Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times, The Huffington Post. It seems that no matter where you go, you will see protests from all around the country with one thing in common; A group of angry looking black people. In fact if you were to listen to the latest Hip Hop tracks or turn on BET late night and watch their discussion panels you would hear genuine indignation. Hell, the Civil Rights leaders of 50 years ago sounded just as angry as the people who get five second clips on KCCI or WHO. So why are they all so mad?
The day after Martin Luther King died, a third-grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa did an interesting experiment with her class. She decided to divide the children into two parts; the blue-eyed kids and the brown-eyed kids. The blue eyed kids were deemed inferior. They were taught about all of the contributions brown-eyed people had made to society, and that this made them smarter. She harshly reprimanded the blue-eyed kids, treated them as deviants, made them wait last in line, made them sit in the back of the class, took away five minutes of recess, and even wouldn't let them use the new jungle gym. At first the blue-eyed kids would resist, but soon they became reserved and timid. They isolated themselves from the rest of the class, began to behave badly, and scored lower on tests. While the brown-eyed kids became arrogant, aggressive, and performed better. After the week was up they all wrote their reactions to the exercise. Some of the kids with blue eyes said that the treatment made them sad, hurt their feelings, made them feel confused. Others said that they couldn't make kids understand that they couldn't control what color their eyes were, and that they really were the same as them. However, the most ubiquitous reaction was, of course, anger. Now imagine growing up in a school and being treated like a blue-eyed kid, but change one thing; you were treated like that every day for the rest of your life. This is, unfortunately for many black people, an everyday experience. You feel as if you don't fit in, that you are inferior, treated as if you don't belong somewhere. All it takes is one or two uneasy glances to make your palms start to sweat, for your heart start to race, for your mind to go a million places at once. Even worse is asking yourself everyday "Did this happen because I'm black, or did it just happen?" Imagine living in a community with astronomical unemployment, and the jobs that are available pay like shit and are even shittier to actually work for. Because of the economic strife, crime rates are high and you can't walk down the street, go to a gas station, or even sit on the stoop in fear of somebody choosing you to be the victim so that they can buy a meal at the end of the day. The police treat you like an animal, the court shows no mercy, the government is either deaf or doesn't care, your fellow people are killing each other or selling each other poison, the schools tell you you're stupid, you can't pay the bills, and God forbid you come down with something that requires a doctor's visit. Doctor King once said "As long as the negro lives every day in a major [economic] depression then every city will be sitting on a powder keg waiting to explode over the slightest incident." In Ferguson it wasn't the slightest incident, it was the death of an unarmed citizen. As it was in New York. As it was in Cleveland. In Iowa City it was an unannounced KKK statue sitting on the pentacrest that put change in motion on campus. What makes it unbearable though, is that nobody else gets it. Tweets like "The only thing that matters is your character and how hard you work. Nobody gets victimized because of the color of their skin." Has anybody ever told you that what you were angry about was stupid? Take that feeling and magnify it by infinity (I know math nerds bear with me). Its one thing to not understand, its another to tell a black person that they don't know what it's like to be black. And that is why black people are so angry. -515
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We take it for granted nearly every day of our lives, yet it has the power to shape every single aspect about ourselves.
IT is, of course, your community. An African proverb says "It takes a village to raise a child", well I believe that it takes a village to raise a village. (It made sense in my head before I typed it). We've always known this in our hearts. Its why we feel a special ping in your heart when you come home and see the school which you walked through, the parks that you used to play at, your favorite small restaurant. I know that personally just driving and seeing the old buildings that you used to take for granted as they passed by gives me a warm feeling. What is it about where we grow up that make us feel complete when we return at long last? Like our parents, every experience we have with our community carves out a new piece out of us. It's why kids from Minnesota are so good at hockey, while kids who grow up in southern California are good at math. Every one of us is a product of our environment. Which is why I believe that the greatest gift you can give around this time of year is to do something, anything, to improve your community. The kids who grow up and are shaped by your community are stuck with what they've got, its only right that we all do our best to make sure every kid has a community that at the very least raises kids to believe that they are special and deserve the world. Let me give you an example. My step-father's family grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Both the white and black families were relatively poor, even today the median household there earns well below-average. There is something remarkable about Clarksdale though, in that almost every student that grows up there goes to college. Not only that, but every adult I know that grew up there has a good paying and steady job, doesn't struggle with drugs or alcohol, and has a healthy family life. When I talked to my uncle he told me about how tight his community was. Everybody leaned on each other. The women in the church would get together to find out how to provide childcare, or rides to activities. They would cook for each other, go to blues festivals, gather together at football games every Friday night. But most of all they looked out for their fellow neighbors. So at the very least, these holidays, make a promise to yourself to start looking out for your community. It can be attending a town hall, donating old clothes, or even offering a neighbor kid with help on his physics homework (or maybe something easier like geography). Give a kid a toy and they may play for a few years. Give a kid a community and they may prosper for the remainder of their life. Happy Holidays everybody -515 One day Hip-Hop music may go down as one of the most successful art forms ever created. Think about it. In just 30 short years Hip-Hop music and the ensuing culture has become one of the most influential and widely discussed forms of expression ever. From Run DMC, to NWA, Tupac, Biggie, NAS, Wu-Tang, up to Jay Z, Kanye, Eminem, and even Kendrick, Drake, and J Cole, Hip-Hop artists have been under both massive scrutiny, and held up to enormous idolization. Which leads us to the question; does Hip-Hop degrade society?
