — less than 40 percent of the $93,000 in debt owed by whites. However, because blacks owed larger amounts of high-interest debt — such as installment credit and student and car loans — the debt they typically owed was more expensive. For example, blacks carry larger credit card balances than whites.
You know these challenges and obstacles can be especially cumbersome in our ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ creed as fellow Americans. So with this in mind it is absolutely imperative for most of us who just want to raise our families and live our best lives to exact a bit of self-control in our anticipations of racializations and simply brush them off. Facts! Again, I do this all the time based on degree and severity to the psyche and tend to adapt until I am in a position to influence change and set a precedent. We — individually, and not monolithically — have different tolerances for this nonsense though.
We know, that they know, and they know.
It sounds hard doesn’t it. Actually our infliction in these instances has hardened our sensibilities as the pressure and or irritation thicken us to the point of callousness when we perceive it as a win-win in an essentially win-lose proposition. And it doesn’t get any cornier than this as I use this metaphorical allusion from Grammy Award winning rapper Drake.
Yeah, I be yelling out money over everything, money on my mind.
Then she wanna ask when it got so empty
Tell her I apologize it happened over time
She says they missed the old Drake, girl don’t tempt me
If they don’t get it, they’ll be over you
That new shit that you got is overdue
You better do what you suppose to do
I’m like why I gotta be all that but still I can’t deny the fact that it’s true (2011)
And so for economic security, or economic prosperity…they know, they know, and they know.
¹ Racism is a stressor that contributes to racial/ethnic disparities in mental and physical health and to variations in health outcomes within racial and ethnic minority groups (Anderson 1989; Clark et al. 1999; Mays et al. 2007; Paradies 2006; Williams and Williams-Morris 2000). Racism, in particular, self-reported ethnic or racial discrimination is a highly prevalent phenomenon. Members of most ethnic or racial minority groups report exposure over the course of their lifetime, and recent research indicates that episodes of ethnicity-related maltreatment occur on a weekly basis for some groups (Brondolo et al. 2009). The evidence points consistently to a relationship between self-reported racism and mental health impairments, specifically negative mood and depressive symptoms (Brondolo et al. 2008; Kessler Mickelson and Williams 1999; Paradies 2006).
