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I was born out of an era of organized boycotts and protests so I am hoping that those who were born subsequently can help me understand something. I have read a number of blogs about how the negative images of stereotypical Black behavior affects our community but no one ever explains why they BUY into them. Many media outlets serve to shape public perception. One of them is music. I guess that one falls on my mind now with the recent death of Isaac Hayes. The sixties were a very contentious period for us as a people but the music remained positive. Back then, we were "Movin' on Up' and we were Black and Proud. Even into the seventies, we "Treat[ed] her Like a Like a Lady." Today, we celebrate our "Hard Knock Life," and call our mothers and sisters bi**hes and whores. What is worse is that we stand in line to purchase CDs and concert tickets to hear artists who promote these negative stereotypes. Thug life portrayals of us have always been available but we didn't always BUY into them. I am keenly aware that the majority of Gangster Rap is bought by the White community, not because it is accurate but because it SELLS! This is a Capitalist country, meaning that if there is capital to be made, someone will be there to make it. Conversely, if there was a 13% decline in sales of these negative representations of us, Capitalist businesspeople would think twice about producing it. So my question is this, "Why do you spend your money on things that denigrate you, your family and/or your people?"
Posted By: Dr. S. Maxwell Hines
Sunday, August 10th 2008 at 11:57PM
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I don't be buy that music or go to concerts that protray Blacks like that. I do not think I am the minority in this, it just appears that way since those that are making the music are selling a lot. I believe just the uninformed and unaware are buying this type of music.
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 12:20AM
Edith Pettaway
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Kenneth,
I agree that in many ways, my generation let yours down. We didn't pass on the history of our struggle because we believed that once the civil rights legislation passed, we would be treated equally. We didn't want to dwell on our past pain and didn't want to pass on our pain to our children. Little did we know that racism would take on another face. We also couldn't take the criticism associated with continually bringing up the inequities inherent in the structure of American society. We should take a lesson from the Jews who understand the importance of passing on the history, legacy and high expectations they have for themselves and their children. They understand that if they let people forget, it will happen again. We are learning this the hard way.
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 1:09AM
Dr. S. Maxwell Hines
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I agree with Kenneth X,
If you make a bed of nails, don't get mad when your kids are stick each other in the butt with the nails you gave them. In the 50s and 60s we were so concerned with fighting The Man and gaining acceptance as equals that we forgot to check-six. The original Rap Music was no more that Black CNN. These kids didn't/aren't making up ways to degrade...they are simply reporting the residual efforts of careless parenting in the 70s -to- date. The issue now is how to we re-learn them? How you we reshape norms? How do we unteach that it is better to go to jail than listen to the Man?
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 5:58PM
Dr. Ahmad Glover
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Kenneth, I'm not sure I agree with your earlier post. I have seen first hand that there's some truth in it.
I was born in the early 70s and am a product of the projects. My mother was way different though. She didn't do drugs, didn't allow her home to be a revolving door of men, and what she did do, I didn't know about until my 20s, which means that she partied some, but she was dang discreet about it.
She was hard on us, too. Mama didn't take no mess. We had to respect our elders, go to church, actively participate in church (extracurricular activities), represent well when we went somewhere, go to school, get good grades, clean up, do dishes, cook...the whole nine. My mama believed that it really does take a village to raise a child and she didn't protect us in our wrong. She always called us to the carpet and I remember many days about to get all my teeth knocked out and handed to me on the floor for even forming my face as IF I was going to talk back.
So...I was raised right. My mother and grandmother didn't play. Those sisters were serious. I'm sure I'm a productive citizen, educated sistah and a tough cookie myself because of it.
Blessings...
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 6:09PM
Dee Gray
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Oh, and I don't listen to the music and I certainly don't buy it. Once I found out what "Superman" was really talking about, I banned it from my house. It seemed innocent enough...no curse words or anything in the radio version...and it had a great beat and fun dance to it. I had no idea "supermannin" was a s*xual denegrative act. As a matter of fact, I found out when I was talkin' to some other sistahs in the beauty shop.
