carlton urkel…..I HATE that motherf%#*&@$!!!

Never have I been so thankful to have a blog title without any CAPS.

Here’s the scary part….this blog tried to capitalize Urkel as a recognized name. Are you fucking kidding me?

The reason that I say HATE (and I know it’s a very strong word) is that for the majority of my life, I was him. He was me.

I’m struggling with waiting for a verdict for a process that was going to have a lasting impact on two families and their friends, and I’ve never wanted to be less like Carlton Urkel. Where’s the high pressure wash to get this off of me, once and for all?

Growing up, it was incredibly fucked up that our dad put all this pressure on us to be like a Huxtable, a “perceived as smart and safe representation of the Black teenager”, because being “too Black” was not acceptable. Making us feel the disdain for preferring Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Robin Harris over Bill Cosby.

Carlton Urkel has created such a divide in our society, to the point where he’s become almost time-capsule Top 10 worthy. And some of us drank that Kool-Aid down to the last drop. And karma has finally caught up.

Boy, did Cosby fuck us all up, right? How he banged the drum about how we as Black people should walk, talk and act. Damned if he wasn’t TV commercial, children’s show or occasional really-shitty movie. Man, I wish my dad has lived long enough to see THAT downfall.

The image showed its true buffoonery with these two. They gave people two code words to make fun of someone perceived to be Black on the outside, White on the inside, without having to use words like Oreo or “PseudoBlack.” You could have people laughing with you for being like Carlton or Urkel, even though many laughed at you behind your back (both Black and White) for being like them.

We now live in a country that is much more open and honest about our reasons for racial division, and that characterization needs to be put back in the box, never to be seen again. Like Roosevelt Franklin on Sesame Street. (Three guesses at who used his star power to make that muppet go away, because he didn’t speak and act a certain way.)

Depending on the verdict next week, there’s a part of me that’s going on permanent hiatus regardless of how it goes. It’s a part that was nothing but defensive, arrogant and narcissistic. (And yes, I see the fucking irony in that sentence. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, folks.) And damn if it’s not pretty cool to do it while truly leaving, but truly not going ANYWHERE at the same time.

Wait, what?