Why in The F*** Does Cooning Exist?
An Examination of Black Self-Hate, Community Sabotage and Opportunity in a Culture of White Supremacy
Racism on Borrowed Time
I remember talking to a white friend, a toxic liberal, who acted like he might one day warm up to logic, reason, and justice, about racism. To no surprise, he with his white self was more interested in the idea of black people being racist. “You don’t think that black people can be racist too?” he stated, in a matter-of-fact sense. He was a bit shocked at my response:
“Yes, of course black people can be racist. Have you ever heard of David Clarke?”
Needless to say, he wasn’t ready for that one.
Most sociology scholars claim that black folk cannot be racist, they are only thinking in the direction of the reverse, and that is correct. I on the other hand always sleep with an eye open, so I always maintained that black people can be racist — only towards other blacks, that is.
When it comes to white supremacy, white supremacists and the rest of the alt-right have a lot of help. You don’t have to be a black abolitionist writer/speaker photojournalist to find frustration when it comes to witnessing a black person use all their talents to oppose black progress, to provide, technically, Psychological Operations against the majority of black people in America. It has to be said, that there are a LOT of black people who rather stand in the way of progress concerning Afro-Americans.
“…..And when that happens, I’d rather be a pet than cattle. You got me, B?” ~ Scud, played by Norman Reedus, Blade 2 (2002)
What to Call It?
One of the first things a coon is called is a house negro of some sort. I for one never liked this term because it perpetuates the myth that house negroes were content, happy as if they were not lived-in hostages as they actually were. House negroes were not infinitely posed in defense of white supremacy, and quite often they were the ones who engaged in arson (i.e., burning down the home and furniture of whites) the most. The second problem I have with this term is the fact that it perpetuates the myth there were only two American slave archetypes (e.g., house slave/field slave) when there were four; house hand, field hand, driver, and artisan slave. Technically, if anyone wanted to use a slave archetype to describe the modern-day coon, it would be the driver slave, because that was the slave who had the whip, and sometimes had a gun, who was charged with the responsibility of an overseer. This gave them the ability to literally enact violence upon other black persons under slavery in order to upkeep white supremacy.
While the word coon or trash panda generally gets the point across within the black community, it’s viewed as a slur due to the initial invention of the term by whites. Due to this fact, other terms have come into existence. Butter Biscuit Brigade typically denotes more than a few.
If you ever heard of the term Scooby Snack Blacks, it’s a term I made myself years ago (circa 2013) after seeing an old photo of a young black male, on his knees, nearly naked, practically posing as the pet (Scooby-Doo, an incoherent dog) for a set of white friends of his, who probably have no idea what white privilege is. Scooby Snacks became what such black folks do it for; the safety, security, and admiration given from white people. Calling one a Pet, also came to existence.
In 2016 I came up with the term “Tanooki”, which is based on the old Mario Brothers game where the character had the ability to literally suit up in a raccoon dog suit.
This term became my favorite on so many levels. First off, it points to a suit that someone can put on and take off. Technically, every black person has a tanooki suit in their closet; it’s just a matter of if it’s ever worn or not. In this sense, the coon becomes an action, not a person, which is more effective as a concept. A black person in many cases might be cooning by accident (by neglect) because racism against black people is so internalized. So from there, the approach is similar to reminding someone that they’re caught with their pants down, or in this case, tanooki suit on. A black person who is cooning by neglect is less likely to get defensive if there’s distance between the action and self.
Even further with this term, is the fact that it stems from Japanese folklore. The tanooki (tanuki) in folklore was a trickster type of character, which cannot be trusted. In folklore, the raccoon dog is also a shape-shifter, which from here alludes to the transformative nature of the coon. The tanooki is also a gullible character, which means it’s easily fooled or swayed… which makes perfect sense here. The Tanooki suit even goes deeper into the concept of Afro-American dual consciousness, first coined by W.E.B. Dubois. With all stated here, I’ll have to say that this fantastic concept still remains my favorite term.
One term I never caught on to was the “Uncle Tom”. Those who use this term, never have read the book the character comes from. I haven’t read Uncle Tom’s Cabin either, but I do know that Stowe’s Uncle Tom was a young black man who refused to obey when ordered to beat other slaves, which goes opposite of the spirit of the term.
Note: When it comes to the names and terms here, these terms are not for white people to use.
Why and How.
