Silence is Golden
Welcome back, my Huddle family. May 2nd was my last post, so I’ve been silent for a while. We would all do well to remember that, sometimes, silence is golden. When I’m silent, it usually means I’m being more observant. There have been lots to observe since my last post, and I’ll be touching on plenty of that in this post.
Sitting back and observing the many happenings over the last couple of months has provided ample writing content. Kendrick Lamar released Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers after a five-year hiatus. He has said before that taking his time between albums and experiencing life creates higher quality content when he does drop. I sometimes like to approach my writing/content in this way.
I wasn’t a fan of the album on the first listen, but I was occupied and trying to multitask. After the second and third listen, it grew on me due to the genius lyricism on display throughout the album.
It’s not my favorite Kendrick album, but lyrically, it’s excellent, and lyricism is the most important aspect of hip-hop for my taste and an aspect that is missing in this era of hip-hop culture.
The Bay Area
The Bay Area has been on fire this spring and summer. We have relaxed Covid restrictions, warm weather, and the Golden State Warriors to thank for that, with the latter being the most exciting part. The Warriors were on a mission in the playoffs, and Steph Curry ensured they would succeed.
Steph went on to lead the Warriors to their 4th NBA championship in eight years, officially cementing the legacy of a dynasty. This was the best I’ve seen Curry play in the playoffs, and his finals MVP trophy was well deserved. Curry is in my top 10 all-time players list. He’s not in the conversation with Jordan as the GOAT, but anyone else is fair game, although I don’t quite put him above Lebron yet. What I do know is that any starting five lineups of my all-time NBA greats would include him in it.
Bear Season
If you follow the mainstream media, you probably haven’t seen or heard much good news lately. Inflation is running rampant. See the latest May CPI (Consumer Price Index) here. The war in Ukraine continues without an end while contributing to supply chain disruptions. Stocks, crypto, NFTs, and most other markets have officially entered the bear market. In some of my previous newsletters in March, I considered the market to be in bear territory then.
With the Feds raising interest rates, increased layoffs, and consumer goods prices skyrocketing, the economy’s faltering is just getting started. Perhaps the historic crash of Luna/UST stablecoin started the cascading snowball we see now, causing massive liquidations in the crypto and stock markets. For an interesting, well-told story on the Luna/UST crash, read this!
Scared Money Don’t Make Money
The investment sentiment is at lows not seen since Covid started locking down the globe. When everyone is fearful of investing, it is usually an excellent time to start looking for long-term assets at a discount. This is not financial advice. But from someone who has been investing in crypto since 2016, I’m still way up on my overall portfolio because I’ve played the long game. Unfortunately, many people lost everything they worked for over the last several years due to poor risk management.
I see assets falling further based on the global economic outlook, but even at today’s prices, there are some quality investments on discount in several different markets.
#BURNBAYC
Now that the recap is out of the way, onto the meat and potatoes and the story that motivated me to write today.
If you aren’t active on Twitter, you likely have no idea why #BURNBAYC is trending. If you aren’t familiar with NFTs, you likely have no idea what BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) is. The good thing is that BAYC art has always been controversial for reasons more obvious to the black community, my community. It’s not that the controversial art is good, but rather because of its controversy; anyone should be able to understand and form an educated opinion about how that controversy weighs on their own life.
To those without knowledge of BAYC, please check out the project on OpenSea here. I encourage you to take the time to check out as much of the artwork as possible.
About a week ago, a youtube “documentary” about the true meaning behind BAYC was released thanks to a lot of research done by a controversial figure himself, Ryder Ripp. If you have not seen this youtube video dissecting the origins of BAYC, then I highly encourage you to watch the video before continuing to read.
Bored Ape Nazi Club Youtube Video
The Evidence
As I mentioned before, the black community has always found BAYC to be offensive. I remember the first time I saw the collection, and I was surprised at what I saw.
I’m a 39-year-old Black American male with more experience dealing with racism than I like to admit. I’ve lived in the hood and the suburbs, where I attended predominately white schools. Thanks to a basketball scholarship, I played college ball in North Carolina and traveled throughout the South, still considered the most racist part of the U.S. Chicago was where I experienced the most racially provoked incidents involving white cops. I say all this to say; when it comes to racism, I have no cut card. My tolerance is zero, and I don’t agree with anyone whose tolerance is otherwise.
I wasn’t surprised that racism infiltrated the NFT space but taken aback by the blatant racist undertones that seemed so apparent to me. The most evident being the use of an Ape as the main character of the art and the story behind the art. When I saw the art, I recall saying, “Are they blatantly pushing an NFT project based around Apes which have been used to describe and demean Black people?” I for sure thought some controversy would fester until they were forced to shut it down, but no, that’s not what happened. The price continued to rise and rise until it became the #1 most successful NFT project to date. All I could do was laugh and shake my head at the realization that, once again, white people have massively profited from demeaning Black people and exploiting our culture.
The reaction Dame Dash had while talking about BAYC on the Assets Over Liabilities show with the Earn Your Leisure Podcast was identical to what I felt.
