Life caught up with me yesterday, hence by ability to provide you
with the much beloved, 20 Questions Fridays, on a Saturday.
1. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that hip hop has an impact on
how Black children treat each other, with regard to sex, tolerance
around sexuality and violence?
2. What if everything you had now, regarding material items,
was all you would have for the next five, ten years?
3. Are you in contact with the people who mentored you when
you were a teenager?
4. Why I still cheer the A's, even though I don't know any of the
players names?
5. Why is it so hard to turn off that "I should have said X to her"
voice?
6. What will it take for those who are employed to be concerned
with the fate of the semi and permanent unemployed?
7. Have you heard of the $5 slice of pizza?
8. Why isn't there an international youth movement?
9. Why stuffed mushrooms go so hard?
10. Why did I find a bar that has a bookshelf full of philosophy
books, California beers on tap, right in Brooklyn?
11. Why, in addition to having a beer, didn't President Obama
take a moment to facilitate a broader American conversation
on the interaction between the police and Black communities.
12. How come there is never enough money for all the artistic
project ideas I come up with?
13. Why three different people tell me that I be over thinking
stuff, yesterday?
14. What collective obligation do Black folks w/ degrees and
education have to Black folks who do not have the resources or
access to achieve these things?
15. Why did being a waitress force me to grow up (in ways I
am still seeing everyday)?
16. Why is white poverty invisible in mainstream media?
17. Why are teen sex workers treated as criminals, as opposed
to people who need social services and mental health assistance?
18. Why for the first time in my life, I have visited New York City
and the people, in some ways seem incapable of feeling?
19. Have you considered composting?
20. How will I be able to blog in the fall when I won't have anymore time?
You, of course, have answers.
15 comments:
1. it's not hard for me at all, considering i SEE how it has affected our kids. it's crazy. but for those that have a hard time? perhaps they'll have to take a look at what role THEY play into buying/producing the music that affects our kids in such ways.
3. i wasn't really mentored as a teen. it's was basically my momma & grandmother who kept me in line.
6. when they're threatened w/ losing their gig. and sometimes not even then. i was so put out w/ my union (UTLA) because i felt like they didn't really care about us newbies that were on the chopping block. they were looking out for themselves & didn't want to take ONE furlough day, that would have saved us all. some of my coworkers are still on ice & hoping the district will rescind their pink slips.
14. i dunno. isn't that always the debate? what obligation do middle class/upper middle class blacks have to "the community"? i give back through my job, but some people are so disconnected. why is it that blacks/minorities are told to 'give back' but upper class whites don't have to do ish about poor white folks?
16. honestly, i've yet to meet a POOR white person. i know they exist (read about 'em lol), but have yet to come across one who was struggling (that wasn't homeless and/or drug addicted). LA is so segregated.
20. you'll stay up all night. lol
http://nahright.com/news/2009/08/02/video-ghostface-killah-on-wife-ing-hoes/
I haven't been on here in a minute...I thought you might be interested in this conversation with Ghost and Angela Yee.
1. Beats me, but I see the evidence regularly in how many of us behave, the phrases we use, and some of our actions.
3. I am.
8. There are number of organizations that connects the youth throughout the world, ok, but not a large-scale effort.
11. It would have been great if he did, but I thought his statement and eventual meeting was grand.
13. Maybe they're not thinking enough?
16. America eats its young. They're usually visible during presidential elections.
17. Maybe the latter is less expensive, although I know it cost a lot to keep one person imprisoned.
1. Because that would require an admission that the thrills may be damaging, which would force a choice between them and acting in the best interest of the children.
.
2. Why not -- it's been pretty much like that for the last 5 years and I'm good with it.
.
3. A few of them. Some no. Some have passed (I'm 57 y/o).
.
4. You used to know the players' names?!?!? Prolly a holdover from the days when players stayed put and we chose a team to support instead of portable stars.
.
