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Hip Hop Isn’t That Political After All: Part I.

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Hip Hop isn’t that political after all.

You may think that its political, but guess what? It’s just music.

Those of us who ARE into “political” hip hop are not learning
anything new from the music that we listen to. If anything
it affirms what we already know. It’s confirms our existence
by reminding us that, while we aren’t the most mainstream of cats,
there are folks, artist, that think like us as well.

Dead Prez.
De La.
Mos.
The Roots.

In fact, hip hop is so apolitical that Kanye saying
“George Bush doesn’t care about Black people“
constitutes BEING political.

How can that be?
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Yes, he was speaking from his heart.
Yes, he had a lot to loose.

But BEING political.

The Montgomery Bus Boycotts were political.
The Freedom Rides were political.
The Abolition Movement was politcal.

Hip Hop, while it has ton’s of potential,
while it has a global impact, while it allows people
to unite who would never
be in the same room together is, as we stand today,
is JUST music.

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I mentioned this idea a week or so ago
to Filthy and promised that I would write
about it.

So, here we go.

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When Did Being Smart Become Acting White?

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The first thing that struck me when I walked into my
into my college prep high school was the
smell. It smelled of new paint, new carpet and
new books.

Books so new that they had never been used yet.

In fact, I stopped by there last August
and it still retained that new school smell. Creepy.

The public middle school that I came from?
There wasn’t anything particularly NEW about it.

The biggest difference between the schools were the money
spent on each student and the students attitudes towards learning.

Regarding the cost difference, the public school was “free”,
but we all know nothing is free. The prep school was $10K/year.

Regarding the students, there was a mixed bag.
Some dudes, came to play, get at girls, and the young ladies did the
same. Others guys came to both learn and socialize as well.
And then there were some known d-boys just passing the day
by until the could grind when the sun went down.

Now that I think about it, it was kind of bugged out to be in
middle school, with cats that were known to sell cracks,
but then again, thats Oakland/Chicago/Philly/Newark/DC….

I thought of this contrast in experience when I read the new
Will Okun post where he discusses being a teacher
and the frustrations that go with the territory.

Full disclosure. Will reached out this morning and requested
feedback on his post. I started writing an e-mail response
and before I knew it, I realized that it was way too long,
and that it would be a better blog post instead.

He used Dead Prez’s song, “They Schools”, to
illustrate his point.

Will goes on to quote a veteran teacher speaking
on what it feels like to teach middle schoolers.
She states,

?We are not teaching them about their lives or their communities because it is not in the curriculum. Instruction is driven by standardized testing. Based on that, a tailored levitra cialis viagra treatment module will be devised. They seem to understand thattrue beauty comes from within. india tadalafil All kinds of erectile dysfunctions, viagra without prescription https://pdxcommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/149-N-Holly-St-Canby-Flyer.pdf short time ejaculation and loss of stamina and vigor. It seems that impotency cheap soft cialis has become a popular name in the world of erectile dysfunction medicine. We are teaching testing, not knowledge. No one hears these kids, nor do we try. There is absolutely no respect for these students. These middle schools are like prisons where the spirits of our children are slowly crushed, and I have been an unwilling participant in the destruction of young lives. Simply being witness and not speaking out daily makes me feel the soulful guilt of a thief,?.

Almost every school that I have been in since high
school has been small- 350 to 450 students.

(In fact, that probably underscores why law school, which
was approximately 1500 people, was so difficult for me).

My experience in small school settings has taught me that
only when the school is small, will the transformative, soul bending
learning that needs to take place, actually occur.

I don’t cosign on the notion that children can’t learn
in environments where there are 1499 other students.

I just know that it is a formidable and damn near impossible.

I also know that public–urban–education
isn’t designed to create critical thinkers.

People say, kids need to learn, “In my day…I walked
ten miles…blar, blar blar.” I always respond to those statements
with, “If it were YOUR daughter in that school, what would you do?”

In fact, I have often wondered what schools would
be like if state or federal charters required that teachers and
administrators to live in the cities that they taught? What if
they were required to enroll their children in public school system
in which they worked as well?

