The Boondocks Catch-Up: "Thank You For Not Snitching"

"Suckas really shouldn't play. I hit 'em with the Hennessayyyyyy!" Fuck snitching, Thank You For Bringing Back Gin Rummy and Ed Wuncler III! I remember reading a Boondocks strip in one of our local tabloids when Bluetooth headsets started to pop off. Tom was wearing one and Huey made it a point to inform him that he looked part-Rihanna-- I mean, Klingon. I too refuse to sacrifice my dignity for fashion or technophilia. Once again, I am well pleased with the program's take on the cultural phenomenon that is the persecution of snitches. We've had snitches since the white man came over with the boats and the gun powder to steal us from Africa. We had snitches to the kings who sold us to the whites with the gun powder. Abel snitched on Cain. Judas snitched on Jesus. Nicky Barnes snitched on everyone. I grew up surrounded by the drug game. While the mantra remains that there's no honor among thieves, I've grown to observe quite the opposite. Snitching as it pertains to said game is a first-degree violation of an ethical code that makes the whole show go 'round. The violation primarily entailed giving niggas up once you got pinched. Despite how loosely the term is used today, this decree did not include civilians. While you surely wouldn't be safe if it were common knowledge that you had a high score on Crime Stoppers, informing the police on the whereabouts of your local child molester, i.e. Cam'ron on "60 Minutes." is NOT snitching. I repeat... NOT snitching! According to Huey Freeman, 1 in 12 black men are active and working police informants. I'm not sure where he gets his fact from, but if so, that's no more than a third of the percentage of black men with razor bumps in the post-Gillette Mach 3 era. That's not all that bad. As we all know, the authorities are looking for Mach 3-users whenever some shit goes down. White woman drowns her kids in a lake in broad daylight, somehow a Mach 3-user's face is plastered across every television network and the local neighborhood watch has militarized. Best believe the streets are fully militarized already. Niggas damn sure know how to destroy each other with ironworks. Unfortunately, when police cooperation is both appropriate and necessary, our brothers in blue don't effectively protect witnesses. I'm not talking about the rat bastards sitting in protective custody in Clinton Correctional Facility who thought selling crack was cool until he got popped. I'm talking about the 12-year-old who saw his classmate get murdered in an alley and won't make it to testify. We're expected to help the pigs "do their job" (translation: "collar a nigga") and they won't so much as uphold the former of their creed. They'll serve you a magazine of hollows while you're trying to parallel park though. You'll be just laying there bleeding with somebody standing over you talkin 'bout: "You know you done fucked up, right?"