Angry Black White Boy Read Online Free
understanding of each line of Rakim’s verse, but the fact that he could scarcely remember a time when he hadn’t known this shit.
With idle pride, Macon scrolled through some of what he knew. The Ten Percent were the bloodsuckers of the poor. They had Knowledge of Self but were not Righteous, and they preyed on the ignorance of the Eighty-Five who were Deaf, Dumb, and Blind to the truth. The Divine Alphabet allowed Gods and Earths to communicate in code; when Sadat X from Brand Nubian rhymed “the born cipher cipher master / makes me think much faster,” he meant the b-o-o-m, the boom, the weed. One hundred and twenty sacred Lessons awaited mastery; Jihad had sometimes disappeared behind a plywood bedroom door to study, or claim he was studying and smoke a blunt for dolo. Elijah Muhammad’s old Caucasian creation myth—the evil scientist Dr. Yacub grafts a barbaric white race from the Original Asiatic Black, a warlike people banished to the caves of cold, dark Europe but destined to rule the earth for sixty centuries—was tacitly endorsed, and white folks were called devils.
But were all white people devils? Could there be exceptions? What about that dude Paul C., who’d engineered Eric B. & Rakim’s album? What about Macon, who built with the Gods morning, noon, and night, passed out alongside them on perpendicular couches with his sneakers touching theirs, high off shared wack buddha? Macon had lost sleep looking for a loophole back in 1990, when the smoovest MC on the planet was Grand Puba Maxwell, asking “Can a Devil fool a Muslim? No, not nowadays bro,” and declaring, “It’s time to drop the bomb and make the Devil pay the piper.”
From Macon’s confusion had bubbled anger. How dare black people not see him as an ally, not recognize that he was down? He retaliated by studying their history, their culture: He was a thirteen-year-old whiteboy in a Malcolm X T-shirt, alone at the first annual Boston Hip Hop Conference, heart fluttering with intimidation and delight as scowling bald-headed old schoolers pointed at his chest, demanding, “Whatchu know about that man?” Which was exactly what he’d wanted, why he’d worn it. He ran down Malcolm’s life for them, watched them revise their expressions with inward elation, nodded studiously at their government assassination theories, rhymed when the chance presented itself. Tagged other graffiti writers’ blackbooks and wondered what it would take to be scratched from the devil list for good.
And yet history was overwhelming, and down deep Macon knew the truth. Who but white folks, his folks, had been so brutal for so long? He’d retreated briefly into his own Judaism,
Jewish-not-white,
with its analogous history of victimization and enslavement, but he couldn’t make it fit, couldn’t make himself feel Jewish, didn’t know what being Jewish felt like. He tossed the Star of David medallion Grandma had given him back into the dresser after a day, reflecting that race pride was a fashion trend he’d been completely iced out of. The sterling necklace’s drawer mate was the red-green-and-gold
Increase the Peace
medallion Macon had bought after Three Times Dope released their single of the same name; he’d copped it from a Downtown Crossing vendor as a less fly but more plausible alternative to the Africa medallions everybody was rocking post–Jungle Brothers. Macon never even wore it in his room.
Instead he lay on his bed in his parents’ house, music streaming past him low enough to go unheard in the kitchen below, and went to work constructing a rhetorical framework that would allow him to embrace the Five Percenters’ truths without capitulating his soul:
White people aren’t evil, but evil is white people.
There it was. Simple. Elegant. True. It bought Macon space to live in, to be special, angry, the exception, the crusader. The down whiteboy.
You my nigga, Macon. You a’ight.
The light clicked green and Red switched up the soundtrack,
With idle pride, Macon scrolled through some of what he knew. The Ten Percent were the bloodsuckers of the poor. They had Knowledge of Self but were not Righteous, and they preyed on the ignorance of the Eighty-Five who were Deaf, Dumb, and Blind to the truth. The Divine Alphabet allowed Gods and Earths to communicate in code; when Sadat X from Brand Nubian rhymed “the born cipher cipher master / makes me think much faster,” he meant the b-o-o-m, the boom, the weed. One hundred and twenty sacred Lessons awaited mastery; Jihad had sometimes disappeared behind a plywood bedroom door to study, or claim he was studying and smoke a blunt for dolo. Elijah Muhammad’s old Caucasian creation myth—the evil scientist Dr. Yacub grafts a barbaric white race from the Original Asiatic Black, a warlike people banished to the caves of cold, dark Europe but destined to rule the earth for sixty centuries—was tacitly endorsed, and white folks were called devils.
But were all white people devils? Could there be exceptions? What about that dude Paul C., who’d engineered Eric B. & Rakim’s album? What about Macon, who built with the Gods morning, noon, and night, passed out alongside them on perpendicular couches with his sneakers touching theirs, high off shared wack buddha? Macon had lost sleep looking for a loophole back in 1990, when the smoovest MC on the planet was Grand Puba Maxwell, asking “Can a Devil fool a Muslim? No, not nowadays bro,” and declaring, “It’s time to drop the bomb and make the Devil pay the piper.”
From Macon’s confusion had bubbled anger. How dare black people not see him as an ally, not recognize that he was down? He retaliated by studying their history, their culture: He was a thirteen-year-old whiteboy in a Malcolm X T-shirt, alone at the first annual Boston Hip Hop Conference, heart fluttering with intimidation and delight as scowling bald-headed old schoolers pointed at his chest, demanding, “Whatchu know about that man?” Which was exactly what he’d wanted, why he’d worn it. He ran down Malcolm’s life for them, watched them revise their expressions with inward elation, nodded studiously at their government assassination theories, rhymed when the chance presented itself. Tagged other graffiti writers’ blackbooks and wondered what it would take to be scratched from the devil list for good.
And yet history was overwhelming, and down deep Macon knew the truth. Who but white folks, his folks, had been so brutal for so long? He’d retreated briefly into his own Judaism,
Jewish-not-white,
with its analogous history of victimization and enslavement, but he couldn’t make it fit, couldn’t make himself feel Jewish, didn’t know what being Jewish felt like. He tossed the Star of David medallion Grandma had given him back into the dresser after a day, reflecting that race pride was a fashion trend he’d been completely iced out of. The sterling necklace’s drawer mate was the red-green-and-gold
Increase the Peace
medallion Macon had bought after Three Times Dope released their single of the same name; he’d copped it from a Downtown Crossing vendor as a less fly but more plausible alternative to the Africa medallions everybody was rocking post–Jungle Brothers. Macon never even wore it in his room.
Instead he lay on his bed in his parents’ house, music streaming past him low enough to go unheard in the kitchen below, and went to work constructing a rhetorical framework that would allow him to embrace the Five Percenters’ truths without capitulating his soul:
White people aren’t evil, but evil is white people.
There it was. Simple. Elegant. True. It bought Macon space to live in, to be special, angry, the exception, the crusader. The down whiteboy.
You my nigga, Macon. You a’ight.
The light clicked green and Red switched up the soundtrack,
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