Can we say “skin in the game“?

Black teachers and administrators had skin in the game
prior to integration. (The other side of That coin is the seperate
but equal learning that was taking place, damned if you do…)
I always think of this when people talk about our fear of
being told that we are “acting white” if we are high
achieving. Prior to integration, there was no one saying that
“being smart was acting white”. There were no (or few if
any at all) white students in our schools for us to be compared to.

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Skin in the game and educational systems.

Acting white as a consequence of integration?

Nice combo, eh?

Oh, and I REALLY like the phrase “soul bending learning.”

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Saying Sexism is Worse than Racism is Like Saying Chattel Slavery is Worse than the Holocaust

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I will never forget being in undergrad when we were
reading Beloved.

Someone began drawing a parallel
between Chattel Slavery and the Holocaust.

Our professor responded cautioning us against making
that comparison saying that the risk in comparing my
unjust pain to your unjust pain only serves to undermine
what both groups of people suffered.

She went on to emphasize that ultimately, this line of
thinking isn’t productive. I have been thinking of this
incident every sense I saw droves of white women and
Black women with Hillary ’08 t-shirts on Election day.
I thought, it’s one thing to vote for her
its another to be running around with the T-shirt on.

I soon rethought that standpoint.

I am a news junkie, so I have been following the media’s
coverage of how the public is viewing this election.

I don’t think as a woman that I should be expected to vote for
Hillary, or that as a Black person, I should be expected
to vote for Obama.

That entire line of thinking is racist because white
people are never questioned on whether they are
going to vote for one candidate or the other because
they are WHITE like said candidate.

Maureen O’Dowd wrote recently asked the question, who is
the bigger boogie man, Racism or Sexism. Personally, I
collapse the two, which makes for easy and interesting
conversations.

Elaine Sirkis, 77, an Obama supporter, confided that
she just isn?t sure she?s ready for a woman president.
Betty Conway, 83, a Hillary supporter, confided that
she just isn?t sure she?s ready for a black president.

As Conway walked away, Sirkis smiled sheepishly. ?I?m sorry,? she told Berman sweetly about her friend. ?She?s a bigot.?

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It?s not yet clear which prejudice will infect the presidential contest more ? misogyny or racism.

Nowhere in this article is that fact that the ism’s tend
 to travel in package, intertwined and codependent.

My issues with Hillary largely stem from the fact that
she made a Faustian deal in tolerating her husbands philandering
in exchange for a chance at the white house.
I understand that all politicians make deals, and this was hers.
 I also understand that we all have our demons, yours truly
included, so I hesitate to point a finger at her, without turning
a mirror on myself. That being said, it was truly out of pocket to hear
this horrible joke repeated in O’Dowds column about her.

The joke goes: ?Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it?s not fair, because they?re being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there?s no White Bitch Month.?

The joke undermines what Obama has achieved, Black history
and how it has historically been marginalized in this country
and IT is is downright hostile and verbally violent
towards Hillary.

It reminded me of an incident a month ago, where a white
person made a comment to me about
“those butch looking women” that she see’s in the hallway.

I responded, poker faced and changed the subject
as it was neither the time or place to say something.

I did make a mental note to view the person as someone
who wouldn’t be beyond calling me that black b-tch when
I wasn’t around.

My rationale is that if you talk about one group
then it is likely that you will talk about another.

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How do you deal with people when they casually
say outta pocket shit about brown folks?

Haitians? Lesbians? Country Folks? Black men? Hillary? Obama?

Model minorities in general?

Why do people like to have “who has it worse” discussions?

Its as if the election has unleashed folks willingness
 to say sh-t that they would normally leave in the
privacy of their homes.

So much for “Post Racial America”.

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Domestic Violence: What Would You Do?

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I hate the term domestic violence.

Domestic serves to modify and soften the word violence.
It seeks to make it a less threating more acceptable
kind of violence. And thats a problem.

