Saved by a Gold Tooth: Gunshot Ricochets off of his Grillz

It is a known fact that gun violence in the Black community is one of the primary reasons many major United States cities are not safe. It has been said that the most dangerous place for a Black person is the womb, but this is patently untrue.

The most dangerous place for a Black person is hanging around other Black people, where an enjoyable afternoon smoking marijuana can be interrupted suddenly and viciously. The story cited below is proof of the importance of purchasing grillz for ones teeth:

A Central City man was left with only minor injuries from a gunshot to the mouth after his gold tooth apparently deflected the bullet, police said.

The victim was sitting in a car with his girlfriend in the 3300 block of Second Street, smoking marijuna that belonged to his 20-year-old brother, Waltdell Davis, said Sgt. Sandra Contreras of the NOPD Sixth District persons-crime division. When Waltdell Davis came home, he got angry about the marijuana, and an argument ensued, Contreras said. In an attempt to defuse the argument, the victim went inside the house, but Waltdell Davis followed him in with a gun, Contreras said.

The two began to struggle, and the gun went off, hitting the victim in the mouth, Contreras said. He ran to a friend’s house for help, and the paramedics who treated him told investigators that the small-caliber bullet apparently bounced off the victim’s gold tooth, leaving only some gum damage from the impact and a cut to his upper lip from the ricochet, Contreras said.

The victim told police in the hospital that he had been shot by his brother, Contreras said. His mouth was filled with gauze from his medical treatment, however, and it was initially difficult to ascertain whether he was identifying Waltdell Davis or a second similarly-named brother, Waldell Davis, Contreras said. Investigators were able to subsequently confirm from other witnesses that Waltdell Davis was the shooter and that Waldell Davis was uninvolved in the incident, and Waltdell Davis was arrested Feb. 9 on charges of aggravated battery, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and parole violation.

Waltdell or Waldell? Who knows, it could have been his other, similarly named brother Waldo. Where is he again?

A video on Grillz can be found here describing the process of putting them on your teeth.

It is our sincere hope that the government – in an effort to stem the tide of rampant gunshot victims in the Black community – institutes Project Gold Tooth. Imagine the lives saved if every person in the Black community has grillz adorning their bicuspids, not to mention the monumental redistribution of wealth this project would provide.

The tragic shooting death of the Black gentleman at the IHOP in Sacramento and the subsequent events that followed (his family attacking a news crew) would have been avoided were the impenetrable grillz attached to his teeth.

Project Gold Tooth: Saved by the Grillz. We encourage local governments to take control of a winnable situation and adopt this plan.  Gun violence in Black communities and dangerous neighborhoods can be halved if they take the steps necessary to implement Project Gold Tooth.

Even better, the high rates of Black people affixing these government-issued grillz to their teeth might somehow spark interest in the Black community in dentistry:

As the American Dental Association reinforced its commitment to  diversity, it apologized for discriminatory membership practices of the past. Dr. Raymond Gist, the group's first African-American president, made the apology in an open letter.

In a historic move, the American Dental Association has apologized for not taking a stand against discriminatory membership practices.

In an open letter, Dr. Raymond Gist, who became the ADA's first African-American president in October, said the dentist group should have done a better job in making sure minorities could join affiliated state and local organizations before the mid-1960s.
"[I]n looking forward, we must also look back," Gist wrote. "Along with acknowledging past mistakes and to build a stronger, collaborative platform for future accomplishments, the ADA apologizes to dentists for not strongly enforcing non-discriminatory membership practices prior to 1965."

Peterson says no data available show whether there was a surge of minority member applications after 1965. But he says of the 185,000 practicing dentists in the U.S. in 2009, about 3 1/2 percent are African American and about 44 percent of those dentists belong to the ADA.

Two years ago, the American Medical Association issued a similar apology.  Dr. Ronald Davis, the immediate past president of the AMA at the time, said that the apology followed an AMA study about the history of medicine's racial divide.

"We knew that there had been problems in the past and after all of the detail was collected, we felt horrible about what had been uncovered, even more so than the anecdotal stories that we had heard previously," Davis told NPR's Michel Martin. "And we felt that we wanted to issue a very public, very official apology on behalf of the entire organization to African-American physicians and the organizations that represent them."

Peterson says that the ADA has established programs to promote diversity, including the Institute for Diversity in Leadership, which aims to help equip minority dentists for leadership roles.

A lack of Black people in any vocation or in any endeavor is always blamed on discrimination. Conversely, a lot Black people in jail is blamed on the same thing. 

Where is the Black dentist? We need them desperately to be part of Project Gold Tooth. The number of Black dentists remained static up until 1991record numbers of Asians and Hispanics are enrolling at higher numbers. 

A staggering 70 percent of Black dentists earned their degrees from HBCUs. Knowing what transpires at HBCUs, this isn’t an indicator of great hope for the future of Black dentistry. This is the same percentage of Black veterinarians that have come from Tuskegee University.

To hinder future Black-on-Black murder rates let us all join together and work to promote Project Gold Tooth.

Thanks to Walter’s wearing of grillz, he survived a gunshot wound to the face. The evidence from this story shows that Project Gold Tooth could save hundreds of life. Perhaps thousands, if not more.

What are you waiting for Congress? Make it happen.

We have no idea how to augment the number of Black people entering dental school, but like most other institutions of higher learning facing this problem the answer is probably found in lowering the standards and academic qualifications required for entrance.

#149. The Decline of Gangsta Rap

Black people love music. They have excelled at numerous forms of music, from jazz to disco, pop and finally to rap music. It is one of the major contributions that they have made to the world, and through this medium they have assimilated themselves to millions of white people who normally would have nothing to do with them.

Rap music in particular, owes its main-stream success to the integration of the gangsta-rap genre with the listening habits of suburban white people, particularly white males whose only exposure to Black people came from listening to gangsta – rap in the early late 1980s and early 1990s.

Songs like Snoop Dog’s “187” were monumentally influential to a generation of rappers and had an immediate impact on tapes that white people placed into their Walkmans.

Ice-T – an occasional actor – performed the popular song “Cop Killer” in 1992, which is, about killing cops:

“The song provoked much controversy and negative reactions from politicians such as George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Tipper Gore, although some defended the song on the basis of the band's First Amendment rights.”

Another gangsta rapper, similarly named after solidified water, Ice Cube, was part of Niggaz With Attitude (NWA), a hardcore gangsta rap outfit from Compton, that took the world by storm in the late 80s, forever changing the listening habits of white people with it:

“N.W.A released Straight Outta Compton in 1988. With its famous opening salvo of three songs, the group reflected the rising anger of the urban youth. "Straight Outta Compton" introduced the group; "Fuck tha Police" protested police brutality and racial profiling, and "Gangsta Gangsta" painted the worldview of the inner-city youth. While the group was later credited with pioneering the burgeoning sub genre of gangsta rap, N.W.A in fact referred to their music as "reality rap".”

But as gangsta rap slowly invaded the white suburbs, it had to move away from the hardcore, cop-killing image it had created. Thus, the Trojan horse for gangsta rap and Black people invading white people’s cassette tapes and CD players: Vanilla Ice.

Yes, he got white kids listening to rap, but it was a Faustian Pact for gangsta rappers: he was a white rapper that parents found tolerable, yet a white rapper that Black audiences found unimaginably intolerable. He was a mortal blow to gangsta rap that the genre may never recover from.

Whomp There It is, Tootsie Roll and other silly rap songs diluted the angry Black man message of Black solidarity and gangsta rap, and appealed primarily to white people and their pocket books. Later rappers like Sisqo cranked out goofy songs like “The Thong Song”, just to make a quick buck. Nothing of substance or of protest in favor of the Black community, just a goofy song that white people enjoyed, and specifically written for massive consumption by the white audience.

