Interesting---a look at some middle class black Internet forums.

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Unk's Troll-free Private Saloon : One Thread

discussion 1-stereotypes

discussion 2-similar subjects

-- (lars@indy.net), June 21, 2002

Answers

Hey nigga Rolo, what does "bling-bling" mean?

-- (black pugs@suck-up.conference), June 21, 2002.

Yo fool, Bling-bling be "flashy", "gaudy". Sheet, you're dumb.

-- (roland@hatemail.com), June 21, 2002.

Interesting web site. I don't see the whining "some people" claim is the norm in Black Society. Perhaps all of those affirmative action efforts had the desired effect, although it took a few generations. It is also true that many of those programs have outlived the need for them. At least in most of the country.

Now if those in the entertainment industry would stop "pushing" the gangsta rap music, videos and movies, perhaps the little children will not grow up thinking, acting and talking like those they see in those mediums.

As long as the worse of any group of people is the only thing the public sees, they assume that is the norm. Is that where some people have this idea that black women are welfare queens popping on one crack baby after another? I don't know why TV producers are continuing to produce all of those "extreme" TV shows, especially after 911 when people are not exactly craving "extreme" crap, because they are having to deal with a reality that is more extreme than they could ever have conceived. There are so many shows where the only point is to show the depths of people's degradation of themselves and/or others. Some of the prime time shows have hit new lows, like "spy TV" and "fear factor"..nothing like watching someone in a pit with rats crawling all over them. One show becomes popular and we get poorly disguised copies, this season was filled with "families" with the Father always portrayed as a moron. Those show are sure a good example for children who watch them, no wonder so many kids have no respect for their fathers.

Kinda got off the subject, but it has the same effect, certain stereotypes are shoved in the faces of kids glued to TV and movies and we get a generation thinking that's real life. Gotta wonder who will be the butt of all of the jokes next season, bedridden grandma's? Hell if it sells advertising what the hell do the networks care?

Anyway, the article below reflects the view of most of the Black people I know.

Ugly past shouldn't overshadow present

By Generic

Black-owned U.S. businesses once ranked No. 1 among minority-owned enterprises. Now, Hispanics and Asians hold the first and second places, with black businesses coming in third. As usual, Jesse Jackson had something to say about it: ''They (Asians) landed on the ground. We (blacks) landed in chains.''

Here we go again. Instead of crying about what happened to us 200 years ago, let's try something more constructive.

Slavery was real, and all of the baggage that came with it is real, but we have to move beyond that and focus on how we survive as a community in a changing America. Oh, I admit: It feels good to feel sorry for ourselves; however, we no longer can afford the luxury of self-pity.

It's almost insulting that we still use the slavery issue to excuse everything bad that happens. Black historian Elizabeth Wright hit the nail on the head in her commentary, Keeping the Spotlight on Failure: ''Black history as told by the black establishment goes something like this: Africans uprooted, chained, enslaved; brutal plantation slavery; oppressive Jim Crow and lynchings; then nothing but misery until the 1964 Civil Rights Act. . . . It is then that real life began.''

If the record of black history were left up to the black establishment, it would read as such: We have been so downtrodden that we certainly made no contributions to America. We stumbled around in utter despair and hopelessness until the government came along with the Civil Rights Act, and then the sun broke through the clouds.

Abolitionist Martin Delany criticized Northern blacks in the 1850s for wasting energy on ''examining, complaining, moralizing over'' the black condition instead of getting on with the business of black enterprise. His words apply today. A continual diatribe about the horrible condition of black people leaves us immobile and void of creativity.

Lots of groups have faced hard times, but they don't spending their time glamorizing their plight, and neither can we. Oh yes, slavery was real, but we made it -- we survived. After those terrible days, our forefathers created businesses and wealth, even when there was no Civil Rights Act to protect them. We have to take the best this country has to offer and use it to our benefit. We have to find the root causes of our problems, such as the failure of public education in black communities' schools, and enact remedies. Blacks have done it before; we can do it now.

Jackie Cissell lives in Indianapolis, where she works in public relations.



-- Cherri (whatever@who.cares), June 22, 2002.


