Perhaps Shawty Lo’s Show SHOULD be Broadcast – Sabrina Lamb Interview (vid)
With all due respect for Sabrina Lamb’s position, I think our community may actually benefit from this show airing.I’ve really been on the fence about this issue concerning Shawty Lo’s show “All My Babies’ Mamas” for many reasons.
First and foremost I too was not happy with the title and the concept of the show, then I had to ask myself was I so far removed from my OWN upbringing that it was ME who didn’t want to see it or was I apprehensive about THE WORLD seeing what goes on in our community.
Unfortunately, it was a bit of both and the bottom line is OUR COMMUNITY needs to see it because it does exist. I did a short survey of a few close friends and relatives and one female told me she had just gone to a funeral where the black man had 22 children.
MOST if not ALL of the kids that I grew up with had brothers and sisters on their father’s side and the black father was not present. This is not a misrepresentation or a degradation of our community IT IS REAL and it’s been going on for DECADES.
The court shows have black men on there with over 20 “Babies’ Mamas” who seem to wear their lack of supporting their children as a badge of honor and even find their position to be humorous. No doubt the mother isn’t laughing while digging through the pantry looking for a can of peas for dinner tonight.
To add insult to injury another black man was arrested for not paying his child support to 25 “Babies’ Mamas” some of whom had babies born within the same month. After watching the video (below) of Sabrina Lamb on Showbiz Tonight, she made some good points on subjects like unprotected sex not being good and our duty to protect children.
I was bit miffed, however, at some of Lamb’s other responses. She stated the children needed to be protected from the exploitation of a TV show like this. The question becomes who protects the children who are NOT on TV who have NO support from their fathers?
In addition, concerning Shawty Lo’s response the white host stated “He (Shawty) was on New York Radio Station Hot 97 and tried to in his own eloquent way explain….” That was a dig on the his ability to speak and his communication skills. He should have been checked on that but Sabrina comes back with a very unnecessary comment “I needed subtitles to understand what he was saying.” I have a problem with that.
This is how we talk in Georgia and all black people don’t speak The King’s English because we have our OWN way of communicating just like many other cultures and races. That one gesture on her part made me wonder if her attack on the show was perhaps a bit more personal against Shawty Lo?
Black men certainly have fallen short in the father dept over the decades…even I could have been a better father but I did support and help to raise my son and we are very close to this day. There are also some mothers out there who have not done stellar jobs either. I have one good friend who’s ex wife uses the kids to get back at him on a regular basis.
There is nothing more repulsive than a black father who wanted nothing to do with his kid coming back into the picture with lawsuits when the kid becomes famous, we have seen this many times. If you’re gone, STAY gone but perhaps our tendency as a community to not want to come face-to-face with issues like this NEEDS to be broadcast to the world so that even if nobody else sees it… WE DO.
There are a LOT of problems in our community that we would simply rather not deal with or ignore than to fix. Over the decades our community has become divided between black and N&*$as even though many of us come from poor backgrounds. Some of the videos on World Star Hip-Hop depict things that even I didn’t see growing up in the ghetto.
Grandmothers beaten up for trying to break up a fight between their granddaughter and a neighborhood girl. A grandmother’s robe ripped off of by a young woman in front of the neighborhood children and older black men beaten by young black men. Our community lacks respect for black men mostly because of our lack of taking responsibility for our children and unfortunately MANY of our problems are related to this one issue as a community.
Even the black men who do take care of their children bear the brunt of blame for the black men who don’t but it’s an unwritten rule (or at least it once was) that black women were to be treated with the highest respect in the black community because they were the ones who held the community together.
Times have certainly changed and so have we but can we make the rules and ignore the problems at the same time? We can’t ask the network to prevent a TV show from airing that accurately depicts the situation in many black families because it makes us feel uncomfortable and we’d rather not see it or deal with it or we don’t want others to see it.
The show would still be a hit WITHOUT the children in the cast. Perhaps SEEING it and shows like this will force us, as a community and the black church to deal with this problem head on, who knows? We can look at the show and tsk and say this is a disgrace but Shawty Lo has one up on us… at LEAST he’s taking care of his kids. Is it really possible for young girls to watch this show and be inspired by it? YES… BOTH WAYS. (video below)
