NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2011 | Page 6

My Take

By QuINCY

TROUPE

During the scorching month of July and the first
week of August of 2011 in this country, many
Americans watched the ridiculous folly of the debt
ceiling crisis unfold in Washington with increasing
disbelief, horror, and trepidation.
What we watched was a man-made,
mostly Republican Party crisis
created solely out of a racist attitude
to undermine an African-American
president. Americans watched an
unprecedented grab for political power
by a small group of small-minded
white men and women, with a few
“Negroes” and Latinos thrown into
the toxic mix.

4

The entire episode was high drama,
treated as such by a mendacious
corporate media watching out only
for its bottom-line: profit. The media
was only interested in how much
money this spectacle would pour into
their coffers through higher ratings
and increased advertising revenues.
But for fair-minded concerned
American citizens, the entire spectacle
was heartbreaking, abhorrent and
ultimately a treasonous display of
elected Congressional and senatorial
officials—mostly Republican—
parading in front of cameras on
self-serving ego trips that threatened
to destabilize the entire nation.

BRN-FALL-2011.indb 4

We watched shallow men and women—
politicians and media punditsalike,
Philistines all—parading in front of
cameras spouting empty slogans filled
with clichés and thoughtless biases,
as though they were addicted to the
klieg lights of media. In reality though
they were only doing the bidding
of their corporate oligarchic masters
who truly run this country, want to
reduce most American workers to a
Wal-Mar