The New Bully In Town,
or The Head Nigger In Charge!
Mr. Zip Coon Tood - as in Tired -- Boyd. 

By Cecil Brown

O ole Zip Coon he is a larned skoler,
Sings posum up a gum tree an coony in a holler,
-- Thomas Birch, New York: Atwill's Music Saloon, 1834

Berkeley Hills, 2003
Uncle Willie, his suit case in hand, came puffing up the street. I
could see him struggling up the hill, as I sit at my computer.
"My! What a view!" he exclaimed, walking in the opened door, looking
at the Golden Gate across the bay, "You always did like the hills!"
I haven't seen Uncle Willie in thirty years, when he last visited me
in Berkeley. Dressed in a checked shirt (Aunt Amanda's feed sack
patterned), and he must now be about seventy.
"You still at it, uh?" He looks across at my writing area-books
scattered, scraps of paper on the sofa near the fireplace. "What chu
writin, now?"
"Well-You sort of caught me in the middle of a piece on hip hop-"
"Hip what?"
Uncle Willie doesn't like hip-hop. He belongs to what Todd Boyd calls
the Civil Rights generation.
"Why would you even bother with that mess!"
"Sit down and rest, Uncle Willie," I said. He did. "Now," I said,
"I'll read you what I've written."
"Okay."
"I'm reviewing this book by Todd Boyd, "The New N.N.I.C.: The Death
of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip-Hop," I start. "Body's main
point is that Hip-hop has replaced civil rights as the defining
moment in Blackness. Here let me quote him. 'one of the biggest
problems now facing the Black community is the divide between this
civil rights and the hip hiphop generation.' "Hip hop has rejected
and now replaced the pious, sanctimonious nature of civil rights as
the defining moment of Blackness." (xxi)
End of quote. He says that civil rights is dead."
"Civil rights is dead! "
It hit Uncle Willie hard. I could tell he and civil rights were
tight. It was like a persona friend had died. Finally, he took a
breath.
"Who killed civil rights?"
" According to Boyd some hip hopper and hip hop generation. killed
it." I pointed to another stack of books The Hip Hop Generation by
Bakari Kitwana, Soul Babies by Mark Anthony Neal.
Uncle Willie looked shake now. He looked like he could use a glass of water.
"Son, that's better. Thanks. I needed that. But tell me, why would
anybody say a foolish thing like that!"
"These new Hip Hop Professors used popular culture as their augment,"
I tell him. "For example, Boyd brings up the case of Rosa Parks as an
example of the schism between civil rights and hip hops."
"God Bless Rosa Parks," he said.
"Listen, Uncle Willie," I said. "Remember that Rosa Parks
hired Johnnie Crochran to sue the hiphop group Outkast because they
put her name in a rap. Boyd traces the source of the bitterness
between civil rights and hip hop back to this incident.
"The lawsuit filed by Rosa parks," wrote Boyd, " is a gesture
of unsurpassed arrogance and condescension. It is representative of
the contempt that many older Black people feel towards their youthful
descendants. In return, the hip hop generations says a collective
'Fuck you,,' asserting its independence and freedom of
self-determination."
"The name of Rosa Parks is sacred," Uncle Willie said.
"Then you take the position of Reverend Jesse Jackson and
Reverend Sharpton. They wanted the film company, MGM, to reedited
the film and take out the scenes that poked fun at Rosa Parks."
"No!"
"Yes, Uncle Willie. "Then Jesse Jackson and Reverend Sharpton sued
the producers of Barbershop for slander. Then, the barbers,
represented by the National Association of Cosmetologists, got
together and filed a lawsuit alleging Jackson and Sharpton
misrepresented their 50,000 members by calling on filmmakers to
remove scenes mocking civil rights identities of the 1960s.' They
claimed that Jesse Jackson and Sharpton cost them 90 million dollars
by driving away their customers."
Uncle Willie whistled his reaction. "But as I was driving across the
country," Uncle Willie said, " I see billboards with Apple Computer
advertising Rosa Parks."
"It's apparently okay to sue her over rap music but okay if she is
exploited by a white company like Apple. But they are all missing the
point. Let me read you what I have written, Uncle Willie."
"Okay."
