An Open Letter to Bob Johnson: America's Favorite Dope Boy

In the words of the great Detective Alonzo Harris a la Training Day: my nigga!

I don’t know how you accomplished such a noteworthy feat or how your accomplishments have gone with such little notoriety, but you, sir, are an American Icon. You managed to sell the potential future of an entire race to Viacom, the drug culture, and creative mediocrity for a few billion dollars and all in the chorus of the soft applause and congratulatory whispers of Black America’s elite. It’s comparable only to Denzel Washington shooting Idris Elba in broad daylight on 125th street. Truly gangsta! My nigga!

First, you changed the conversation by removing any content that had the remote chance of expanding the knowledge base of your core viewers—Black youth. BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley? Canceled 2001. Teen Summit? Canceled summer 2003. BET Nightly News? Canceled 2005. What programming do you put in its place?

Hits from the Street—two hours of comedic cooning with a guy wearing spandex, a cape, and topped off with underwear on the exterior of his outfit.

106 & Park the original and 106 and Park part deux—two hours of the same videos we’ve all seen 200 times. The prior hosted by the Predator and a women he would never have. The latter hosted by a southern belle being chased by a random simp who, like his predecessor, will never have his lady of choice. Young teens may not be properly prepared for college or have any desire to change their environment, but they can surely “superman that ho.”

College Hill—a show not about the rigors and importance of higher academia, but rather one more focused on the sexual trysts and sophomoric behaviors of young, Black college students without once noting that their experiences are no different that those of their white counterparts.

Uncut—beautiful women parading like immature girls while shaking their asses for often broke rappers who will likely never make a video that will ever play anywhere but Uncut. Black Jesus? Really? Please click here for Uncut’s best of…

And the list goes on: Access Granted; Baldwin Hills; Beef; Cita’s World; How I’m Livin’; Lil’ Kim’s Countdown to Lockdown; and Spring Bling not to mention syndication of The Parkers, The Wayans Bros., and In Living Color. Oh, my! Please, by no means, can we forget about the genius of the Bet Awards! You ripped off every crappy MTV show you could and made a shitty, Black version of it. How did you manage to completely remove any quality programming and replace it all with absolute garbage with such little resistance? You’re my idol! My nigga!

And what about your work on Debra Lee? That was beautiful! A multi-millionaire, Harvard graduate who has fallen completely in line with your tactics and continued to drive your company into the depths of social destruction. She, along with all of your other cohorts (far too many to name) have depicted Black life to be little more than music, sex, bling, drugs, and crime. How’d you pull that one off? It’s as if you did that Agent Smith thing from the Matrix—stuck your forefingers directly into their sternums and snatched their souls right from bodies. That’s some Mortal Kombat, Shang Tsung shit! My nigga!

More over, you have helped to make each and every Black citizen—be they opposed to the mediocrity of the television station that bears the name of an entire people or not—a tacit participant of your non-sense. Guilt by association—genius! Our inability—rather, our refusal—to challenge BET’s programmatic strategy is far from puzzling. Sure, most decent Blacks are bewildered by your choices and desperate for positive images, but that’s juxtaposed against the fact that a Black person has finally developed wealth. Not rim money, not diamond grill money, not blow it at the club money, not Gary Coleman “damn homey, what the f&@k happened to you” money, but legitimate wealth. You found that part of us that wants you to succeed even at our own peril. My nigga!

You are the ultimate dope boy! You exemplify the corner boy. You destroy our neighborhoods with your full out assault on our people and we allow you to do it. Partially out of fear, partially because we benefit from your practice, partially because we know we have not provided you with the base you need to do better, partially because we take joy in your success. You’re the reason we revered Marlo’s psychotic leadership and mourned Stringer Bell’s death. You’re the reason we celebrated the Nicky Barnes NYT Magazine cover. You’re our guilty pleasure that hides in the shadows of our conscience.

You deal death sir, and I’m not speaking metaphorically. You sustain the urban drug culture that daily destroys lives, engulfs entire communities, and eradicates the strength of our culture. You are the megaphone for drug lords and thus enable them to continue their trade with little community resistance by allowing the publicists of the drug kingpins (rap artists) an unregulated platform by which they may spew their self-hated consequently influencing weak-minded adults and impressionable youth. I’d do you the honor of calling you a drug kingpin, but, in reality, you are but an intermediary. Your wealth does not compare to that of the Colombian coca planters you represent or those prison industrial complex benefactors whose interests you protect. Make no mistake Robert L. Johnson you are a murder. You benefit from the death of your people in the same way as those who stand on the corner. The blood of our children are on your hands, too. Moreover, to share the wealth, you’ve helped to pour that blood on our hands as well. You’ve helped to make us all murders and thieves. We’ve stolen our own futures.

But you gotta get that gwap right! Dolla, dolla bill nigga!

My nigga!