Noose.

Are black people hanging themselves. By black people, I do not mean the ones out speaking for Black people. Thankfully they are exempt from this generalization, I'm speaking on the average black dude or homegirl. Are we hanging ourselves? Has the unflux of hip-hop culture been us slowly tightening the noose around our on necks? I look at the supposed evolution of hip-hop fro the 80's to the culture today and I see a bunch of blinged out coons, tapdancing on stage for a little change. I see the images of Birth of a Nation brought forth in real time and streamed for all audience to see. The internet provides a global stage for todays supposed "Black Culture" to poisen the minds of everyone. To create a universal disdain and, more importantly, a universal image of African Americans. There is a currently a debate going on BET (....) between scholars and 'conscious' blacks and with the rappers as well, who have milked this image to fatten their owners pockets. It was an interesting debate but the ignorance and routine statements by the rappers seem to generate more applause from the audience then the actual educated statements made by some of the more educated on the panel. I am one who follows of the path of criticism as a means to, hopefully, spur change. I criticize Black people pretty often because I know there is so much. If we could only stop willingly tieing the rope for ourselves and seperate ourselves from the rope then we can hope to move forward. At this point control no longer needs to be overt. We have a self governing way of dealing with issues and that is through ridicule and beating each other down. We only look to pick each other up when we are knocked down as a group. Why must it wait for that moment? Every other culture seems to understand the value of oneness and togetherness, why not us? Hasn't the shackles of slavery held us back for too long.

.......I never like to say slavery should be forgotten and we should move forward. I am complelty aware of the damage slavery had on the Black pshcye and I do see us moving in the right direction soon but right now we are still learning how to deal with freedoms and understanding responsibilies. In describing Black people, I think we are in our teenage years, we exagerrate alot, we are very materialistic, seemingly hard to please, we want to be left alone but still need the strength our parents provide, we are confused at the prospect growing in though it is a definite, we are in constant of defining ourselves, and most importantly we need to grow without the shackles of our parents. Mistakes will be made but that all leads to growth. But I guess moving is better then stagnating, I'm just afraid we might begin to stagnate because Black culture is almost definitly infused with hip-hop when it should not be.

Britney

First off I want to say that I hate Britney Spears. Now that the formailities have been taken care of, I would like to start by pointing an angry finger in the direction of our media. BRitney Spears is not headline news. I know this is over weeks old at this point but I was watching the news yesterday and there was a Britney bit in it and I was pushed over the edge. There is no reason her performance should occupy the attention of the nation. I have such a disdain for television as a result of the antics of Lindsey, Paris, Nicole, and Britney. They are everywhere I want to be. The lives of these bitches are grounds for intelligent interesting American conversation... But what I wanted to say specifically was that Britney Spears introduction into the music scene came at a time when the girls of my generation were teens. They have all grown with her. And i truly believe American women have grown up LIKE her. They lost there innocence and followed the timeline of Britney like stupid sheep and to me, her disgusting behavior parallels the majority of American women my age now. She is exactly the same as them. And I dunno if its an unconscious connection the girls of my generation have with Britney or what but I think its there. She came at a perfect moment in their lives to implant her sickness in all of them and as she started to bloom, so did her followers. Now the image of have is Briteny is mached with Images of American women in college. Most of them speak the same, dress the same, make the same mistakes, and think the same. I do not know why Americans idolize the destructive. Is it because of our film industry and how important movies have been to generating interest in anything. Americans have always been a film culture but has movies warped the minds of Americans. I move from Britney to film because I feel that a lot of the themes of music and the videos surrounding music stems from a film or film culture. Celebrity is a phenomenon I had never actually thought about until my senior year high school, when R-kelly was all over the place for having intimate relations with a little girl. I started having conversation with teachers about his behavior and class discussions would be held and his crisis would be the center of it. I didn't like the shift from books to tabloid gossip and I definitly do not like present day media situation. Britney Spears being the headline of every major news station in the nation is travesty. People need to turn the TV off. Stop buying the newspapers with that garbage as the headline. Force the media to shift. If they see that people will eat this crap up then they will keep serving you crap. And WORST OF ALL, they will keep feeding you the dumbest stories each time. The American Media at the very bottomline is a business and it has one real goal, money. Informing the people about meaningful topic is no longer financially viable but if it was then they would make the shift. But the people need to make the first step...show the powers that your not dumb...Force them to give you something that educates you and is useful to you...for your own sake...

AHmadinejad

I was lucky that at the exact time the Iranian president was being introduced I was in a place to witness it. His speech says a lot about this country that many other countries just cannot say. To allow a university to openly invite the president of a country that has been deemed member of the axis of evil speaks volumes on the importance of allowing an open dialogue between potentially warring nations. However, if someone of this importance is speaking ears need to be perked and ready to take everything in. Free speech is only as poignant as the ears hearing it. If you are speaking to a crowd that already deems you a threat and hates you, then the speech gets lost and unforutnately dwindled down to an exerpt in the next days papers. AHmadinejad was very well composed and delivered his speech with dignity. He even made a hilarious joke at the end. He seemed at ease for the duration with the exception of the question of Iranian homosexuals being execution to which he accused homosexuality as being a western phenomenon that Iran did not have to worry about. People need to understand how grand of a gesture it was for AHmadinejad to accept COlumbia invitation and educate the students on Irans policy. I believe because his back was against the wall from the onset, in terms of, thepublic outcry, and the cheering for an incredibily disrecpectful Columbia Universty president. I can appreciate direct questioning but he was implanting a bias using the tired and done rhetoric of the United States government in his questioning. What people are praising as strength and courage I see as flagrant and disrespectful behaviour. If your going to invite him to speak, Columbia University, then allow him to speak. Some of his most poignant points were being cut short by the moderator or was lost in translation because of the bumbling translator, ESPECIALLY when it came to his feelings on Israel. The crowd showed blatant, yet typical, American disregard for authority as booing and such were skattered throughout the speech. I honestly feel that the world fears a man who should not be feared.
One of the things he mentioned and was interogatted about during the Q&A was his statements of the holocaust. He stated that, for one, the holocuast is a true and historical fact. Two, like any other event in history the Holocaust should be broken down and analyzed to tireless detail. As a student in Academia is see no problem with him saying that there should be more studies on the holocaust. Why not? And his third point was what did the Holocaust have to do with Palestine, the malnourished fetus baking in the womb of the Middle East. Palestinians have been abused for such a LOOOOOOOONG time, why is nothing ever being done...? How can country like Israel whose lost a lot of blood historically reciprocate that behavior on a smaller nation? However, I dont feel like getting into Palestinian-Iraeli conflicts rite now. In closing I feel that it took a lot for AHmadinejad to come to the an American institution of education and attempt to open up the lines of communication between the academia of the two warring countries. I pray something can be done with a pen in the stead of a bullet.