“We were kings and queens, not porch monkeys.”
The aforementioned line is from Nas’ “I Can”, one of my favorite tracks from one of my favorite rappers of all time.
During the Jim Crow era, one of the many slurs directed at Black people was “porch monkey”.
It was a slur that carried over into numerous political cartoons, especially ones that mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, among other things.
So, in so many words, if you, the reader, is using that term to describe Black people in 2025, then yeah, you’re probably a racist.
Oops, I meant to take out the word probably.
Throughout my life, I’ve dealt with mostly microaggressions from White folks as opposed to racial slurs.
I once had a so-called ally explain to me that her son was afraid of me. Didn’t give a reason why, but said he was afraid of me.
“You ruined meeting people from Twitter in real life for me,” the woman said to me.
But you fixed your face and said to a Black man that your son is afraid of me and couldn’t give a reason why.
So yeah you’re a piece of shit.
Which leads to something that happened recently, this happening over a podcast that I do occasionally.
A psychotic hobo of an individual that once lived in New Orleans, who once was part of the weekly social rides I do, apparently had his brain broken when I chose to give his ex a platform on my podcast. The mere thought of his ex coming on my platform and not him, in his world, was me taking sides in something that happened years ago.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but the last time I checked, your ex is a person, not property. You don’t run shit on this podcast,” I wrote in a terse email to him, “Disrespect of women isn’t tolerated on this platform.”
Of course, this didn’t sit well with the psychotic hobo, who then went on to call me a “flying monkey”.
Yes, you read that right, a psychotic hobo decided to fix his face and call a Black man a flying monkey.
And when he got called out on it, instead of apologizing, which takes a moment of self-reflection for most people, he doubled down.
“I don’t care what type of monkey it is,” I stated, “You called me, a proud Black man, a monkey. That’s racist and you know it.”
Anytime you have to explain why something isn’t offensive, then it’s offensive.
Anytime you have to explain why something isn’t racist, then it’s probably racist.
Sadly, the hobo didn’t get the memo. He didn’t see this flyer for my podcast either:
