Friday, March 23, 2007
A very Literate Conversation
I read a story yesterday that really bothered me. I emailed the link to my co-worker and friend Nico. Below I've posted his response to me saying that it's a shame that a city that is majority black having such a hard time right in the nations capital and below that is my response to his response. Does that make sense? Good. Again this went through company email so we were quite tame. Let me know what your thoughts are and as always..... Enjoy.
You are telling the truth but you know a lot of the parents don’t even care that their children are the majority and that the city is rigged with crime and illiteracy.
Most African-American males prefer to think they will become rap stars someday; the girls would like to dance in their videos and while this it is good to have a dream, it is also good to learn one or two things just in case. So you have a backup plan. Most kids are dropping out and taking to the streets and joining gangs. And the Gang leaders are out there roving the streets recruiting young impressionable minds that need a better example to emulate. If a young African American man doesn’t wear tee shirts three times his size, with pants hanging off the bottom of their ankles, they are looked at funny and called Cosby kids. The girls prefer to be with gangsters and have children all over with numerous men at very tender ages.
Most men don’t take charge of their families. Most even abandon their children and do what it takes to own that new Cadillac and they throw some D’s on it, rather than pay child support that will enable their children buy school books. Mothers let their children who are barely able to walk watch TV videos that objectify women and tell them to pop it, lock it and drop it, as a means of babysitting the children.
It is a lamentable situation, and when Bill Cosby wants to bring people’s attention to it, they ridicule him and rout his persistent aim and sensitizing the people who have been taken advantage of for 500 years (slavery and colonialism) and are still being taken advantage of as I write. It sucks but that is the reality in which we live.
We have to wake up and smell the coffee and although many are trying to do that, the vast majority just doesn’t care. Martin Luther, Malcolm X etc died for nothing. To young men and women today, these people signify nothing. Calling their brothers niggas just as the white man did. Busting a cap on their own brothers. Drive buy shootings, etc .This is what living in the city has been relegated to. And who lives in the city, the niggas that don’t want to work or learn. The niggas that really don’t have an excuse for standing in the street corner all day shooting dice and relying on the tax money of the few hardworking men and women of their kind (call it welfare).
It is sad but then again. A chacun son lit! As you make your bed, so shall you lie on it.
This is a very interesting take on the situation. Let's take another look as well. We live in the richest country in the world. We have spent billions of dollars in Iraq the past 4 years. The exact amount of time it takes for a student to get through high school. So let's not blame the victims here! Are there irresponsible men and women in the black community? Yes. Just as there are in every community including Karl Rove and George Bush in the white community. But for some reason irresponsible white men are the most powerful men in the world while Tyrone from D.C. can't read. It doesn't mean that Tyrone isn't smart. No! They spend as little money as possible to educate these children while they turn their heads as crack fill the city streets. If a young child grows up with two parents who are drug addicts and makes it out then they are the exception! They aren't exposed to anything outside a 50 mile radius and so they think that wearing their pants hanging off their butt is what they are SUPPOSED to do. They sleep in horrendous conditions and are privy to things that you and I would squirm at if we saw it on a movie screen. So when Jay-Z comes on TV and says he made it out of the ghetto and he drives this car and wears these clothes while he's standing next to Beyonce then of course that's who they want to be like!
So it wasn't exactly what Mr. Cosby said but how he said it and whom he said it to. He was condescending and really didn't put the onus of the problem on the correct people. Black people aren't inherently violent nor are they born with an inability to learn as fast as others. In fact we adapt better than any people on this planet. We turn sh*t to sugar and then others come along and profit off of it. White boys in Iowa wear there pants hanging off their butts too. They call their college bound girlfriends b*tches and ho*s just like the boys in D.C. The white boys learned that stuff from watching music videos. You see white men like Clive Davis and Jimmy Iovine saw that despite the fact that these impoverished and illiterate men were at an extreme disadvantage they made it cool and not only that but they made it MARKETABLE. Ahh capitalism at it's best. They sold 50 Cent to the masses as a young black man who didn’t have a mother or a father and had been shot 9 times. They was the crux of their marketing plan. Interesting isn't it. 50 Cent has proven to be quite the business man himself. He earned almost 100 million dollars last year. Not from record sales but from the running of his own company. Of course if he made 100 million somebody else made 200 million because of him.
The point? A kid who isn't being taught values from his parents because his parents weren't taught values and the importance of education is going to look at Theo Huxtable on the Cosby show as an anomaly, him and the whole family just seem odd or out of place because he's never met anybody like that. The show is a fantasy. But he sees guys like Ludacris everyday on his block. There's a guy in the apartment above him that can rap just as good or better than Snoop Dogg. But he's functional illiterate. Biggie Smalls is universally recognized as a musical genius. Some of the words and phrases that young man put together were unbelievable. He never graduated high school. You'll never see graduation pictures of the CEO and President of Def Jam either because Jay-Z never finished high school. It just so happens that these two and a few others get a chance to show exactly how smart they are and can be if a given a chance. But in reality there are a million Jay-Zs across this country and there are easily 10 or 12 standing on a corner or in a crack house in D.C. as I type this email. So let's not judge these babies of victims and these grandchildren of victims let's look at the real enemy, the real irresponsible men who continue to allow some of our best and our brightest just sit on a corner blocks away from the richest and most powerful buildings in the world!