5. So you’ll know that next time you’ll have a good answer.
a. Down: Because you feel like you “lost” somehow and a wounded pride wants restoration. (Better to drop the pride, tho)
b. Up: There is that in us that yearns to be our best and failures identify places to improve -- once identified, we want to grow remedy the deficiency
.
6. A combination of love for others and a sense of sufficiency for one's own needs. Also, getting past the untruth that material stuff indicates your value -- like in "The Story of Stuff" video you embedded 5.29.09 -- so you won't want to misuse your material blessings in an attempt to set you above other people. Or you could revisit the parable of the talents, recognizing that the Master's work is to love/help others.
7. No -- but now I want to try it! Do they deliver to SoCal?
8. There is one -- I'll email you.
9. Dunno. Mushrooms to me are tasteless but harmless additions to real food.
10. Because you'd be interested in finding it.
11. Wish he had. I want to believe that he felt that this potato already was too hot that week and some cooling-down was needed before having a real conversation about it.
12. The answer is in the adjective: artistic. There's always enough money for successful *commercial* projects b/c they create monetizable value that results in money coming back to you. Artistic projects, by their definition, exist outside the monetary system and depend upon money coming to you from sources that do not receive monetizable value from you.
.
13. Only 3? How many people did you talk with who did not tell you that?
14. (See #6)
.
15.
a. Hard work for the money can bring similar insights as other hard experiences like crises, incarceration, war, or anything that forces you to look at your perspective and values.
b. Having a large cross-section of humanity pass by closely every day causes rapid-fire confrontations with your assumptions and stereotypes about different kinds of people -- and quick reconciliations with them as you have to give good service out of integrity and out of a desire for a large (monetary, not artistic) tip
b2. This is magnified as representatives of different groups show/don't show gratitude for your service (nonmonetary).
.
16. No foolin'! Maybe because the networks have dialed-in the focus groups' responses about how they want to see the world and whites' role is to be privileged and powerful.
.
But thank you for this observation. I attended a convocation for my step son's program at a state university. The program was to help new students have a successful start in their college careers. Good program and evening, but I wondered why out of 700 people in the room, was I the only white one. Were there no white kids who needed help? Were there no white faculty who could help any of the kids?
.
17. We still favor the punitive model over the rehabilitative one
a. Cheaper – more money in our pockets
b. We escape responsibility to help (See #6 again).
Why did you limit your question to teenagers instead of including all sex workers – or all criminals?
.
18. Dunno, last time I was in NYC was a couple months after 9-11 and I was surprised then by how feeling everyone was in contrast to the coldness I’d in my earlier visits.
19. Do you mean beyond the corpus of my blog postings?
20. How have you been able to blog so far? You put out so much in the couple years I’ve been reading here that I’ve wondered whether you’d hired someone to live your real life while you blogged about it.
@Manaen
Can't believe you answered so many.
You are reall funny. Composting = Posting.
"The answer is in the adjective: artistic....Artistic projects, by their definition, exist outside the monetary system and depend upon money coming to you from sources that do not receive monetizable value from you."
Thank you. I needed to see this.
5. So you’ll know that next time you’ll have a good answer.
a. Down: Because you feel like you “lost” somehow and a wounded pride wants restoration. (Better to drop the pride, tho)
==========
My pride is my friend.
Hard to let it go.
@TPW
Really. No poor white folks?
Wow.
Ummm. Re- Elite whites and poor whites. White folks have their whiteness, which is worth Money.
Re-Black folks. We decided to pursue individual gain, rather than community benefits. That, my dear, is the rub.
@Gigga,
Thanks for stopping by. However, Ghost's misogyny, umm, I have to be in the mood for that, and lately I haven't been at all. Its hard to check for rappers when they they we are all Ho's, even though given Ghost's poetics, he is one of the more creative ones.
