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by Dr. Boyce Watkins
Adam “Pacman” Jones of the Cincinnati Bengals has been ordered by a judge to pay $11 million to strip club employees for a shooting that took place in 2007. The judge has forced Jones to “make it rain” on the strip club employees because they were victimized by bullets fired by a man who was shooting on behalf of Pacman.
Tommy Urbanski, a club manager, was paralyzed from the waist down. Aaron Cudworth, a bouncer, was also severely injured. Jones’ attorney, Lisa Rasmussen, has argued that Jones was not behind the shooting.
“It’s obviously a devastating amount for him financially,” Rasmussen said. “He has really worked hard to make a comeback with his NFL career.”
Rasmussen made the point that being an NFL celebrity doesn’t mean that you’re made of money.
“People perceive him as a person who is able to pay $11 million,” she said. “Adam doesn’t even get paid until he plays his first game.”
Richard Shonfeld, the attorney for one of the victims, says that Jones should be held responsible for what happened that night.
“I am pleased that Mr. Jones has finally been held accountable,” Schonfeld said.
Jones’ current NFL salary is $950,000, making an $11 million dollar verdict nearly impossible for him to pay. He has always worked overtime to make his life difficult, as Pacman has watered down his talent with one bad decision after another. Just last January, he had a run-in with police that led to a charge for disorderly conduct, leading to a one year probation and community service.
The story goes that Jones and his entourage became angry after he was pouring out money onto the stage at the strip club and the women were taking money without his permission. Attorneys are saying that Jones met with the shooter, Arvin Kenti Edwards, right before the shooting took place. Edwards is now serving 10 years in prison for his role in the incident.
So, let’s see: Just this week alone, I’ve written about the strip club shooting incident that has cost Pacman Jones $11 million dollars, bottles being thrown during an all-out brawl between the entourages of Drake and Chris Brown and the shooting of two former Auburn University football players at a house party right off campus. And that’s just this week.
I long and pray for the day when I can turn on my computer and not hear another story about a black entertainer or athlete shooting someone, being shot at, or busting bottles upside somebody’s head while trying to “make it rain” at a d**n strip club. Like Pacman, Drake and Chris Brown are also going to end up paying millions for their reckless behavior, and if they are not careful, they may end up paying with their lives.
For some reason, the culture of the black male in America, largely inspired by the b*llshit being spit at us by commercialized hip-hop on the radio (which should be distinguished from real hip-hop), creates a cultural tornado that leads to black men memorizing a carefully-designed blueprint wired to guide them to self-destruction. The blueprint, which can be found in nearly any hip-hop song on the radio, says to: 1) stay high/drunk as much as possible, 2) carry a gun and don’t be afraid to use it, 3) have s*x with everything that moves, 4) waste your money on stupid material possessions, 5) remain ignorant, lazy and uneducated, 6) always show disrespect toward women.
I regularly make this point and I will make it until the day I die: Black men should be better than the buffoons that many of us are training ourselves to become. Also, we must all speak out against this ignorance whenever we see it.
A man does not find success by throwing away his education for an athletic or musical career that will probably never exist. He can’t become a leading scientist, attorney or entrepreneur if he’s wasting every Friday night making it rain at the club. He can’t live a prosperous life if he’s been getting high/drunk every weekend and catching diseases from sleeping with countless women. All of this has distorted what many young boys believe to be the essence of the black male in America, and quite frankly, it’s killing us.
Most of us agree that Pacman Jones is an idiot. What we fail to realize is that dummies like Pacman are being mass produced by commercialized hip-hop culture, and it’s causing millions of young black men to waste their genius trying to bust rhymes, throw footballs, “slang” dope, or engage in otherwise unproductive life choices. This is not saying that hip-hop on the radio is the cause of all the ills in our society, but the glorification of the very worst in us certainly does not help.
