XPost: alt.fan.julia-roberts, alt.culture.ny-upstate, alt.fan.j-garofalo 
 XPost: alt.atheism 
 From: levy_oates@hotmail.com 
  
 On Sat, 31 Jul 2004 19:33:09 -0400, Dave Middleton  
 wrote: 
  
 >Liberals Push Filth to Black Kids!!!!!!!!!! 
 > 
 > 
 >Black teen girls don't get much respect, not even from each other. 
 >That's just one of the startling findings of a recent study of the sex 
 >and gender attitudes of low-income black teenagers. It offers new 
 >evidence, as if we needed it, to me and to other parents of black 
 >teenagers that the standards of "black authenticity" promulgated in 
 >hip-hop culture are not only too narrow but downright dangerous. 
 > 
 >With funding from the Ford Foundation and the California Endowment, 
 >MEE (Motivational Educational Entertainment) Productions Inc., a 
 >marketing firm that specializes in the buying patterns of urban 
 >youths, conducted a 10-city research study of teens aged 16 to 20 
 >years old. 
 > 
 >The study found black urban youth from households earning under 
 >$25,000 a year to be remarkably untouched by positive messages from 
 >schools, parents, the media and health-care providers about 
 >responsible sexual behavior. 
 > 
 >But the teens did display attitudes consistent with the cool macho 
 >pose of hip-hop rappers. Their mottoes: "Use or be used," among 
 >others, and "Get it while you can." 
 > 
 >And, consistent with a culture that uses "bitches" and "ho's" as 
 >labels for every woman but one's mama, the study reveals, "Black 
 >females are dissed by almost everyone," including other black females. 
 > 
 >Compare, for example the half-dozen slang nouns in the study's 
 >glossary that are used to describe males ("Dog... homeboy... playa... 
 >lame... sugar daddy... payload") with some of the words used by both 
 >teen boys and teen girls in the survey to describe women: "skeezer... 
 >'hood rat... 'ho... trick... freak... bitch... gold digger... hoochie 
 >mama." 
 > 
 >The study of the "hip-hop generation" fails to pin down the big 
 >question: Does rap music and other hip-hop culture influence teens or 
 >merely mirror the culture that teens already have created? The answer 
 >is probably 
 >both. 
 > 
 >Born since the mid-1980s, today's teens grew up awash in hip-hop and 
 >so did their parents. The sad consequences have been a narrow and 
 >distorted view among many black youngsters, among others, of what it 
 >means to be black. 
 > 
 >It was back in the 1960s, I painfully recall, that "authenticity" 
 >began to replace the more generalized "cool" as the standard for 
 >acceptable tastes and behavior among black youths. It was a period 
 >marked by big Afros, dashikis, bib overalls, jungle combat boots and a 
 >propensity for greeting each other with defiantly raised fists. Ah, 
 >youth. 
 > 
 >Such was the "authentic" look among black college students, of which I 
 >was fortunate enough to be one in the late '60s. The "authentic black" 
 >came to define a person who did not "sell out" to bourgeois 
 >middle-class standards, the same values that enabled our families to 
 >prepare us for college in the first place. 
 > 
 >Even if we aging black Baby Boomers no longer buy that narrow notion 
 >of blackness, a lot of our kids and grandkids do. In 1986, Signithia 
 >Fordham and the late John Ogbu shocked many with a landmark study of 
 >"oppositional cultural identity" in black teens who derogate academic 
 >achievement by their peers as "acting white." 
 > 
 >Still, there are signs of hope. Among those who expressed some pretty 
 >raunchy attitudes in the MEE study, some also praised certain hip-hop 
 >artists as more "positive" and called for more "message" in pop music. 
 > 
 >And in another section headlined, "Wish I woulda waited: The secret 
 >allure of virgins," many sexually active youths said sex wasn't all 
 >they had hoped and that they wish they had waited until they were 
 >married or at least older. 
 > 
 >And many of the young men, in a reflection of times past, in the study 
 >still showed significant respect for virginity they would not express 
 >outside the group. Girls who don't "give it up" are males' top choices 
 >for 
 >long-term partners. 
 > 
 >What is to be done? Pardon my dangling prepositions, but like other 
 >generations, today's youths probably are just looking for someone to 
 >look up to and something to believe in. 
 > 
 >We, their elders need to provide it. We need not only to reach out and 
 >show the world a broader vision of what black culture is all about, 
 >but also to reach back and mentor our least-privileged youngsters. 
 >They're not going to learn life's valuable lessons from CDs alone. 
  
 What has any of that got to do with being liberal? 
  
 --------- 
  
 Archdeacom Levy Oates 
 On behalf of the Prophet Eric Peabody (pbuh) 
 Basingstoke, England 
 http://www.angelfire.com/alt/bumblism/ 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)