A Quote by Big Narstie
I'm not a token black guy.
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I didn't want any middle-of-the-road creep. I always wanted the toughest guy in school, the guy from south Philly who wore tight black pants. Y'know, the guy who carried the umbrella and wore white shirts with real thin black ties. I was really nuts over this guy named Butchie Magic 'cause he let me carry his switchblade.
It was really bizarre. I was learning how to be a black guy from a white guy pretending to be a black man.
In my experience, as a young black artist, you have to fulfill an archetype, or be a token - and I was unwilling to do that.
Race makes things funny. A black guy driving in NASCAR: not funny. A black guy driving a car sponsored by Tide: not funny. A black guy driving a car sponsored by Aunt Jemima: hilarious.
I sat down with CBS, and we talked about me developing a show for them. At the time, I was meeting with a lot of networks. And I told them, 'I don't want to be acting on your show as the token black guy. I want to do something that will change a network and will change the way people view African-Americans on TV.'
Ben Starling, you better not have bought your token black friend a racist shirt
A token is not a short term carrot, nor a stick for that matter. Just having a token doesn't mean that you have a working business model attached with it.
When people nowadays say that Elvis was the first white guy to sound black, I have to shake my head; what can you do? At the time of 'That's My Desire' 1947 they were saying that I was the only white guy around who sounded black.
I often find myself in situations where I am the token black person. It can feel like this enormous weight.
My father was, like, the token bad white guy in all the old Jackie Chan/Bruce Lee films.
My father was like the token bad white guy in all the old Jackie Chan/Bruce Lee films.
I don't want to be an art-house movie guy, where people who go to film school can discuss your work, but people who haven't studied cinema can't appreciate it. By the same token, I don't want to be the guy who's making this commercial pap that people lap up but that disappears the minute you leave the theater.
As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.
The token itself is not your new business model. What the token enables for you and for your users is the key part to focus on.
That's what being nervous and sort of out of your comfort zone does. It's the same in "The Office" when a black guy comes to the office and all he thinks is `I better show this guy I'm not a racist.' So what does he do? Only talks about black issues.
If your user base engagement is fledgeling, a token may not be the panacea unless it is properly threaded into the product, and user behavior is accompanying the token utility.
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