Presentations 4/8

All of the presentations from Thursday 4/8 were very informational. Great job to all of the groups that went. The presentation that I found to be the most interesting was the topic about Social Issues: Racial Profiling by Police. I was surprised to learn that 17% of Maryland's drivers are black yet 77% of them have been pulled over and searched. The number of black drivers in Maryland that have been pulled over and searched seems way to high! It seems that if you are black you have a higher chance to be searched when pulled over over others. I believe that officers should only search cars if they have sustainable evidence or reason to do so. I believe it is an evasion of privacy without a reason to do so. I have heard of situations or rumors of Racial profiling but I have never heard any facts or statistics that actually prove racial profiling so I have never considered it a big deal. In Malcolm X he often talks about White policemen beating African Americans for not listening to the police officers like on page 238. It was interesting to connect the data with real life stories from Malcolm X. Rodney Kings beating in LA. also relates to this. How can America eliminate racism if state and government employees such as policemen are expressing racial profiling? Another presentation I enjoyed was the one about African American Music. It was interesting to learn about artists who were the first to combine different styles of music to create a new genre.

African-American Culture Presentations

I really enjoyed all of last Thursday’s presentations, but especially the ones about music and teaching ideas. I thought it was very interesting to learn about the foundational singers and musicians from the 30s and 40s who dominated the jazz, funk and soul genres. I had heard of most of the artists before, but for the majority would not have been able to associate their face with their name or even their music. It was also interesting to learn about the individual styles of the artists, such as Ray Charles, and how he combined genres that society didn't expect him to combine - Gospel and R&B for example.
I liked the teaching ideas presentation as well, because it was very thought-provoking. I realized that I hadn't ever really given any thought to the racial composition of the American military in our history of wars. Of course there was an African-American population in the military - they've been a part of the population before our official founding. Then why hadn't I ever heard of African-Americans in authoritative positions in the military even today, when they have more freedoms than in the past? Honestly, this is sad, but the only African-American in the military that comes to mind is Bubba from "Forrest Gump." It amazes me that African-Americans make up 13% of the total U.S. population and 20% of the military. I would be curious to find statistics about African-Americans in military leadership positions. I may simply be ignorant, but I suspect that it also involves the fact that racism has permeated our military throughout history and still does today.

Twilight & Loewen

This section of Loewen, chapter 10, really hit home for me after reading this week's selections from Anna Deavere Smith's book, Twilight. I am familiar with Smith's work, having reading part of Fires in the Mirror and did a project similar to the interview representations she performs.

Other than vague mentions of the Rodney King trial and riots by my parents, I knew very little of what actually happened in LA in 1992. I wasn't even born until July of 1992. I find Smith's work interesting and the information she presents fascinating. I find what Loewen said about the youth of my generation not being taught about the "sasha" or the recent past/living-dead to be entirely true. I wasn't even alive during events like the LA riots, but I was alive during the 9/11 attack and even remember where I was. Despite the differences between the two situations, I feel I know relatively little about either. Yes, I saw the news and have read many conflicting reports concerning 9/11/01 from family, friends, and other sources, but no history course even gave me definitive teaching on either subject.

Loewen has mentioned before, and I have fully agreed, that we cannot be expected to learn from our past mistakes if we are not taught what those are. I feel that the old adage applies to this situation, as well.

I am interested to see what direction today's discussion with take with this subject in class.

Malcolm X Movie

After watching the movie Malcolm X, I was able to see visually the story that we have been reading these past few months. It followed the story of the book almost exactly, and helped me realize just how great the accomplishments that Malcolm X made were. While there were parts of the movie that were almost exactly the same wording as the book, there was also some things that the movie did differently than the book. The movie focused on Malcolm X entirely, and didn't even show his family like his brother Reginald, or his sister Ella. Reginald was the person who actually turned Malcolm to the Muslim religion, but in this movie a fellow prison inmate was the one who taught Malcolm all about the religion.