Many people think so. Or at least, that Hip-Hop music doesn't add value to society. We as Americans have watched many rappers grow to fame by rapping about wealth, fame, sex, drugs, alcohol, crime, and violence. 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne, Migos, and most recently Bobby Shmurda have made their living by appealing to the most base aspects of the world. Rappers like these glorify prison culture, violence, and materialism. Doctor Boyce Watkins, a self made academic who is widely respected by the black community, argues that rap music preaches 7 commandments to those who listen to it. 1) Never respect or value women 2) Money and material wealth reign supreme over education, security, loyalty, and love. 3) Chase money immediately and always put the pursuit of money over all else 4) Masculinity is defined by your ability to be violent 5) Alcohol and drugs are glamorous and are should be abused 6) Society is patriarchal 7) Sounding educated or "white" is lame, wrong, uncool, etc. Watkins argues that as rap music glorifies prison, black on black violence, alcohol/drugs, misogyny, homophobia, and ignorance, the stereotypes that exist for black males are going to continue to exist and be used as justification for the subjugation of a whole race. For example, how many people have you heard blame black youths for the choices they make pertaining to culture? "They need to pull their pants up" "They sound ignorant" "If they'd stop pushing drugs, stop shooting each other, go to school [fill in any other stereotype] they'd be better off" "All they want to do now a days is shake their ass." I could go on forever. Hip-Hop not only allows black people to be negatively stereotyped, it also glorifies and entrenches the aspects of life that have arisen from centuries of subjugation deeper into our culture. I would argue something different. First of all, to blame hip-hop for giving people a reason to negatively stereotype black people is to ignore history. American society has been skeptical of the humanity of black people literally since the founding of our country (see the 3/5 compromise). Second of all, since the 80's and hip-hop's birth, crime rates have dropped significantly. Third, hip-hop did not create the problems that black people face, rap music only serves to express what life is like for the most distressed people not only in our country, but increasingly globally. Furthermore, what about the sheer artistic value that Hip-Hop brings? My 12th grade AP teacher would be amazed at the complex system of enjambment, rhyme scheme, personification, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, meter, allusion, consonance, and assonance that hip-hop contains. And that is before you explore the musical beauty of the rhyme flow and the beats that artists rap over. How can this music be viewed as the "ignorant genre" when it takes rhetorical, lyrical, and oratorical genius to be successful? I was watching a debate hosted by google+ when an Oxford English professor said that "In twenty or thirty years Tupac Shakur will be considered as great a poet as Walt Whitman." And what about the voice for the oppressed? Hip-Hop is the most democratic thing we have in America. Rap music is one of the most successful ways that the poor, the degraded, the subjugated, and the discriminated have been able to make their voice heard. Hip-Hop culture, and I mean the dress, the dancing, the language, the visual art, as well as the music has been the most successful counter-culture in the history of our country. A whole generation of young adults has grown up in a culture that challenges the many notions taken for granted by those who supersede them. Yes, a lot of hip-hop is sexist, misogynist, homophobic, violent, materialistic, and nihilistic. However, hip-hop is very diverse, and to attach that label to all rappers is simply unfair, especially when it is the cancer of over capitalism that created the commercialized crap that gets on our radios. Rap also does not exist in a vacuum. It was created and continues to exist in a very specific context. The problems that persist in rap music are not the products of the music, but of the conditions that gave birth to it. To attack hip-hop is not to attack the music, but to attack the culture of an increasingly diverse community of listeners. Hip-Hop most definitely does not degrade society. But if people aren't careful, it may give a sound to social change. -515 It was ominous, creepy, chilling. After a night where hundreds of students protested in solidarity with African-Americans all around the country, the students of the University of Iowa woke up to a seven foot statue in the shape of a Ku Klux Klan member. The statue was supposed to be a form of protest, it was made of newspaper killings criticizing violence against blacks from the past. However that was lost on most students; many saw the statue as a threat, or warning. After 6 hours of a social media firestorm and hundreds of angry and confused students the University of Iowa finally decided to ask the artist to take the statue down. This lead to a domino effect of further bad decisions of the part of the University.
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October 2018
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