Racism is such a hard thing to prove. Why is it that so many white cops get away with killing unarmed black people? A big part of the reason is that the burden is on us, as black people, to prove the killing was racially provoked. We aren’t in court trying to prove murder but rather racism, and that’s the problem. I bring this up because the Bored Ape Nazi Club video does an excellent job talking about plausible deniability because of the esoteric way BAYC racism is presented.
The evidence is pretty hard to deny. But what’s hard to deny as racism to the Black community has to be spelled out and then some to the white community and other POC. The sad truth is that racism has affected the Black community more than any other community across the globe, and it still does. Anyone denying the accusations in the youtube video is either a racist denier or has no personal experience with racism. For me, all it took was the ape to see the racist undertone. I have yet to see a Black person say any different when asked about BAYC.
#BURNBAYC Twitter Spaces
Since the youtube video was released last week, several Twitter spaces have held discussions to get BAYC holders’ opinions and the rest of the NFT community or anyone who wanted to discuss the accusations. For the most part, more people agree that the video has too many red flags to be a coincidence. Still, plenty of folks were in denial of the totality of the accusations, and trying to deflect by focusing on one or two accusations that could be argued was a stretch.
The common denominator between those defending the BAYC creators seemed to be being white. One common word that was continuously uttered in the Twitter space was empathy. Several speakers mentioned how no one has empathy for those being ridiculed by the BAYC art. The problem is that people often misuse the word empathy. Empathy can not be applied to racism when the one not experiencing racism is of a different ethnic/racial background. Empathy implies that you can share the feelings of the person going through what they are experiencing. For someone who is not black, they will never be able to feel what I feel when being racially discriminated against. For example, a woman who loses a daughter to cancer moves to a new house, and her neighbor is a woman who also lost her child to cancer. These women can then have empathy for their situation.
What we need in these situations is sympathy. Sympathy can be felt by all and displayed towards all. Unfortunately, because so many people can’t relate to racism, and when America continues to choose to ignore and not acknowledge the actual history, it continues to get swept under the rug or viewed to be nonexistent.
Another issue I want to address concerns the ADL or Anti-Defamation League. In the Twitter space, someone referenced a report from the ADL and mentioned the ADL was the only “repudiable” source they valued. The ADL is tasked with investigating certain things to ensure they aren’t racist or anti-Semitic. Well, defenders of BAYC like to bring up that a senior member of the ADL said he saw no link between the BAYC logo with Nazis but admitted that some do display traits that are questionable to the Black community and Asian community. You can read about it here.
First, the ADL admitted to finding some traits racially questionable towards Blacks and Asians. That should be enough to end the debate about whether the art is racist. How many characteristics does it take to mark the magic number of being officially determined racist? Second, the ADL has one black member on its board of directors and one Asian out of 19 members. Sorry not sorry, but I won’t be viewing anything the ADL has to say as expert opinion or expert fact. They should worry about getting proper representation from ethnic groups that actually experience racism.
Don’t Be Fooled
When facts become too obvious to be thoroughly debunked, that’s when deflection takes place. Don’t be fooled by the deflection from BAYC art being inherently racist to the background of Ryder Ripp, who gathered most of the damaging information. It has been said that he has a racist background, so his credibility is under attack. Bump all that. It takes a wolf to catch one. Most people who think racism doesn’t exist haven’t experienced an ounce of discrimination in their lives, and they think it’s nonexistent because they don’t know the signs to look for, to begin with. I trust the findings in Ryder Ripp’s investigation because, based on his controversial background, I believe he knows plenty of racist dog whistles when he sees them.
The bottom line is, BAYC art is racist and offensive to the Black community and others regardless of Ryder Ripp. Don’t be fooled into deflection away from the issue at hand.
Last Take
I’m going to wrap up this discussion with one last take. Too many times in Twitter spaces talking about this story, I’ve heard that using an ape as art can be subjective to its racist characteristics. Someone said that some Black people don’t find apes offensive, so why or when should they? The reason why its offensive is because it is offensive to the collective Black community. We have been ridiculed and demeaned since slavery with the symbolism of apes, monkeys, gorillas, etc. Apes being an offensive trigger for the Black community is not subjective; it’s a fact. People who don’t experience racism are the ones who think it can be subjective.
It’s important to remind those who need reminding that any amount of racism is unacceptable.
The good thing about all of this is the conversations being had from the attention and awareness of the story. The NFT space, including Web3, has roots of racism being displayed before our eyes that need to be addressed in general. BAYC is the number one NFT project and is worth around 8 $Billion at its peak. This is the perfect project to take a stand against to put the industry on notice and it’s a necessary discussion that requires action.
Unfortunately, the majority of the BAYC community have or had no idea of it’s racist origins but ignorance is also to blame for part of that. But now, a message can be sent by any and all who oppose the racist art and symbolism of BAYC and racism as a whole. What side of history will you fall on? What price are your morals, principles, and values worth? It will take no small effort to topple an $8 Billion dollar NFT juggernaut with a diehard community. It will be interesting to see who chooses the bag over morals.
Please like, share, subscribe, and comment. This discussion needs to continue in all spaces as conversation can lead to education. Thank you for your support!
The Huddle