Along with this, the movie also didn't show much of the street life that Malcolm lived while on the streets of Harlem. Though these harsh times were ones that didn't define him as who he was as a leader later in life, they show the struggles that African Americans in this time and those who live in poverty face and how they are forced to live.

Although there was some things that were different and things I felt could have been better about the movie, I still feel like it was worth watching. It may have taken over three hours to sit and watch, but I now have a little better understanding of Malcolm X and the life he lived.

All Black Everything~Lupe Fiasco

So, I really enjoyed the presentations on thursday because they brought up a lot of ideas with new insights that I had never thought about or in the case of the teaching group, they showed something that I had never before understood. The music group in particular was really interesting and they also reminded me of one of my favorite singers by the name of Lupe Fiasco who is also a black artist. The difference though is that he is in the prime of his career right now and released a new album just last month. One of the songs on this new album has a lot to do with what we have been discussing in class because it goes through what may have happened if black people were never enslaved and racism were non-existant. I like all of the ideas that it brings together, because it also seems to challenge the listener to ask themselves, "Why can' t it be like this?" I have included the lyrics below so that you guys and read them and hopefully enjoy them as much as I did. I also have a link so you can listen to the song if you like. All Black Everything Hook-You would never know/ If you could ever be/ If you never try / You would never see/ Stayed in Africa / We ain't never leave/ So there were no slaves in our history/ Were no slave ships, were no misery, call me crazy, or isn't he/ See I fell asleep and I had a dream, it was all black everything / Verse 1~Uh, and we ain't get exploited/ White man ain't feared so he did not destroy it /We ain't work for free, so they had to employ it /Built it up together so we equally appointed /First 400 years, see we actually enjoyed it /Constitution written by the W.E.B. Du Bois /Were no reconstructions, /Civil War got avoided /Little black sambo grows up to be a lawyer /Extra extra on the news stands /Black woman voted head of Ku Klux Klan/ Malcolm Little dies as a old man /Martin Luther King read the eulogy for him /Followed by Bill O'reailly who read from the Quran/ President Bush sends condolences from Iran /Where FOX News reports live/ That Ahmadinejad wins Mandela peace prize/ hook /Verse 2~Uh, and it ain't no projects /Keepin it real is not an understood concept /Yea, complexion's not a contest /Cause racism has no context/ Hip hop ain't got a section called conscious /Everybody rappin' like crack never happened /Crips never occured no Bloods to attack them /Matter of fact no hood to attack in /Somalia is a great place to relax in/ Fred Astaire was the first to do a backspin /The Rat Pack was a cool group of black men /That inspired five white guys called the Jacksons /Eminem fitted in but then again he ispired a black rapper tryin to mimic him/ And that's what really rose up out of michigan, the sign of white rapper by the name of 50 Cent,/ hook /Verse 3~Uh, and I know it's just a fantasy/ I cordially invite you to ask why can't it be? /Now we can do nothing bout the past /But we can do something about the future that we have /We can make fast or we can make it last /Every woman Queenin' and every man a Kingin' /When those color lines come we can't see between /We just close our eyes 'til it's all black everything/ hook. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71McnVwWPwU

African American Presentations

I thought everyone who presented on Thursday did really well. Jill and Sara's presentation on teaching ideas was really informative. I liked how they connected the four major wars with events and ideas concerning African Americans. I don't really remember any of my textbooks making connections between the people and ideas of one war to the people and ideas in the next. I always saw them as separate events. That's not what history is like; everything is connected in the world.

The statistics presented concerning racial profiling are CRAZY. Whether the connection between black drivers being pulled over and searched and racial profiling is causal or not, there is a definite connection between the two. 77% (drivers pulled over and searched) of a 17% total population is huge. That and some of the other stats gives me a little more perspective on Malcolm X and his experiences like when he explained an instance of severe police brutality against an African American and when he evaded the draft. I agree that there is some definite "blame the victim" attitudes going on, like Loewen says, but we need to be careful throwing that phrase around, so that people don't begin to purposefully play the victim, in my opinion at least.