Black people sold their soul to Mephistopheles - the white devil, white people – in their bid to get big record deals and big bucks. Snoop Dog is now in PG-13 movies with Vince Vaughn and no longer rapping about the thug life. Instead:

“Rap artists have continued to produce more easygoing, melodic songs with R&B choruses. However, the likes of Kanye West, Snoop Dogg and Nelly have gone as far as to not only sing the hooks themselves, but to sing entire songs.

"Additionally, almost across the board, rappers from T.I. to Plies to Soulja Boy Tell'em have released songs with the female fans in mind, boasting about their ability to satisfy their women physically, emotionally and/or materialistically.

Have rappers gone soft?”

Take Soulja Boy Tell’em for example. He is a young rapper who one website dubbed a walking poster-child for Black stereotypes. He scored a hit in 2007 about performing a lewd act upon a female – which is one of the number one topics of rap music now – and older rappers had this to say about him:

“Critics and hip-hop figures such as Snoop Dogg and Method Man cite Soulja Boy as artistically typical of contemporary rap trends such as writing for the lucrative ringtone market, and the ascendence of "Southern hip hop", emphasizing catchy music that discards rap's traditional emphasis on message.”

Rap music, in the good old days, wasn’t about pumping out hits for white people to listen to in lily-white suburbs, but a genre to express Black angst at the world and their predicament in it. That was of course, in Pre-Obama America.

Now, what do Black people have to protest?

Rappers now have so much money at their disposal, that the issue that dominates the music scene is No Homo:

“But old habits die hard, and last week, West amended his position somewhat on "Run This Town," a new Jay-Z single on which the Chicago rapper is a featured guest. "It's crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow," West begins his rap, "to everybody on your dick—no homo." No homo, to those unfamiliar with the term, is a phrase added to statements in order to rid them of possible homosexual double-entendre. ("You've got beautiful balls," you tell your friend at the bocce game—"no homo.") No homo began life as East Harlem slang in the early '90s, and in the early aughts it entered the hip-hop lexicon via the Harlem rapper Cam'ron and his Diplomats crew.”

Yes, gangsta rap and rap music as whole is dead, a water-downed form of music that white people feel safe and comfortable listening too.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the decline of gangsta rap, an art form that they perfected and then lost in a Faustian pact with the white devils. The allure of money and fame was too much for gangsta rappers so they sold their souls for vast fortunes. Not even resurrecting Tupac Shakur could save rap music now.

The following two videos show the evolution of rap music, from its hardcore, edgy past to where it might be headed...

#70. The Word Niggardly

Black people love words. There’s no getting around it. From “bling” to “booty” to “drive-by shooting,” Blacks have undoubtedly enriched the American English vocabulary. Incredible athletic achievements aside, Black people's top contribution to the American experiment is undoubtedly the new words that have flown smoothly into the vernacular. “You straight trippin dog,” to a new version of "for real" - which Black people say "fizzule".

We can credit Black people for their linguistic achievements—Flava Flav and Mike Tyson come immediately to mind - as top notch, verbose, representatives for their community.

Yet despite their creative knack for inventing slang, pidgins, and complex poetic genres like graffiti and human beatboxing, Blacks tend to be a little wary of Standard English words that contain six or more letters, especially if those words are combined together. Compound words like porch-monkey (the movie Clerks II tries to show white people taking porch monkey back) really throw Blacks into a rage, and they’re known to thereby justify any act of violence against anyone unfortunate enough to say these or other words that discomfort or confuse them.

Black people, however, do not like the word "niggard" or its more common usage, “niggardly,” for example. “Niggardly” means a miser, someone who is stingy. But for Blacks, “niggard” means…well, you know what it means. Black people automatically assume using the word niggardly is a racial pejorative, when in fact it is a fine word to denote someone who is parsimonious, primarily in tipping.