You are telling the truth but you know a lot of the parents don’t even care that their children are the majority and that the city is rigged with crime and illiteracy.
Most African-American males prefer to think they will become rap stars someday; the girls would like to dance in their videos and while this it is good to have a dream, it is also good to learn one or two things just in case. So you have a backup plan. Most kids are dropping out and taking to the streets and joining gangs. And the Gang leaders are out there roving the streets recruiting young impressionable minds that need a better example to emulate. If a young African American man doesn’t wear tee shirts three times his size, with pants hanging off the bottom of their ankles, they are looked at funny and called Cosby kids. The girls prefer to be with gangsters and have children all over with numerous men at very tender ages.
Most men don’t take charge of their families. Most even abandon their children and do what it takes to own that new Cadillac and they throw some D’s on it, rather than pay child support that will enable their children buy school books. Mothers let their children who are barely able to walk watch TV videos that objectify women and tell them to pop it, lock it and drop it, as a means of babysitting the children.
It is a lamentable situation, and when Bill Cosby wants to bring people’s attention to it, they ridicule him and rout his persistent aim and sensitizing the people who have been taken advantage of for 500 years (slavery and colonialism) and are still being taken advantage of as I write. It sucks but that is the reality in which we live.
We have to wake up and smell the coffee and although many are trying to do that, the vast majority just doesn’t care. Martin Luther, Malcolm X etc died for nothing. To young men and women today, these people signify nothing. Calling their brothers niggas just as the white man did. Busting a cap on their own brothers. Drive buy shootings, etc .This is what living in the city has been relegated to. And who lives in the city, the niggas that don’t want to work or learn. The niggas that really don’t have an excuse for standing in the street corner all day shooting dice and relying on the tax money of the few hardworking men and women of their kind (call it welfare).
It is sad but then again. A chacun son lit! As you make your bed, so shall you lie on it.
This is a very interesting take on the situation. Let's take another look as well. We live in the richest country in the world. We have spent billions of dollars in Iraq the past 4 years. The exact amount of time it takes for a student to get through high school. So let's not blame the victims here! Are there irresponsible men and women in the black community? Yes. Just as there are in every community including Karl Rove and George Bush in the white community. But for some reason irresponsible white men are the most powerful men in the world while Tyrone from D.C. can't read. It doesn't mean that Tyrone isn't smart. No! They spend as little money as possible to educate these children while they turn their heads as crack fill the city streets. If a young child grows up with two parents who are drug addicts and makes it out then they are the exception! They aren't exposed to anything outside a 50 mile radius and so they think that wearing their pants hanging off their butt is what they are SUPPOSED to do. They sleep in horrendous conditions and are privy to things that you and I would squirm at if we saw it on a movie screen. So when Jay-Z comes on TV and says he made it out of the ghetto and he drives this car and wears these clothes while he's standing next to Beyonce then of course that's who they want to be like!
So it wasn't exactly what Mr. Cosby said but how he said it and whom he said it to. He was condescending and really didn't put the onus of the problem on the correct people. Black people aren't inherently violent nor are they born with an inability to learn as fast as others. In fact we adapt better than any people on this planet. We turn sh*t to sugar and then others come along and profit off of it. White boys in Iowa wear there pants hanging off their butts too. They call their college bound girlfriends b*tches and ho*s just like the boys in D.C. The white boys learned that stuff from watching music videos. You see white men like Clive Davis and Jimmy Iovine saw that despite the fact that these impoverished and illiterate men were at an extreme disadvantage they made it cool and not only that but they made it MARKETABLE. Ahh capitalism at it's best. They sold 50 Cent to the masses as a young black man who didn’t have a mother or a father and had been shot 9 times. They was the crux of their marketing plan. Interesting isn't it. 50 Cent has proven to be quite the business man himself. He earned almost 100 million dollars last year. Not from record sales but from the running of his own company. Of course if he made 100 million somebody else made 200 million because of him.
The point? A kid who isn't being taught values from his parents because his parents weren't taught values and the importance of education is going to look at Theo Huxtable on the Cosby show as an anomaly, him and the whole family just seem odd or out of place because he's never met anybody like that. The show is a fantasy. But he sees guys like Ludacris everyday on his block. There's a guy in the apartment above him that can rap just as good or better than Snoop Dogg. But he's functional illiterate. Biggie Smalls is universally recognized as a musical genius. Some of the words and phrases that young man put together were unbelievable. He never graduated high school. You'll never see graduation pictures of the CEO and President of Def Jam either because Jay-Z never finished high school. It just so happens that these two and a few others get a chance to show exactly how smart they are and can be if a given a chance. But in reality there are a million Jay-Zs across this country and there are easily 10 or 12 standing on a corner or in a crack house in D.C. as I type this email. So let's not judge these babies of victims and these grandchildren of victims let's look at the real enemy, the real irresponsible men who continue to allow some of our best and our brightest just sit on a corner blocks away from the richest and most powerful buildings in the world!
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