The art, music, and films categories were the presentations that I knew the most about (comparatively). I recognized many of the names mentioned. Jean-Michel Basquiat though, I had never heard of. I found his story very interesting and tragic. On the other hand, I have seen a literature class presentation on Maya Angelou and have heard/read some of her poems before. As for films, I am certainly going to try to watch "Ray" and "Malcolm X" since both have incredible actors and stories. I am most interested in seeing the one about Ray Charles even though I have a high respect for Denzel Washington.

Islam part 2 and Malcolm X and a response to the Prison blog

Okay, on the outset I just have a few things that I wanted to take back and/or make clearer from my earlier blog about 'Malcolm X and Islam.' I take back what I had to say about Malcolm X because once he went on the Haaj, he truly learned the difference between the Islam that he had been practicing and that of the Islam of the East. I also need to address Professor Sugano's comment, I know that Malcolm X knew that Christianity was not literally a white man's religion, he himself went to many christian services when he was younger. I know that he just doesn't like the blond haired blue eyed version that christianity had turned into. My problem was just that he was doing the same thing that the white people had done to christianity. If white people had co-opted the Chritian religion than he was co-opting Islam. He kept claiming that Islam is for the black man when Islam, at least the Islam of the East, does not stop at race lines but extends to everybody. To turn the religion into a race thing is to limit its capacity to reach the masses that it was intended for. I also need to take back what I had said about the differences between the two different forms of Islam portrayed in the book. I interviewed my friend who is a black muslim. (Not like the book, he is just black the race and muslim the religion) He believed that although there are fundamental differences between the two versions, he said that Malcolm x at least, seemed to really be practicing the religion of Islam. I had been critical of the Nation of Islam in the book because it seemed like a farce to just get their political/social goals to the masses but I was wrong. I defer to my friends greater knowledge on this subject and humbly take it back. I do however wish that they had two different names for their two divisions so that people do not assume that they represent the same thing but maybe they do by now, I dont know. First of all, I wanted to thank Emily Brown for speaking her thoughts upon the prison system and her critiques on said system based upon what Malcolm X said. I would just like to respond by giving her a little more information based on what I know. My brother is in prison so I have visited various prisons and city jails over the years. I think that Malcolm X is hugely right in what he says when he speaks of not putting people behind bars if you have any feelings at all for other human beings. However I do not think that the bars are the problem. It is the institution itself. Malcolm X was only one of very few exceptions who turned his life around in jail. Statistics state that most people who go to jail or prison will go again before they die. This is because in my opinion prisons do not rehabilitate their prisoners; instead they just sit, watch, and wait for the prisoners to get into even more trouble so they can put a stop to it. In my experience you will never find a more segregated place in America than in a prison. They have separate groups for everything. The blacks stay with the blacks, the whites with the whites, and the indians and hispanics stick with each other. If you stray across those lines than you will get in a fight. This is not something that the prison enforces, this is something that the prisoners do themselves. My brother was telling me one time how in the Walla Walla state prison the different ethnic groups had what you might call a war over the faucets in the showers. The black people wanted more so the white people had to defend theirs. They could not share. After much blood, the white people ended up with four faucets which was not really enough because their were over twenty white people in their block. In a place where people are locked together and live in such a racist society, how can they be expected to change? They will only get worse because they build resentments towards not only the other races but also against the gaurds and their authority. They get tired of being known only by a number (like Malcolm X said). They build tattoo guns out of anything that they have on hand and make their own alcolohol in trash cans etc. I believe that prisons or something of that nature is still necessary, however I think that the way that it is structured needs to change vastly if we really want a high percentage of people to rehabilitate like Malcolm X. I do not know how this would be done, I just do not like the system as it stands now.