@Gigga,
Thanks for stopping by. However, Ghost's misogyny, umm, I have to be in the mood for that, and lately I haven't been at all. Its hard to check for rappers when they they we are all Ho's, even though given Ghost's poetics, he is one of the more creative ones.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I hear you and I can understand why you might feel that way. But under all the mysogynistic overtones I think duke has some valid points. Men and women aren't equal on that sexual prowess type stuff. I know saying that in this forum is basically like pouring gasoline on myself...but whatever though.
IMHO, any woman that feels she should sleep around like a dude is buggin.
Listen here homie.
It ain't like pouring gas on yaself, because
peep game, I ride with my allies, if you want to talk and dialogue, AND learn, than I can ride with that.
Internet beefin. No Way. Honestly, I am on a mission to change the world.
Arguing with men about how judging how whether
women fucking mad dudes, makes her a ho' is
not worth my time, energy or Love.
If you want to change, I am a change agent.
If you want to remain the same, more power to you.
IMHO, any woman that feels she should sleep around like a dude is buggin.
-------------------
And -- speaking of "should" -- should the dude be sleeping around?
(sent last prematurely)
.
Please don't disrespect us men by having a lower standard for us -- you enable our disablization when you do.
"16. No foolin'! Maybe because the networks have dialed-in the focus groups' responses about how they want to see the world and whites' role is to be privileged and powerful."
This idea, combined with what Ta-Nehisi Coates has been talking about lately regarding the civil war and white southern notions of aristocracy defined and maintained through black enslavement, has my synapses firing.
(For those who don't read his blog, he breaks it down to the observation that while there were poor white folks in the south back then, they were always told by the land owners that they were a class better than the slaves they saw around them. Even a poor farmer could be noble when he at least had his freedom. If they lost slavery, they lost nobility demonstrated through the contrast it created.)
It seems like a power structure that holds white folks on high would be hurt by admitting that poverty hits them, too. Image isn't everything, but it's a lot. I'm thinking about newspaper articles with white executives ready to bounce back from the minor inconvenience of temporary unemployment. ("Hey, it gives me time to learn how to paint!")
If my suspicion is correct and the connection is there between old southern nobility and the current way power is expressed and maintained, that just added another dimension to this system that I have to contend with. Dammit.
Dylan,
This notion of whiteness being valuable is related
to W.E.B's notion of the white psyhological wage,
which is the wage that white folks receive just by virtue of their skin, nothing more.
There are some of us in the Hip hop community who think that the Gangsta, Thug, Ho adds to the psychological wage that unenlightend young white youth receive.
There is in fact a connection between old southern nobility and the current way power is expressed. It is ROOTED in it. Peep Cheryl Harris's Whiteness as Property. Will.Blow.Your.Mind.
Just discovered your blog from over at Field's. Sorry for being late to the game.
I got an answer for this one:
"13. Why three different people tell me that I be over thinking
stuff, yesterday?"
You're not over thinking...they are just under thinking.
You are an artist, which means you notice things other people probably can't even see. I imagine you are the type of artist who gets an idea in your head and won't let go of it until you covey it through your artistic medium exactly the way it is in your mind- every nuance, texture and contour of the idea has got to be perfect.
Most people ain't like that. They under think stuff.
Although you can't tell from my blog, I am the same way when it comes to writing. My blog is where I go to let things flow out without being concerned about getting it down just right.
Yesterday, however, I spent 6 hours on a single paragraph of my dissertation. And it isn't because I'm an idiot either. I had a precise thought I needed to express, but I had to find just the right structure, form and flow so that the my words would contain an inchoate subtext of pre-verbal emotion that was essential to conveying the idea.
I been accused of overthinking stuff too.
It's a good way to be.
Elian.
Big {TEEF} Smile.
Thank you for stopping by and commenting.
Wachu studying?
There is one hellraising of a blog you have there.
The whole time I was just reading it "I was like... does
this person clearly has passion, do they have theory, do they have a vision?"
~m.
Some people prefer not to ask themselves such questions at all
Geneza Pharmaceuticals
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