" Well," I said, "here goes: 'As a symbol and icon of resistance Rosa
parks becomes a commodity when used by advertisers to sell products.
Like other icons of resistance, hiphop militants is used to see
T-shirts to suburban white kids.
"The rappers are doing the same thing with Black symbols and icons of
resistance, such as the 'bad nigger' stereotype. There is a new
commercial featuring three black men playing the "dozens." One of
them is not quite able to play because his timing is off. They are
plugging Coke. A few years back, such African American style was
forbidden in polite command,
"Have you notice, Uncle Willie, the only images that the media likes
of black are the thugs? Well, it's a product, like that cotton we use
to pick, to sell to white suburban kids.
"What these new professors of hiphop fail to explain is the neo
minstrelsy that is taking place in our electronic environment. Back
in the end of the 19th century, the minstrelsy was the beginning of
popular culture. Whites played stereotypes of blacks to the great
amusement of a white public.
"Just as the early black face minstrelsy, profited from presenting
caricatures of black culture, by making the whites feel good
themselves without doing anything about the suffering of African
American.
"You know what these fellows remind me of? Well, we used to call em
the coon singers. T hey would be one who called himself, Zip Coon and
the other would call him self The Darky. They would come out on the
stage in blackface and white folks just loved them to death.
"Civil rights is Bert Williams Darky Negro, with his tattered coat
and Hip hop is Zip Coon. Just as the early black face minstrelsy,
profited from presenting caricatures of black culture, by making the
whites feel good themselves without doing anything about the
suffering of African American.
"You know what these fellows remind me of? Well, we used to call em
the coon singers. T hey would be one who called himself, Zip Coon and
the other would call him self The Darky. They would come out on the
stage in blackface and white folks just loved them to death."
When we go to the movies and see box office hits like The Head of
State and Bringing Down the House, we are seeing the same stereotypes
that were invited during the 19th century coon shows. In both film,
blacks make fun of black behavior, eccentricities of size, or any
physical differences.
"In Bring Down the House, Queen Litifah's size is the object of white
people's pupil dilation. Such racial stereotyping is aimed at the
white audience, and the plot of the film justifying logically so that
the audience doesn't feel guilty laughing them.
"The professors of hip hop can't explain these revival of minstrelsy,
because they, as professors of zip coon, are in on the hustle, too."
"How does Body do that?" Uncle Willie asked.
"Well, he is constantly bragging about himself. "
When I finished, Uncle Willie gave me a round of applause.
"That's great," he said. "Maybe I will be able help you turn that
into a movie."
"Uncle Willie, why are you here in San Francisco?"
"I'm here because I am going to produce a movie!"
I was shock to hear this, because he has never been away from the
little town we come from in North Carolina more than a few times.
"A movies?"
"Yeah, it's like the film we been talkin about, Barbershop. You know
how in Barbershop, the whole point is that this is a place where
black men can speak the truth, right?"
"Right! But who see how much trouble they got into with it don'cha?"
"Yeah, I see that. But what I want you to see is how in movie, the
black people can say anything they want to say bout anybody body.
It's called The Barbecue Pit," and it's about these fellows, who have
this barbecue pit " He kept going on like that, and to shut him up, I
thought of Aunt Amanda.
"If you don't give up this ridiculous idea immediately, I'm going to
call Aunt Amanda-"
The idea he was suggesting was what I had been wailing against. Why
does everybody want to sell out black culture? Why does everybody
assume that they can make money off our oral culture, even without
understanding it?
He cut me off. "Tell her what? It was her idea. " He wheeled about,
and headed for the door." She wants to direct it." Then he was gone