If you look at a picture of Pacman, the way he dresses, speaks, and carries himself, you’ll notice that he is a product of hip-hop culture. Any psychologist on earth can tell you that listening to a message repeatedly and reciting toxic mantras nearly every day of your life embeds the message so deeply into your subconscious that even you don’t know that it’s affected you. These mantras impact the way black men treat each other, the way we treat women, the way women respond to men, and the way we live our lives.
As a result, our men end up filling up the penitentiaries, the morgues and the unemployment lines. Then, the dude with tattoos from head-to-toe, gold teeth across his entire grill, slobbering broken vowels and syllables out of his mouth, and pants sagging off his a*s complains that “the white man’s trying to keep him down.” I agree with you brother, the white man is trying to keep you down. But your oppression is a partnership and you have turned yourself into a willing participant. The white man doesn’t have to keep you down if you are choosing to do all the hard work by yourself.
I’ll say this as plainly as I can say it: It’s time to put an end to the nonsense.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.
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vickie
June 18, 2012 at 9:22 am
pacman can’t make it rain anymore a fool and his money
Sylvia
June 17, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Dr. Boyce . . . Very, very well stated!!
Miguel
June 17, 2012 at 5:21 am
I don’t think that Brother Watkins is making any broad generalizations whatsoever about Pacman Jones or Black males in general in his article.
Nor is he putting all the blame on hip-hop music if you pay attention to what he actually said in the piece.
To me, Adam Jones is now getting on the back end as a player for Cincinnati, for what he did as a younger player for Tennessee. Despite formally renouncing his Pacman nickname a couple of years ago, and chopping off his braids, he is still being made to pay big for that strip club fiasco.
Let’s not forget the numerous offenses Jones committed during his brief stint as a Titan from 2006 to 2007. This $11M verdict is merely the culmination of all the ignorance and stupidity that Mr. Jones has shone since becoming a pro football player.
It brings to mind Michael Vick, now with Philadelphia, and the dog fighting case. Before he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, he’d had numerous off the field incidents. Plaxico Burress, a former Steeler, Giant and Jet receiver, also had several behavioral lapses, culminating in him trying to cover up a leg wound he received, after accidentally shooting himself with an unlicensed gun in a nightclub. He served three years in jail.
Now obviously, there are a lot of other athletes and people that have not shown the poor decision making that the above men showed in their respective lives, and Dr. Boyce Watkins has written articles on them too. I challenge those of you who think that he is merely trashing Black men to check them out.
Dr. Boyce, you’re a talking head that I love, keep up the great work and thanks for the insight.
isaidsobra
June 16, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Couldvebeenme, that was well said my brotha. That’s where I come from as well. I was given the choice between life and death and I choose life. You’re 100% right about starting with our youth. That’s where we must begin if we are going to end this trend. What’s sad is that we know this but we pick and choose which child to help when we must help all of them inspite of their pedigree. We must equip them with all that they need to improve life for all people here in America especially Black people. We must also keep the doors open for the older ones as well. We love and need them too. Yea they are making terrible decision at this point but I believe that we’ve all done that a time or two. When I was younger I didn’t realize the value in the decisions that I made and there was no one to teach me. So my heart goes out to all of our youth and I pray that we as a whole would someday extend our hand in love towards them and not condemn them. After all it was us as a whole that dropped the ball with them so I believe that it should be our responsibility as a whole to do everything that we possibly can to help them. I think that you really want to help them. So I encourage you do all that you can in your community and I will continue doing all that I can in mine. It’s not easy but its got to be done. 1 Luv…
Bron Rock
June 16, 2012 at 7:19 pm
First of all there is not enough details given as to why Pacman is being held guilty for merely meeting with another man before the shooting. It only suggest that he encouraged the shooting! I’ve known enough slick lawyers who will find a way to involve whoever has wealth for the big payoff! I don’t know Pacman well enough to say that he wears his pants below his b**t. If he does than he is indeed an a*****e!