In fact, many white people have used the term "niggardly" before at their job, in a mulitracial setting, and found themselves deprived of that vocation soon thereafter.

Strange though, the etymology of the word "niggard" derives from 1366:

1366, nygart, of uncertain origin. The suffix suggests Fr. origin (cf. dastard), but the root word is probably related to O.N. hnøggr "stingy," from P.Gmc. *khnauwjaz (cf. Swed. njugg "close, careful," Ger. genau "precise, exact"), and to O.E. hneaw "stingy, niggardly," which did not survive in M.E.

Numerous uproars have occurred over the term "niggardly", most recently David Howard:

"David Howard, the white director of a Washington D.C. municipal agency [..] told his staff that, in light of budget cutbacks, he would have to be "niggardly" with funds. An uproar followed that resulted in Howard's resignation, which was accepted by Mayor Anthony Williams on the grounds that Howard had shown poor judgment.

Even some of the commentators who admitted that they knew that "niggardly" has no relation to "nigger" (the origins of the first word predate those of "nigger" by about 300 years) still condemned Howard. They were answered by the columnist Tony Snow, who wrote, "David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who

a) didn't know the meaning of the word 'niggardly'

b) didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the word's meaning and

c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance."

"Niggardly" sounds, to the Black ear, too much like the term "nigger" or "nigga", which Black people are allowed to say to each other, but White people cannot. A white person saying the word "niggardly" or "nigga", let alone the mother of all hate words, "nigger" is grounds for expulsion from work, or in some cases, death.

Equipped with a biological capacity for language which rivals that of macaws (Zulu and other Bantu languages average about 20,000 documented words, while English and French have several hundred thousand), Blacks tend to overlook troublesome letters and simply go with their instincts. This leads not only to their extraordinary talent for misconstruing harmless phrases or words - like niggardly -, but also to their ability to create nonsensical words out of thin air, giving them an undeniable edge in scatting, freestyle rap, and slam poetry.

#170. Losing gold teeth

Black people are fascinated by gold, more so than the Spanish Conquistadors of old. Black people love gold so much, that they have it fashioned to put onto their teeth, known throughout the Black community as "grillz".

A subculture has grown around this fascinating practice and has become a lucrative business for entrepreneur's hoping to affix their wares on the Black persons bicuspids.

One practitioner of the art of "grillzing" writes,

"Gold teeth are a product that has been increasingly growing over the past eight years, especially since the attention given to them from celebrities such as Nelly and Flavor Flav. Since that time, they've taken on several different names, such as gold fronts, gold caps, gold slugs, grills and grillz."

The problem for "grillz" advocates remains maintaining the integrity of said gold piece in their mouths, while using the restroom.

Recently at a Major League Baseball (MLB) game between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets, a woman lost one of her "grillz" in the latrine. While relieving herself, somehow her "grillz" become dislodged and ended up resting in the bowels of the commode.

Her first instinct was to attempt a rescue operation by jamming her hand into the toilet, but she became stuck. In the toilet. Fishing for her "grillz". Black people do not like losing gold teeth.

All stories of the deadly encounter with the toilet left out the racial group this women belonged too, but a call to the plumbing company that rescued this woman from mindless butchery at the hands of a "grillz" devouring toilet provided the answer: A Black woman.

As the Fox story continues:

"It's unclear how long she was trapped screaming in the john, but stadium security guards and emergency medical personnel eventually showed up.

But they could not pry her loose on their own.

The anxious victim, meanwhile, could only wait as the toilet continued to flush over her arm."

Video of the event is unavailable at the moment, but Stuff Black People Don't Like is asking readers to scourge the internet in hopes of finding cell phone videos or pictures of this woman fishing into the abyss of toiletry for her "grillz". Because, as you now know, Black people don't like losing gold teeth.

Worse, the woman never retrieved her gold tooth from the toilet.