In the psychology research book Black and White Racial Identity, Theory, Research and Practice by Dr. Janet E. Helms, it is found that there are stages in black identity. To be honest? There are a lot of gems in this book. The stage that corresponds to cooning is the Preencounter Stage:
The general theme of the Preencounter stage is the idealization of the dominant traditional white world view and, consequently denigration of a black world view. Because the dominant white world view in the United States considers whiteness and white culture as superior to blackness and black culture, the black person who espouses the preencounter perspective must find some way to separate themselves from the devalued reference group in order to minimize the psychological discomfort that arises when one’s cognitions are incompatible. In general, this dissassociating occurs by artificially inflating one’s personal identity, abandoning Blacks as a reference group while accepting whites as such, and denying one’s ascribed Black identity. ~Beverly Helms
D.M. Taylor (1980) argued that a Preencounter mentality can be maintained as long as the dominant group (read: whites) allows a few conforming “ethnic group” members (read: blacks) to be relatively successful.
In addition to this understanding, It is understood through this collective psychological research that the Preencounter stage has two parts: Active and Passive. In short, the Passive is the type of coon who is oblivious to racism, never had a wake-up call, and mostly runs on a white reference group orientation by way of the American socialization process and public school education. The Active is the type of coon who is doing it on purpose, is intently being situationally dense with selective stupidity that breaks the threshold of trolling. The fact that MOST coons you will deal with are in fact Active Preencounters, it’s really important to know that they are doing this on purpose. Kanye West, Candace Owens, ALL OF THEM. With that being said, do not waste your time with discussions and debates. They are speaking in bad faith, always.
What Do They Do?
Just as black progress has two sides (e.g., black empowerment, dismantling racism) cooning has its parallel: defending white supremacy and assaulting the black community. Assaulting the black community doesn’t necessarily mean a literal physical attack; in fact it rarely ever is. Assaulting the black community typically involves measures one can describe as political warfare. Cooning efforts include Sabotage, propaganda campaigning, deception, disinformation, gaslighting, and other forms of psychological warfare. To the trained eye coon efforts explicitly look like targeting efforts J. Edgar Hoover (COINTELPRO) created. Coons in America either wittingly or unwittingly degrade, deter, divert, demoralize, and/or destroy the black community.
Five Types of Coons
When I gave this subject the due diligence of critical analysis concerning particular motives, missions, and skill sets, I realized that there are at least five types of coons who exist:
- the Government coon
- the Sports coon
- the Influencer coon
- the Hollywood coon
- the Religion coon
The five types of coons, due to the overall role of participation of their own oppression, do have some overlap. The biggest part thing I noticed with these five types is the fact that they all are in places of influential power. While Government, the internet, and religion is legitimate power that needs no explanation, sports/entertainment also exercise influential power upon black people, due to a myriad of factors, such as charismatic powers, the ability to attain wealth, providing personal characters to emulate. In the 1990’s one slogan was “I wanna be like Mike”, and Michael Jordan was one of the biggest coons in American history. And who didn’t want to be like Mike?
Government
The government coon is particularly dangerous due to the fact that it can affect policy, law (i.e., politician), and execution of said law (i.e., cops). The government coon, for white people, covers two bases; similar to the “I have a black friend” nonsense they provide a black body a white person can root for, wish for the success of a black person as long as they assault the black community, provide nothing for the black community except empty words and pontificating phrases, and uphold white supremacy by way of racism denial and other COINTELPRO-like actions.
Mia Love, for example, a black woman from out of Utah hailing from the same city that murdered Darrien Hunt under a badge, has nothing, literally nothing that points to a culturally black point of view. For all intents and purposes, her political template is literally the same as a rural isolated-from-black-folk conservative white male.
The government coon, like most, seems to take refuge in the notion of being distant from the black community as a whole. The more removed from black life the person is, the better accepted they are by white America.
Universally, all government coons politically operate more or less with the prototypical template of a rural white male, which is the reason why they are so popular among Republican/conservative circles. These types do NOT function as a black person in Congress, representing black people, answering problems such as losing their sons to police officers who learn they can kill any black child with near-impunity. There is never a concern for equal pay or equal rights.
Another thing to note is how the government coon isn’t allowed to EVER be angry — unless that anger is directed at blacks. Allen West, served as the angry black man, for whites, in spades during the Obama years. This points to another purpose for the coon — to be a vessel of hatred, wrath, and fury that whites can live vicariously through. Similar to the driver slave, it’s okay to put a whip (and gun) in a black man’s hand as long as that black fellow is whipping (and shooting) other blacks.
Speaking of driver slaves, the perfect modern-day embodiment of such has to be David Clarke, who is a hyper-racist Milwaukee police officer who shares an internet platform (overlap). While coons like David Clarke are loud, worst are the silent ones, such as Clarence Thomas who currently sits as a “Justice” on the Supreme Court.