However, it seems to me that Dr. Boyce is making broad generalizations on the entire Black male species because of one incident at a night club. For instance, why don’t you count the number of Black athletes in Football, Baseball, Basketball, and other sports and you will see that the vast majority handle their biz admirably! In other words, if their are 1000 black athletes in America and 1, 5, or even 10 phucks up, you should not make that mere fraction applicable to the other 990 who hold down respectability! The only thing the majority of you are doing now is speaking up for the oppressors by telling everybody and us that Black males are no good!
Blaming everything on Rap Music isn’t the answer either! The real blame lies in the family structure and educational system which are usually wholly lacking in competitive equipment, teachers, computers, and computerized systems!
In terms of being ready to fight, you all had better prepare yourselves in some form because the conservative right wing extremist are armed to the teeth! And are itching for a fight, especially when they know they outnumber you.
Charging Pacman for that amount of money for something he didn’t do or may not have encouraged is outrageous! I think it is very unlikely that he would order somebody to be shot because of the money he was already throwing away on a stage for half-naked dancing girls. Why don’t you as a news reporter get the rest of the facts before you go around dissing Black men based on half-a*s information!
I am just as angry as you about black males wearing pants below their butts, slinging and using dope (especially crack) but I see a lot of them doing well in many other aspects of life including academics, sports which require a great deal of discipline, and parenting! Back off Dr. Boyce if you want to cast a shadow over Black men COME CORRECTLY!
Dr. F. A. Young, Esq
June 17, 2012 at 1:07 am
Well put Mr. Rock. We must understand what is going on in America and how deep the river flows. Unfortunately so many of our ‘talking heads’ use their internet pen to ‘come on us’ sounding like the paternalistic wise cracker that feels he has a burden to carry. Instead ‘talking heads’ should be dealing with the root causes of the dilemma our people are in – have found themselves in since being bought to the shores of this hemisphere. Slavery – oppression has morphed, as Frederick Douglas feared and taken on covert and overt forms employing and deploying the old sociological-economic weapons and a brand new set of ‘psyche’ warfare tools. The danger of all dangers and daggers is our ‘talking heads’ have been co-opted knowingly and unknowingly into 21st Century Jim Crow’s tool box! As Malcolm has warned – we need to go to the woodshed and sort out our problems and not spit in public – preaching to a choir that is in deep psychological confusion and unaware that a war is afoot and we are being erased and replaced. Take heed and beware of what the justice system will and can do with or without evidence!
LaFaith
June 16, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Very Sad, but it’s time to make it rain in all this “BAD BEHAVIOR” SICK OF IT! More everyday black, white, it don’t matter what color. People are getting more stupid, crazy, and insane for s*x, DRUGS, AND HAVE MORE $$$. Now is the time to make it happen, and do whatever means possible to make CHANGES IN OUR WORLD. Some folks will never get it SO…FORGET ALL THE NICE S**T MAKE IT RAIN!!!
jaleel shakir
June 16, 2012 at 5:52 pm
When will we as a people wake up to the tricks and
schemes that the enemy of man has been playing on
us for hundreds of years.Too many us are falling
for the life style of self destruction while
claiming that I’am doing my own thing.
Robert Brown
June 16, 2012 at 5:20 pm
I am well aware that the majority of black males are not caught up into this negative culture, but there are all to many that have allowed themselves to become victims trying to be hip or popular, with every one else. Having positive morals have no limitations, if one wants to get any where in this world along with a education, which will put $$$ in your pocket, making one’s life drastically easier. I say it all starts with strict discipline from the cradle, instilling God’s Word in them by keeping them in the church and being a positive example in their life. One cannot afford to wait one second for the forces of evil to influence them, because once the world has them, it’s a up hill battle to ever turn them around in molding them in being positive respectful individuals for their own lively hood and other people who they will come in contact with in all walks of life for no man is a island.
Edward Cooper
June 16, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Please excuse my mistakes– I used a smart phone which sometime think for itself, it seem.
