The Inconsistencies Of Race And Class

Sex Sells! Exploring the Music Industry.

NO. 1

From “Chapter Two: Hip Hop, Context, and Black Girlhood.” Counterpoints, vol. 399, 2012, pp. 16–31. ‘‘The hegemony where domination is maintained through contemporary democratic societies not through the use of force, but through winning the consent of the people.’’ How many times has Gen Z heard from educators, politicians, and parents alike that the rap genre today should be discouraged as the lyrics are filled with violence, exploitation, criminality, and sexual themes? The music industry understands that the culture of black and brown people perpetuates the idea of fighting against such domineering systems but, unfortunately uses those ideas against that very people. Major music artists such as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Jermaine Dupri, and Percy ‘Master P’ Millers share a large majority of profits with major record labels, but the industry as a whole is ‘white controlled’. And if any rapper wants to be successful socially and financially, they will change their image and structure their performance, lyrics, and music videos to cater towards the ‘White imagination.’

NO. 2

But then there is the other side of the fence that believes that people are going to gravitate toward what they feel motivates them, inspires them, and utterly captivates them no matter the judgment that is unleashed. Regular people cannot change how the music industry operates, so it makes more sense for these rappers to make steady profits from these mega companies. Plus, it is not the responsibility of these rappers to enforce a cleaner message for children and young adults. New female rappers like Ice Spice, Megan the Stallion, Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, and others are breaking the ‘glass ceiling’, and are widely successful and popular for their music. They are bringing more attention to the rap game and are paving the way for the next generation of female rappers, proving that they can be just as successful as their male counterparts, if not more. Their success is encouraging more women to pursue rap/hip-hop.

NO. 3

Most female rappers of the time today could not be where they are without honoring those who contributed to hip-hop and rap: young Black and Latino youth. From “Under Construction’: Identifying Foundations of Hip-Hop Feminism and Exploring Bridges between Black Second-Wave and Hip-Hop Feminisms, ‘‘In the late 1970s and 1980s, hip-hop was. in part, a response to the class exclusivity of the New York disco scene and the growing gang culture of inner-city New York. Initially, the culture was created as a social and recreational space for the working-class and poor folk who had been pushed to the fringe of society and forgotten. Gradually, hip-hop emerged in the recreational space but also in which to voice contempt for the living conditions of the economically and racially marginalized. From its inception, hip-hop has represented resistance to contemporary political and economic oppression that makes social marginalization possible.’’

NO. 4

As a woman of color and anthropologist, I completely understand both sides of the controversy of rap. As much as female rappers are breaking the rap game, so to speak, their lyrics perpetuate negative stereotypes of the Black community and hostile misogyny toward women. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, for society’s judgments towards rap and the people who create it will be called into question, but there should at least be a conversation about it so that we can all have a better experience. Society itself holds a double-edged sword when it comes to this, as this music is appreciated by suburban white males, wanting to identify with a culture that is not there behind closed doors while belittling the culture and artists in the limelight. No matter the judgment and hypocrisy, these artists success speaks for themselves.

i think actually the key to successfully doing tumblr (and especially doing fandom on tumblr) is realising that your blog is your little house and you can post about whatever you like there. once you realise you are just living in and decorating your very own silly little online house you start focusing on what makes you happy rather than constantly performing for & compromising your tastes for & placing all your self worth on little scraps of clout, and you will be a lot happier for it

Sometimes you’re just an introverted loser who sits alone in your room with a cup of tea and a book, has fantasies about morally grey fictional characters, is severely touch starved with a completely fucked up sleep schedule and slowly declining mental health.

What happened to Haiti?

I wrote an earlier piece on Haiti, mostly on the revolution and its leading founders Toussaint L’Overture. But the missing parts, like what happened after the revolution, who became president after L’Overture’s capture, and why Haiti still looks and is, impoverished must be answered.

