Since Baltimore is the city with the dubious and arguable distinction of starting the “Stop Snitching” craze -- courtesy of a DVD of the same name produced two years ago -- it’s only fitting that the man with the antidote to it comes from Baltimore too.
BlackAmericaWeb.com readers, meet Cornell Dews, creator of the “Stop Lying” T-shirt. Or rather, meet him again.
You were introduced to him when I did a column on how Dews tried to convince his class of fourth-grade boys at a Baltimore elementary school that they needed better role models than rapper 50 Cent. To be specific, Dews tried to bring his boys back to reality after he heard some of them claim they wanted to be shot nine times and live, just like Fiddy did.
Dews has struggled for years trying to counter the nonsense being pumped into the heads of our youth by some of today’s rappers. He’s dismayed by other things he sees wrong with the values and mores some blacks today cling to so desperately. And he was appalled when he learned that “Stop Snitching” apparel was selling well.
That’s when he thought of the idea for his shirt. It’s not snitching that’s a problem among some black folks of the hip-hop generation, of which Dews is a member. It’s lying.
“The idea (for the shirt) was birthed from working with my children,” Dews told me for a column I did in the Baltimore Sun. “So many people are lying to them.”
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They’re not only lying to our children. They’re lying to themselves. Dews said he has heard guys he grew up with brag about doing jail time he knows they didn’t do, because they were on the streets at the time they claimed to be behind bars. Dews is especially miffed by those “gangsta” rappers who brag about their lives spent in poverty-stricken urban slums.
“Some of them grew up in better neighborhoods and went to better schools than I did,” Dews told me.
The truth is, few rappers probably grew up in a neighborhood as rugged as the one where Dews grew up. He graduated from and lived within walking distance of Lake Clifton High School in East Baltimore, which was briefly renamed “Gunshot High” after a number of shootings in the 1990s.
Also within walking distance of his old neighborhood is the house where the Dawson family lived when they were firebombed to death four years ago this month. Angela and Carnell Dawson, along with their five children, were killed; they had offended neighborhood drug dealers by telling them not to sling drugs on or near their steps in front of their children.
Those drug dealers had a name for the Dawsons: Snitches. You can now understand why Dews has a problem with the term “Stop Snitching” and with anyone who wears a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt or cap. Anyone who does is, in essence, saying the Dawsons got exactly what they deserved. It betrays a mindset that says crime is a cultural imperative for black Americans.
Dews believes we’ve reached that point. He wasn’t surprised that Busta “I’m-not-a-snitch” Rhymes was invited to a homecoming concert at historically black Morgan State University last week.
“There’s probably a couple of reasons that he was selected,” Dews wrote me in an e-mail. “First, he has a fairly new album out. Secondly, for a headlining act and the troubles that presently surround him, he probably charged less than many other big names in the rap industry. And last, but not least, in our community, ‘not telling’ or ‘not ratting’ is an applaudable act ... With this allure and appeal to garner and sustain ‘street credibility’ in our community, Bussa Bus’ actions are actually applaudable. He’s only doing what he was taught to do.”
Dews, his shirt emplazoned with a red octagon stop sign on the front and the words “Stop Lying” inscribed therein, hopes to teach us something better. We do need to stop lying. If Busta Rhymes can see his bodyguard murdered before his eyes and think things will be better if he clams up rather than talks to police, he’s lying to himself.
Those who believe law-abiding black folks who want to live in drug-free and crime-free communities are “snitches” are lying to themselves. The guys who made the “Stop Snitching” DVD in Baltimore don’t even believe that. They clearly defined a “snitch” as a criminal who gets caught by the police and then gives somebody else up so he won’t do time. Some of these characters even lie other criminals into prison.
See how Dews shirt can even cover the more invidious side of snitching? I hope the brother’s shirts sell well.
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Correction: In last week’s column, I incorrectly wrote that the Black Panther was the symbol of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. My thanks to BlackAmericaWeb.com reader Jeffrey Buchanan of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial for pointing out that the Black Panther was actually the symbol of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.
