Dismantling Hip Hop

Because Hip Hop is such a part of Urban Black culture in 2013 I feel it is necessary for us to dismantle the genre to better understand how it began, how it's evolved, and how it has affected the Black community.

The documentary 'Hip Hop' beyond the beats and rhymes ', is a great way to begin this process. It is an expose on the music and those who create and perform it.

It examines the state of Hip Hop and why it's evolution had become, for the most part, detrimental to the community. The emphasis on violence, misogyny, homophobia, and consumerism permeates the music. The misguided and misplaced images of manhood, power, sex and success are constants and promoted in Hip hop.

The values of the Slave Mentality are reinforced and substantiated when aspiring young Black male rappers are rewarded for perpetuating the stereotypes that are demonstrative of the worst of the Black community.

They are being paid by those outside of the community to slowly destroy their own.

Lil Poopy?

We watched and discussed a music video that I was hipped to on CNN. The artist was a young child by the name of 'Lil Poopy'... What? The discussion spanned from questioning whether the video was child abuse, okay, a true reflection of our society to whether it was the worst thing a child has done in the name of Hip hop.
The Cosby speech took a bank seat to this discussion. I had originally thought that the blatant sexualization of women, the drug connotations, the references to violence and overt display of bling and crass consumerism was passe in the age of Obama. I was obviously wrong.
The questioning of this little boy's ethnicity came up as well as whether that changed things. The definition of' Urban ' was brought up. As the class strives to define Black a lot came to light as the discussion continued.

Great Class in Friday

Another great class, another great presentation. The class went very well. Even with the technological issues, the last presentation was very well done and well constructed. The presentation 'dovetailed' with the introduction of Bill Cosby's speech on Brown v the Board of Education.
Many important points were exposed and ready to be debated in the next class. Please review Cosby 's speech which is available in an earlier entry in this blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gh3_e3mDQ8

Visible Knapsack Presentations

I was quite happy with yesterday's presentations. All of them were effective and impactful and presented in differing formats. Some dealt specifically with statistics, while others were creatively crafted short anecdotal stories that were well prepared and engaging. The PowerPoint presentations were well laid out and all of them were informative.
Good job to all of the groups who  presented.

Why do we think the way we do?

Today we discussed the process of reconditioning Africans who were taken slaves. Why these people are taken as slaves, as well as a little about what happened when they reached the new world.
How do you condition the Africa out of the African? The process began from the time that they were captured. The helplessness of captivity. Being led to the coast. Crammed in the belly of the slave ship for up to three months. They were then brought to the new and unfamiliar world where they were further conditioned to rid themselves of whatever made them African. They lost their culture, their religion, their name and their history. The African wasn't allowed to fill this void themselves rather this empty was filled with a slave mentality based on the value system geared towards the benefit of one group at the expense of another. The slave mentality was created as a way to control Black people without chains or bonds.
Look at earlier post in this blog for more information on the slave mentality and is effect on the Black community.

Malcolm and Martin

We had the opportunity to watch a great play about the relationship between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Although fictional the play did highlight the differing approaches to solving the same problem of Black oppression during the 1960's.
Malcolm's 'By Any Means Necessary' is balanced against approach of Martin's 'Non-violence'.
I felt it was a fair representation of each ideal but, what do you think?

CAS 331 George Harvey semester 2

Welcome to the African Studies course. Use this Blog as a reference and resource guide for assignments, tests, and exams. Feel free to post comments whenever you need to. This will be open to anyone taking the course throughout the TDSB.