Think about this fact.
42% of women murdered in this country, are
killed by lovers, partners spouses. This means that
by and large, we get killed by men that we love, men
that we are intimate with.
(I am not sure of the statistics of
women who are killed by their female partners,
but the rate of women killed by their male partners
is currently tracked, so I will go with it for now).

Now me and this dude go hard, he’s family,
So if he says, “Yo, you been picking at me”,
I knew he was serious.

It all stems from a conversation last week where he
mentioned that he had to break up
a fight between a dude and a girl. He went on to say
that if he see’s a dude that is clearly bigger,
and hitting on a woman, he is going to do something.

I responded saying, I believe that if you
are violent You Are Violent, and if you aren’t violent
then you aren’t. This, “I don’t hit girls sh-t” is
for the birds.

Looking back. My answer was too theoretical
and apparently didn’t fly with his version of
hood reality.

Earlier today, he mentioned that my response didn’t make
sense. He went on to say that after he played his role
and tried to break up the fight and left, the dude punched
the girl in her neck. She was taken to the hospital
for that injury and also because she drank to much.

He was angry at me because I said that it wasn’t his role to
get in the middle.

My position was that you are either for violence or against it.
This ” I don’t hit girls sh-t ” was some outta-pocket hair
splitting.

That ain’t cut the mustard with him.

m.dot:”What happens when you get in it to defend the
girl and the dude comes at you?”

dig dug: “In that case, they weren’t gonna come at me.
They know me and they know that I will go bad on them”.

m.dot: “I forgot that you have a thick is invincibility
strand”. He remains quiet.

I cleaned up my previous statement and said, alright blood,
I should have said that these situations should be judged on
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shown me that you can come in between a man and a woman
and in trying to defend her she starts attacking you,
presumable for hitting her man.

I acknowledged that there is no easy solution to those situations.

dig dug: Yeah, you right about the case by case basis too.

me: Yeah. I should have said that last week. Plus. I think
that the “don’t hit girls thinking is dangerous because what
stops a person from saying that YOU CAN DO SOMETHING
to a girl BECAUSE she is female”.

He acknowledges what I said with a pause, he doesn’t
outright agree with me. I sensed that he knows that I have
a point, but he is going to continue to stick to his Gemini guns
because he can’t help it.

dig dug: Plus, I know you different form me, you a liberal.
m.dot: What, I’m a liberal, then what are you then?
dig dug: I ain’t no liberal. You probably gonna vote for Hillary Clinton.
I bet you was in Berkeley last week protesting the Marines.
me: ***Cracking up laughing. What. Why you say that? You
are so scandalous. Did you find out your voting eligibility?
Who you voting for?
dig dug: The old dude, the grandpa.
me: McCain? Why?
dig dug: Because he a grandpa, he deserve to win.
me: ***shakes my head, but I am happy the argument is deescalated.

The bugged out thing, is that if I ever got myself into a squabble,
dig dug would be the first person I called because I KNOW he is
that thorough.

That was a hard conversation y’all.

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Do you intervene if you see a man putting
his hands on a woman?

Does it matter if you know them?

Would you intervene if they were strangers?

Why or why not?

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I Just Wanna Be Your Friend and Not Ya’ Man. ~Big Pooh

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This time last week I was a complete puddle.

Thursday before last, SJ decided to finalize the
status and make us just friends. I was devastated,
not because it happened, but how it happened.
At the time there was no room for discussion.

It was just ended. In my head I thought I could
lose the relationship, I just didn’t want to lose my friend.

At the end of something, its easy to look around
you and see reminders of the person everywhere.
You know how you walk past
certain streets or stores, and you think about
a person? That is exactly what happened to me
last Friday.

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spirit wasn’t right and that I needed all the extra help
that I could get.

I passed the corner where I spoke to SJ after my
first temp interview, then I saw the bank where I deposited
my first temp check. Over there was the corner where
I called him and ranted about the OTHER Black girl that
was trying to hate on me to the investment bankers.
There was the Staples where I made copies of
Michael Datcher’s book and sent them to him.

Everywhere I turned there was a reminder…. to be cont….

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What did you do to get yourself out of your last slump?

How long did it last?


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