Maria clark
June 16, 2012 at 4:11 pm
I agree I’ve been telling my children this for years
Edward Cooper
June 16, 2012 at 4:05 pm
It have been pass time for then young men to get out of death lines, out of prisons lines, out of drop-out line and get into the lines of life–And for the younger generation to do this–We , the adults, will have to get off our a***s, and stop debating about who is the best sport player , best singer, rapper, dancer, tv and movie star, and bring the debate to the schools demanding that the schools no longer allow students to move from a grade until they fully understand the course–There never be situation where a student reached the ninth grade and is unable to read, understand science, grammar or do math proficiently (unless the student is mentally deficient, and for student to declared as such, he/ she would have had to be declared so after being seen by a myriad of heath profession)– We need to stop make excuses for lazy a*s parents who don’t want to get involve with their children education or their lives for whatever reason (those who want it should be taught good parenting skills, and those who refuse to be taught better parenting skills should have their children remove from them and place in an a government run environment where the children can receive positive parenting that will help make them positive productive citizen) — We should demand that legislatures pass a bill that protest parents who want to take time off to visit schools to be a part of their children’s education–for example , when a child act out–Currently their are parents whom jobs don’t allow them time off to visit their children’s schools for whatever reasons– The Presidents and government have always said that the children are our future–okay then, it is well pass the time for the government to put some real action behind what have been to long, just words–The government should give businesses major tax brakes that are willing to allow their workers to visit their children’s school when the child acts out, or just to meet with the teacher to check on their child’s progress–This will prove to the citizenship that the government is a pro-active partner with parents in the positive development of our children’s future– If the government doesn’t act soon, there will be no future for America…
Edward Cooper
June 16, 2012 at 4:45 pm
(There should never be a.situation)
Instead of ( There never be situation).
(and for a student). Instead of. (and for student)
(he/she would had to have been declared as such by a myriad of health professionals)
INSTEAD OF. (he/she would have had to be declared so after being seen by a myriad of heath profession)
(when a child acts out. INSTEAD OF. (when a child act
out-
couldvebeenme
June 16, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Dr Boyce thank you.
However I will take a different approach. An object that has momentum will continue to gain or maintain that momentum as long as its source continues to propel it. It’s similar to rolling a tire downhill. The entity that gave it the initial push can walk away while it gains speed. If you add others that join in and keep that momentum going, that tire could roll across continents.
If you substitute attractive bass melodies and lyrics that lead to destructive behavior for the tire in my above example another race would NEVER have to lift a weapon or deny that group opportunities or break any civil rights laws. ALL they would have to do is PROMOTE that type of music and those artists. If you REALLY wanted to keep
them down then you’d get it into the minds of the young black males before they develop a healthy sense of identity. Tell them they are nothing but a N***ER and screw authority etc…. Most importantly have these words come from someone that LOOKS LIKE THEM. It’s hard to fight yourself. This tears down a child’s natural ability to dream of places better than their current state and forces them at a very young age to give up.
This environment will lead to disproportional lockup rates, very high dropout rates, fatherless kids, and poverty. The sad part is kids born into this environment will be exposed to these influencers and a high number will help to perpetuate it upon the next generation.
How do you stop it???1. Start with the kids. (unfortunately LIFE will teach the older kids the hard way)2. Exposé them to successful blacks. They must be able to converse and identify. (unfortunately even with a Black President as an example they can’t see that far) 3. DON’T BAN THE MUSIC. Doing that will only make it more attractive.4. Listen to jazz, classical, positive urban, gospel, hip-hop and reggae or any music that uplifts them. Explain to them what you hear and how it makes you feel. 5. Tell them WHY you don’t appreciate them listening to destructive music and what it does to them. 6. Love them and give them time. It will work. You’ll know it when they rush in and want to introduce you to a new jazz artist they discovered. My daughters now introduce me to this type of music and can’t stand “Racks On Racks!”
BTW I’m a black male that grew up in the above mentioned environment. I never stopped dreaming.
NoirINAmerica
June 16, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Very well stated from another angle juxatoposed to B.Watkins’ version.
We should print these to paper and hand them out and or put these statements to audio for all to see and or hear.
Both are outstanding statements on our ‘current state of affairs’.