"Hey nigga Rolo, what does "bling-bling" mean?

-- (black pugs@suck-up.conference), June 21, 2002.

Yo fool, Bling-bling be "flashy", "gaudy". Sheet, you're dumb.

-- (roland@hatemail.com), June 21, 2002."

LOL! Roloboy has gone completely schizo, the whitey Rolo is talking to the nigga Rolo!

-- hee-haaw! (talking@to.himself), June 22, 2002.


Cherri, you bring up some excellent points about the media.

Why do you suppose these same people who want to lower the standards supported Gore/Lieberman so much?

At one time the Gore's were very critical of this same media, and even much more recently Lieberman was. Now it seems that the media has bought them.

-- Ferrell Boy (living@in.desert), June 22, 2002.



It looks like these days almost anyone can be bought. I agreed with Tipper Gore when she was talking about the media children are exposed to. I saw what it did to kids, my kids, my biological and foster kids. Especially the foster kids who were already dealing with the insecurities that go with being removed from or abandoned by parents). I remember getting cable once, decided to get rid of it and asked my oldest who was 12 at the time if there was anything on cable she liked. She said no. I asked about the Disney channel and she said "It's nothing but a big commercial". I had one TV and controlled what was watched. (had a little one hooked up to the nintendo game-where I played Zelda-selfishly- the kids didn't get to use it until I finished the game *grin*). I would get up in the middle of the night to nurse my youngest, sit cross legged on the couch, her on a pillow at a convenient level, and play nintendo. She used to watch the game while nursing. I am surprised that even now, at almost 12, she has no interest in electronic games?? I honestly believed I had corrupted her from the breast. But plenty of neighbors have cable and violent video games, at nine she thought she should run around in hip hugging, tight pants and little shirts almost up to her (then) non existent breasts. Now that she has hit puberty, I find myself saying the same things to her that my parents said to me, like "leave something to be desired" and "don't dress like you're a streetwalker". Who was it? Bill Blass who had prepubescent girls on their commercials modeling as if they were trying to sexually entice? And I am really sick of those "Herbal Essence" commercials. It was funny in "When Sally met what's his name", but shoving it into the face of 3 year olds who are in the room as Mommy watches soap operas (which is another sorry excuse for programming, especially during the time of day they are aired). I remember not being allowed to watch "Payten Place". But then my Mother, married at 17 was not allowed to go into the movie house and watch "Gone with the Wind". The only way to prevent our children from being exposed to media we do not want them to see (or hear) is to lock them in the house, not let them go to friend's houses where the parents don't give a thought to what the kids see.

When my youngest called me to her room one night and begged me to remove all of her "baby" dolls, I questioned her and found out about "Chuckey", which she had seen at her friend's house. Even now, almost 12, she refuses to sleep with a doll in her room. It's a pretty poor commentary on our society when we accept whatever the advertising media throws out at us, some of which has driven girls as young as 8 years old to become anorexic because they think they are too fat. Puberty is such a vulnerable age, girls bodies tend to plump up before they grow taller and fill out, and the media strikes at their self esteem because they are bombarded with unrealistic images of what they should look like. It would be nice, and probably is a hopeless dream, to have the media show kids the beauty inside, that it is positive and admirable to be smart, to be considerate to others (rather than constantly putting others down and degrading and laughing at differences) as well as looking their best (even if they don't look like a baywatch lifeguard).

-- Cherri (whatever@who.cares), June 22, 2002.


I had much the same reaction, Cherri, to some of the posts on the black forum. Many of the posters sound frustrated by the stereotypes perpetuated by media and by a segment of the black population itself.

If you have HBO, you know what type of black person is often glamorized. The gangstas in Oz and on The Corner in Baltimore and the sadly unfunny comedians whose idea of comedy is to overuse the Anglo-Saxon word "fuck" to the point of terminal boredom.

I know more than a few blacks IRL and they do not talk that way (which doesn't mean that there aren't many others who do talk/behave crudely, as was brought up in the forum discussion). There are trash-whites and there are trash-blacks. We all need to remember that.

-- (lars@indy.net), June 22, 2002.


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