A few rapper are welcome...Will Smith, among other positive message rappers. ...not many more though.
Blessings...
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 6:12PM
Dee Gray
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Irma,
I if listed the norms for war culture, prison culture and hip-hop culture...you'd think they were from the same culture. NO ONE was minding the store and the kids ended up raising themselves. And as Mr. X warned..."now the chickens have come home to roost"/
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 6:35PM
Dr. Ahmad Glover
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Dr. Glover, I hear ya. My store was well-minded though, as were many of my other family members. We were definitely surrounded by chaos, but it didn't have to be the way you descrbed and wasn't that way for everyone.
One half of my family (cousins, etc.) "made it." And the other half cared not to. They are totally content with life as it is, and if they're not, they never give any indication of it.
It's also funny that the blogger mentions, "Treat Her Like a Lady." That is my JAM!!! ô And I love the music of that time. That's when they knew how to make music and woo a woman.
We went from "I'll Make Love to You" to "You Remind Me of a Jeep." !&$%&$##@#$@
Come ON. It's ridiculous.
Lyrics: You remind me of my jeep...I wanna ride it... ô WHAT???????????
And from "When a Man Loves a Woman" to "Superman" that wh==e! WHAT?????????
Will SOMEBODY please stop the madness????????
Blessings...
Blessings...
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 6:43PM
Dee Gray
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Irma, I will not only blame the 60's generation but all the generations before it. :) Nah, I see your point, Mother Robinson!
Monday, August 11th 2008 at 8:28PM
Kenneth X
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Kenneth, you're right. The breakdown of the community DID happen and there is absolutely no denying it.
I just think it has more to do with the more we advanced, the more we regressed...in parenting, in education, in earning what we have, in taking care of ourselves...in being mothered AND fathered. I really believe the more forward we go and the more the system tries to turn parenting into some cookie-cutter, unrealistic, ineffective and inefficient methodology, the farther downhill we're going to go.
And don't even get me started on the entitlement attitude of Gen Y...as if they really are doing it for themselves and by themselves...and as if all the success started with THEM...and as if millions of people didn't slave and die and fight for them to even be ABLE to GET educated and/or to have things we never began to have because of the times.
Please, don't let me go there, Lawd! Please! LOL.
Blessings...
Tuesday, August 12th 2008 at 12:13PM
Dee Gray
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One of the major regrets I have of my 60s generation is we ended up in White schools under the false impression that we wanted to go to White schools. That 'we" wanted to be any thing but proud to be Negro!!!!My generation said and put our lives on the line saying that we wanted the 'right' to go to a school in our negiborhood/ on the next block from our homes and not in the nearest Black only town spending hours on a school bus rides.
I regret that the "rights' that came from our movement included the rights to not have to listen to your school teachers, ministers, parents,or any form of constructive teachings for a better future past instant pleasure for long term pain!!!!! Lets not forget how a child can not play in front of there own homes in safety as in the 60s.
In the 60s we were so busy working our butts off after school we had no need for drugs or to fight for drug space. Back then we knew that we did not own not one brick or one window pane on any building or one deed on any property therefore we respected this fact. I never even saw so much as pot much less any thing harder than that. We did have corn liqupr but you were too 'afraid' of the grown ups to touch it....Now what were you saying about the 60s as you could not have been there as I was....
As more of us are dead, in nursing homes,etc. please try and look to your self then ask what have i done with my life for the next generation?Will they abuse the rights they were given as my generation did......
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
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Thank you for this blog Dr. Hines. I hope that an out look from those of the 60s from differnt points of views from those who were there wil go a little way to get our own young to stop looking at the whole of the Black race as not being made up of individuals. This I can take from main stream media but I refuse this from our own.
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
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Dr. Glover here is another out look on the 60s "Movement".ME, I was not fighting the "man" in the sense I assume that the man is spoken. I was marching for removing the Jim Crow , Seprate is Euqual, which had been over turned by Brown vs Board of EDucation!!!!!!I was fighting for the American Constution to be obeyed by our then White Only D.C. /Federal government!!!!!!!As this was THE MAN...