Fernando
June 16, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Chill out people! your talking as if this is behavior is the norm… I can assure you it is not. It is the most sensationalized and gets the most press but it is not the norm for black males. I see first hand black families up front and personal and we can be very proud of the MAJORITY of black men. The press just doesn’t talk about it because it not news and nor should it be, but it is a fact that millions of black men are holding it down the right way. Dont believe the Hype!
vickie
June 16, 2012 at 3:15 pm
PACMAN IS A IGNORAMUS
Whud Dafuquewesay
June 17, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Now he’s a broke ignoramus
Maat20
June 16, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Financial illiteracy + poor education + lack of knowledge of history + Willie Lynch + poor diets + lack of respect for women + excessive violence towards yourself and your community + excessive every day use of alcohol + drugs + over inflated egos + stupidity = Hip Hop
superauntie
June 16, 2012 at 2:33 pm
I don’t know what it will take for the Black Male to get himself together. Why is he so ignorant? He has not been taught to be repectable,going to the clubs,and most of all to take care of his money. Black Males stay out of bad ccompany,when you hit it big,sometimes you have to let some old habits and friends go. One thing he need to remember is that just like he has gained fame,there is always someone ready and willing to kill his dreams and take away his finances. Pull your pants up,nobody what to see your nasty underwear, and you behind. It look nasty. Get educated, speak well, stay away from those enviroments that will make you a part of the “JUST US SYSTEM. Furthermore, start respecting women, lastly, get some counseling.
Charles McGee
June 16, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Stop praying and do something of worth. This state of affairs is not leaving until the state of mind changes. If mental illness is part of the package we had better admit it. If learned actions are part of the package we had better change the curriculum. So, stop praying and do something. Somewhere between the mental state and the curriculum rests the truth. No amount of praying will change that. The mis-information in the curriculum is severe. Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson made that case in about 1917. He said that the NAACP was on the wrong track. He called it mis-education. Yet, 95 years later we still suck up to the merchants of social sickness-BOSS WE ARE SICK.
As Fannie Lou Hamer was to remark, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
How does it come that in 2012 we have a college president who aquiesces to a local police chief and is unwilling to inform student of the potential danger in their midst. There is something wrong with that college president, just as there was something wrong with the president of Pennsylvania State University. At Happy Valley they found a new president. We will see what happens at Auburn, Alabama.
William
June 16, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Dr Boyce this article many reason of course
for what is going on with the black male.
the Stage is set with lights camera action
for him to go right up play his own self and people. in all destroy the very thing most with
struggle for and this not money its respect and education EEOC… Your decripiton of what is going
is the best i have read in a long time it just need promoted and marketed eveywhere possible with a team even in the HIP WORLD THE SHOULD BEWARE.
Shasa Hashbrown
June 16, 2012 at 2:06 pm
You said it all right here. (I’d add -7-always show disrespect to EVERYONE and -8-be violent and act rowdy) I teach high school and get to have conversations, even freestyle sessions, about this “Willie Lynch 2012″ almost *daily*.
“The blueprint, which can be found in nearly any hip-hop song on the radio, says to: 1) stay high/drunk as much as possible, 2) carry a gun and don’t be afraid to use it, 3) have s*x with everything that moves, 4) waste your money on stupid material possessions, 5) remain ignorant, lazy and uneducated, 6) always show disrespect toward women.
I regularly make this point and I will make it until the day I die: Black men should be better than the buffoons that many of us are training ourselves to become. Also, we must all speak out against this ignorance whenever we see it.”
butch
June 16, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Spoken very well my brother!!! I commend u for stepping up and laying it out like it should be! I’ll add to it as well. This younger generation knows nothing about GOD, the church nor the Holy Spirit! It is sad that we have to reach one in order to teach one. The absent parents are taking us down.
John Tac Brantley
June 16, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Thank you…. i have been and will be talking about what you just stated……. We are a endanger special………. when over 79% in jail….. unemployment……old of School and I can go on……. peace – out …. DJ Quiet Storm