So, independence day for Haiti from French rule is January 1st, 1804, when General Jean-Jacques Dessalines led his forces against Napoleon’s colonial army. Upon achieving liberation, Haiti became the first independent black republic and the first leading state to abolish slavery altogether. Except, in 1825, France’s government, alongside the U.S and other Western powers placed an embargo on Haiti unless they paid the French government $36 billion dollars as reparations to end slavery and keep their independence, and ever since, Haiti has been exploited for its natural resources and has fallen victim to international trade crimes by European and American ‘world powers’, putting the country in extreme economic decline.

‘‘Haiti has had a long volatile relationship with the United States and other foreign countries. For the past century or more, reforms have been imposed largely by outsiders, leaving the country with little ownership of the development of economic and political systems. Haitians were left with a ‘prickly nationalism’ distrust of foreigners, and an economy largely dependent on foreign assistance.’’

Haiti, last weekend, has had another major earthquake, this one’s magnitude at least 7.2, which destroyed ‘more than 7,000 homes and damaged 5,000 leaving about 30,000 families homeless, not to mention the death toll was up to 1,200, and over 6000 plus injured. Hospitals, schools, offices, and churches were decimated and badly damaged.’ The tropical storm that came before battered the southwestern side of the country and the earthquake made it worse. The country sits on a fault line between two tectonic plates, the North American and the Caribbean plates, which slide past each other over time. There are two other major faults along the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the southern one is known as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system., which the U.S Geological Survey says caused this one and the January 2010 earthquake.’’

Because the country has been in economic decline, and with the recent political unrest (the recent assassination of their former president, Jovenel Moise) its people have been unable to bounce back from the damages of previous earthquakes and are currently living through extreme humanitarian crises. There are thousands of people who are now homeless, in desperate need of aid, food, fresh drinking water, clothes, and socks. It is our responsibility to help, as the privileged who benefit from the exploitation of Haiti, to help and give back what we can.

P.S. Do not donate to the Red Cross. Instead, find and donate to trusted organizations whom you know your money is going directly to the Haitian citizens who will hopefully get basic needs and funding. If you cannot donate, then volunteer at organizations that are sourcing those basic needs. Read and research and spread the word to help.

1) https://batischool.org

2) About Us - Sow A Seed (sowaseedonline.org)

3) Responding to the Major Earthquake in Southern Haiti - Hope for Haiti

Reblog

Farewell online privacy

Being poor is dangerous. Being POC while poor? Even more dangerous.

NO.1

The question, ‘‘Is being poor dangerous’, an easy question to answer for those who suffer from being poor. Yes, it is highly dangerous, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. People usually move to cities in the U.S, and cities are segregated. Each person, family, etc. has a different background, therefore they have a different connection with others unlike themselves. That means different habitus’ and different inequalities, for those who are not rich.

NO.2

This all has to do with the economic structure, between poor, middle class and rich. Segregation is everywhere, and in cities, it is an intermix of ethnicity, citizenship, indigeneity, and class, and when they are intertwined, they create systems of labor, respect and suffering. The physical differences in the conditions of life, especially barbaric. Throughout the hierarchy of suffering, the opportunities decrease and the social hardships increase as you go down the ladder, and depending on what race you are, the more dangerous, psychologically strenuous and physically stressful it can be. Everyone is structurally vulnerable, and each person can participate in what is called the Gray Zone.

NO.3

Primo Levi defines it as the knowledge of the corrupt system but trying to survive within it, whether you’re at the top or at the bottom, and when you are at the bottom, the system is designed to make people remain there. For Mexican workers who choose to make the difficult journey to work in the strawberry fields in Southern California, they are kept segregated by race, class, and citizenship, they have limited opportunities to afford the basic needs we use every single day, either access to affordable healthcare or able to get a decent paying job. Collective bad faith, or as Nancy Scheper-Hughes calls it, is the self deception to help you feel okay about the work you do in the moral gray zone. One example would be the strange concept of naturalization, like black deaths at the hands of police officers. A more basic definition would be seeing an oppressed people and saying that they like being oppressed, making you feel better about the injustice. Since we see it go on for so long, the moral injustice, we normalize it, or that it just part of ‘the game’. The game is to thrive, survive, and suffer in the social world, where you are both dominated and dominant. We justify it because they are different, and say it is normal.