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
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Kenneth, all I am trying to do is to get you to realist the every Black person who show any kind fo "responponsability" in our community/to fight against the IDEA that what we did in the 60s began in the 60sis not telling you the truth.If we allow ourselves to no longer allow the mainstream media to educate us then you(we as a race of individuals)can take time to stop complaining and learn how we have been at this fight for EQUALITY/against Jim Crow every since the first African set foot on the American shores.
Dr. King was trying to get laws already ontthe books to be inforced . Laws like Brown vs Board of Education that was made law in May 17,57 which over turned the jim crow, Seprate is Equal . And, This was a follow up of the death of Emmit Tilll, and Ida B. Wells' fight against the governments not stopping us being hung /murdered at will by White people because of the color of our skin . Ask those like Michelle Obama why she was born in Chicago not in the deep south and it's relationship to Ida B Wells' fight with Congress. Yes, this great black woman did speak to Congress about the conditions of our people's suffering because of our own government's -White ONLY allowed!!!
Susan B Anthoney got a coin named after her, but Ida B. Wells did not. Wells was the person who argued in Congress agains Anthoney's trying to get the Constitution change and take away the Blalck male vote and give it to the White woman.
'Black Liberation Theology' demands was responsible for the first Black church in America. The slaves held the first sit in in America in protest at being forced to stand in Church. they wanted to be able to sit down during these hours and hours of church from those cotton fields! No, 100s of the slave generation(s),my generation just as your generation as the next and the next must carry on this in America. You as a responsible Black male are a Black Leader.
Kenneth X, all I ask is that you go back to when it was acceptable by our young to learn from their black elders, passing on our History verbally!!! And, this is all.to use the uncensored,bias education that has us :on drugs, violent, uneducated,ect. African-American being able to learn by reading and writting has been replaced by main stream media.........(now that it is LEGAL)even to listening to our own parents, our school teachersis now socially not accepted!!!!!!!!
Me, I can not spell with using a dictionary today because I did not listen to my 3rd grade teacher....please do not wait until you are in your 60s to realize these l-i-t-t-l-e things like YOU Kenneth is a Black leader. And, you did not have to wait for CNN to tell you this. All you have to do is believe one of your Black elder's life experience and countless others- BLACK IN AMERICA before mine in the 60s! As ,I know you can do....
Much lov and respect as our race's future is in you hand, Kenneth X!!!!!
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
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..One last thing Kenneth, those "villages" were not the villages in the President's wife's book. Our Black villages were based on Black culture. they were made safe because the teachers, the neighbors. the extended family had the right not to fear the law would arrest them of being our judge and jury when we did something to harm our VILLEGE" period!!!!! And, trust me our safe and secure villeges are still like this. As I say one more time listen to the verbal true Black in America . and I pray that you see your self as doing the same thing as Dr. King, Rosa Parks because they were only one person in one little town when they began this as soon as they learned what was going on verbally. Long before going to the Black ONly schools which they were lucky-blessed if they had heat during the winter....forget the used books and miles of walking to school no matter the weather...WAKE UP...Our children are still facing this today even thought one will not see this on CNN....our uniting on the site is leader ship. this new generation are using the www.high way to help today. this is not different that marching....thanks to this new generation. i am too old and tired to go back to the streets like they are doing in Canada. It is all about respect and equality then now and for as long as we have to fight for it...
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
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Thank you Kenneth X and since I am your "mother' who have no idea who your father is (smile)then this really goes back to African Culture!!! The mother (husband dead or alive)is the head of the house holdand because of the needs to survive, not because of what the Jones said or did.. As hunter -gathers the father may or may not come home with meat from the hunt. The mother, the gather, could always be counted on to have food for the family/village. There were always berry, fruit, roots,plants, etc. that were never out of season or out of reach; so was medicine from these also.
I am so honored with the Mother-elder out look Kenneth X, even more lov and respect to you, my young Black leader of your community.
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
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