Sports
The sports coon seems to be among the first proto-coons in my studies. When I began researching the gravity of this situation the first thing I noticed was the fact that there were so many coons from the sports industry. Cam Newton, Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson, Sage Steele, Jason Whitlock, Michael Vick, Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, the list goes on. How come there are so many coons from sports?
One reason why, in my assessment, is the fact that sports were one of the first integrated institutions in America. From there, black success in sports was tethered to the acceptance of blacks by whites, so there is an illusion that the black sports athlete has no choice but to perform minstrel-esque tap-dancing routines around the fact that black people who are less fortunate are being lynched, maimed, and murdered around them left and right, or still being terrorized by racist local law enforcement policies. Keep in mind that the sports coon doesn’t necessarily have to really lean in on the effort; black Athletes provide racial comfort to whites by merely being silent. Never speaking up. Michael Jordan explicitly decided to stay silent during his prime in the 90s concerning racism, stating that white people buy his shoes too.
One of the interesting behaviors to observe in the American white collective in the year 2017, is the whitewashed response to black athletes protesting racial profiling and state-sanctioned murder of people of color. The American white collective, has largely considered these black athletes “ungrateful”, as if their athleticism and entrepreneurship aren’t their own. This is spoken as if all the money that these black athletes earned, is a bribe, hush money of some sort. A green code of silence.
The expectance of Black Silence is a White Entitlement.
The fact that the white collective call the protesting affluent blacks “ungrateful” suggests that white people perceive an ownership, master-slave relationship with black athletes. The white literal “owners” of these football teams, such as Jerry Jones, unwittingly illustrate this perverse white entitlement mentality. White people, as a collective, pretty much assume a tap-dancing minstrel routine from all black athletes as a result. And there are more than enough black athletes to oblige to this racist system; keep in mind that their profession is highly competitive, so appeasing white racist ideologies may place one on top of the other. Favor-equity, whether real or not, can possibly decide million-dollar contracts which can span years. Even further, athletes typically become sports commentators where they further perpetuate Afrophobia. Jason Whitlock doesn’t have any significant on-field history, but the fact that he’s a sports commentator sporting a full tanooki suit is a perfect example of this dangerous problem.
Hollywood
The Hollywood coon parallels the sports coon, so there’s a lot of overlap in functionality. Some athletes have transitioned into acting; O.J. Simpson and Shaquille O’Neal are notable examples. Being that entertainment encompasses both, the only true difference is whether one was a professional athlete or not.
The Hollywood coon, much like the sports coon, serves the same purposes; a suppressed black role model to emulate, a black-self hating body for white people to live vicariously through, and perpetuate respectability politics.
Typically a white person, either toxic liberal or blatantly racist conservative, will cherry-pick a quote from an tanooki-suited actor to deflect befuddle, racism as a whole. For some strange reason quoting an actor on socio-psychology issues such as racism, sociological privilege systems despite the fact that they are not people with doctorates in sociology or psychology, will continue to be a favorite behavior of the white collective.
Bill Cosby, as an example of a toxic liberal, is a favorite of conservatives due to his public admonishment of black youth, which gave racists a black person to live vicariously through. Others, such as Raven Symone, are a whiteness favorite due to her selective befuddling of black identity. She infamously stated that she isn’t black, and white people LOVE to see black people erase themselves; they don’t have to perform erasure if the black person does it for them. Stacey Dash, as an out-of-work actor, served the Obama years as the Afrophobic cute-faced black chick on Fox News. The fact that Stacey Dash was fired literally as soon as Obama’s presidential term was over, illustrates another matter: White supremacy, does not love their black sock puppet pets — at the end of the day you are still black.
Religion
I will have to say that one of the goals of the religion coon is to keep black people docile.
The thing that makes religion so harmful is the fact that once you attach the notion of a comfortable afterlife to a task on this planet, human beings will literally DIE in the name of whatever task you attached to said religion.
For that reason, the religious coon is a magnificently dangerous type of pet. The religion coon, by way of being a part of a community that explicitly builds leadership qualities in people, will be already skilled in managing resources and people; volunteering, running meetings, managing disagreements, allocation of funding on projects, and other forms of leadership responsibility.
If a fellow of the religious cloth were to engage in civil rights activism and produce great results, what if one were to use all of their skills and social capital to suppress, deter and degrade black people as a whole? What if one were to use their religious social capital to align with white supremacy?
I always marveled at the fact that when a white person takes Christianity in America, they have “God-given rights” to “have guns” and dish out “death” in the name of “Holy vengeance”, but when a black person takes the same religion, it’s all about forgive, forgive, forgive. From this point, I will have to say that one of the goals of the religion coon is to keep black people docile by way of manning the post of Colonel Crunchy in the Butter Biscuit Brigade.