NO.4

‘‘For decades, experts have agreed that racial disparities in health spring from pervasive social and institutional forces. The scientific literature has linked higher rates of death and disease in African Americans to such ‘social determinants’ as residential segregation, environmental waste, joblessness, unsafe housing, targeted marketing of alcohol and cigarettes, and other inequalities; Racism, other researchers suggests, acts as a classic chronic stressor, setting off the same physiological train wreck as job strain or martial conflict: higher blood pressure, elevated heart rate, increases in the stress hormone cortisol, suppressed immunity. Chronic stress is also known to encourage unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking and eating too much, that themselves raise the risk of disease.’’ From How Racism Hurts—Literally.

Charleston Shooting

If we're not safe in a Church...where exactly ARE we safe? This is still going on. Racism. Hatred. And we pray that it ends, as it should have ended in the 60's. But hate never stops. As does evil never ends. And of course, we have our hope that it does but...that's all we ever have.

The tale of Lilith

There are a lot of accounts about the ‘demon-ness Lilith’, and her origin story leads a lot to be desired. Apparently, she was the first wife of Adam in Sumerian folklore, and because she did not want to be under Adam’s control any longer, and became, depending on which account you read, a vampire, a demon-ess, or a harlot, or all three, for not wanting to be apart of ‘God’s plan.’ The Sumerian accounts, taken from the 3rd millennium, were the first accounts of what happened to her before the biblical Hebrews surmised of her.

She is described as a ‘beautiful maiden’ but was believed to be a harlot, who once took a lover, offered no satisfaction to him, nor would she ever let him go. According to the Sumerian epic, dating from around 2000 B.C, ‘Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree’ and was ‘‘believed to appear to have human eyes. She is slender, well-shaped, beautiful, and nude, with wings, and owl feet. She stands erect on two reclining lions which are turned away from each other and are flanked by owls. On her head, she wears a cap embellished by several pairs of horns. In her hand, she holds a ring-and-rod combination. Evidently, this is no longer a lowly she-demon, but a goddess who tames wild beasts, and as shown by the owls on the reliefs, rules by night.’’

Apparently, the earliest mention of the ‘she-demon, whose name is similar to that of Lilith is found in the Sumerian king list which dates from around 2400 B.C. ‘‘It states, that the father of the great Gilgamesh was a Lilu-demon. The Lilu was one of four demons belonging to an incubi-succubae class. The other three were Lilitu (Lilith), a she-demon; Ardat Lili, or her handmaiden, who visited men in the night and bore them ghostly children. There is also the tale of the Irdu Lili, who was her male counterpart and would visit women and beget children by them. Originally these were storm demons, but because of a mistaken etymology, they came to be regarded as night demons. On one brief reference to Lilith in the Bible, Isaiah 34:14, in describing Yahweh’s (God) day of vengeance, says: The wild cat shall meet with the jackals, And the satyr shall cry to to his fellow, Yea, Lilith shall repose there, And find her a place of rest.’’

That's amazing!

I’m Honestly Fed Up With All The Bad News, So I Illustrated 40 Of The Best Ones From 2021

We need more positive news to acknowledge that the world is actually getting better little by little. Here are some of the top performing positive news illustrations from 2021.

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-land-and-natural-resources-protect-pololu-valley

I saw this on Tiktok and thought it needed to be passed on. Pololū Valley is sacred land currently at risk of being developed into yet another "scenic tourist attraction" for profit. Activists like @/melemaikalanimakalapua on Tiktok are fighting to have this petition seen by as many people as possible in order to prevent the senseless destruction of this land.

Note that the petition says not to donate to change.org--donations to change.org do NOT protect Pololū Valley.

I hope that by spreading this to tumblr, I can help it reach more people. Please sign this and reblog it if you can!

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-land-and-natural-resources-protect-pololu-valley