Influencer
These social media types DO NOT hate being black by any means, in fact, they love their blackness. The problem lies in the fact that they love being black FOR WHITES ONLY.
The social media realm is one of the most fruitful places where a coon can engage in the greatest form of coonery. Just as social media allows the unheard protester to have a voice, social media also allows the pet to white supremacy to also have a voice. A lot of these social media coons caught foothold during, unsurprisingly, the Obama years.
My interest in studying coonery came from the fact that I instruct whites to dismantle white racists, but this is only one position on the battlefield. If I’m practically training white assets to work behind white enemy lines, what about the black agents of white supremacy? The parallel antagonist to any black abolitionist social media entity is the influencer coon. Being that I exist as a social media entity as a writer online, the social media coon is the type of coon out of this list that I bump shoulders with the most. Needless to say, I have a detailed analysis of this particular type of coon.
In my analysis, there are two main types of social media coons:
- Type A: The “black conservative” who isn’t a politician; provides “puppet therapy” for white supremacy-aligned politics and people; enjoys talking colorblind nonsense at Blacks; toting one’s Black existence when it benefits ingratiating with white supremacist culture.
- Type B: Explicitly harass and assaults an element of the Black community to ingratiate with another half (e.g., attacking only Black women, as a “concerned male” or shitting on Black men, because); provides minstrel-wretched entertainment for low-brow folk (e.g., Kevin Samuels); fulfills and validates negative stereotypes against Black people; tacit agreement with common white supremacist talking points(e.g., “what about black on black crime?”); never angers white constituents.
The two types of social media coons have a varied response to the black community. Type A might not exactly be super-comfortable being around a lot of black people. The Type A influencer coon might enjoy a marginal amount of comfort around, but the more extreme their right-edge politics are, the less likely black people will accept them. The Type B social media coon, on the other hand, will be very comfortable surrounded by black people. This is because they tend to stay away from heavy politics and only manipulate intraracial dysfunction. Typically, Type B will only explicitly attack black women if he’s a male. If Type B is a black female, she will only attack black men. Type A might not necessarily attack black people by manipulating intraracial concerns, but they will support and uphold white supremacist policy which hurts the black community as a whole. While there are slight differences in the two types of influencers, one giant overlap is the fact that they tend to function as trolls.
Whether you are dealing with Type A or B, one thing that a lot of black people don’t understand is if they hate being black or not. These influencer types DO NOT hate being black by any means, in fact, they love their blackness. The problem lies in the fact that they love being black FOR WHITES ONLY.
If you ever had the chance to talk to a social media coon concerning a discussion on race relations or referencing race at all, you’ll notice the mental gymnastics they pull which will point to the fact that they do not hate their black skin. They love monetizing their blackness because they’ve realized the same thing an abolitionist has — white supremacy, like all forms of oppression needs validation agents from the stock of dark bodies from which they anathematize.
Being that I was a black conservative during the Bush-era (2000–2008), I often wonder what would have happened if I used all my analytical skills, attention to detail, brains, and wit to suppress black thought like the rest of these coons. What if when I first started writing in 2013, I was like Allen West against Obama or something? What if I was a younger David Clarke with an online platform? What if my writing was practically a black version of Breitbart? I would probably end up on Fox News as another black body against black bodies for conservative whites to marvel at, to pet on the head. From there, white conservatives will continue to elevate my online presence. I would then monetize it.
You see, as a fellow who once was a black conservative, I can reflect, and clearly see where this would lead. I can think like a social media coon because technically, I could have become one. So from there, I know why they exist — because cooning is REWARDED BEHAVIOR.
Conclusion
The biggest reason why cooning exists is that for starters, black people in America do not have the sociological capital to effectively punish them. Using Tommy Sotomayor’s (influencer) cowardly case as an example, he explicitly provides Afro-misogyny which many black men support, so from there, half the time we can’t even get a majority of black people to agree on what’s right or wrong.
A lot of times, social media coons also double as trolls who have a multitude of accounts, and will block anyone who they slight, and will continue to bully the defenseless and marginalized from their social media platforms. What makes matter worse is the fact that many of these trolls have a follower-ship (read: cult) who will without pay, harass their targets to no end, report anything criticizing white America and get people suspended or banned off of social media.
Being that the coon is a black person who explicitly decided to align themselves with white supremacy, one cannot approach them as if they are a racist white person. Half the time white people are totally oblivious to how racist they are. Most coons, especially social media influencer types, absolutely know precisely what they are doing. It is intentional, always. The best way to defeat a coon (outside of the pain of death) is to continue to do what you are doing, engaging in black love especially. Voting (and money) defeats the political coon. For the rest, one must roll over them by continuing to do the right thing.