Posted on 01/06/2005 8:50:50 PM PST by FreeMarket1
Jan 06, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com
by staff reports
From reports, David H. Smith, Newsbriefs Correspondent
HIP HOP ACCOUNTABILITY – AND THE LARGER ISSUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
FreeMarketNews.Com, Jan. 6, 2005 - The New York Daily News reports on what may portend a possible sea change in outlook at the offices of Essence, the nation’s most successful black women’s magazine. And it may not stop there. Essence’s editor, Diane Weathers comments: “We started looking at the media war on young girls, the hypersexualization that keeps pushing them in sexual directions at younger and younger ages.”
She told the News, “We started talking at the office about all this hatred in rap song after rap song, and once we started, the subject kept coming up because women were incapable of getting it off their minds.”
And she adds: “When we started this, all the editors came together. We formed a music committee – staff volunteers who did the research and then focus groups of women and men of all ages… ‘We realized that, my God, we were right on point! What we were feeling and what we were finding out in our research was all correct. It was time. Women were no longer going to sit still.’ ”
What Weathers and the staff at Essence are coming to see is what a lot of people in this country have been feeling – and speaking out about - for a long time. A considerable portion of rap music is degrading to both genders: to those who watch the videos; to those who attend the concerts; to those who buy the records.
The drumbeat pounds the messages into the subconscious. Women don’t really count. They are just means to an end. Cops should be shot. Life is like rule in the jungle – yet even the jungle has a certain morality that escapes much of what passes for ‘artistic expression’ in many of these videos and songs.
The antipathy to rap music – and to the larger issues of black social and cultural aspiration - has been building in the black community for some time. Recently the entertainer Bill Cosby made national news when, according to AP, he “denounced some blacks’ grammar and said those who commit crimes and wind up behind bars ‘are not political prisoners.’ “
Cosby took his remarks further in July during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund’s annual conference. According to AP, he defended his previous remarks and commented on the war between the sexes that takes place in the black community.
“You’ve got to stop beating up your women because you can’t find a job, because you didn’t want to get an education and now you’re [earning] minimum wage,” Cosby reportedly said. “You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity.”
In his book, "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,” John H. McWhorter, a linguistics professor at UC-Berkeley, offered an explanation for the kinds of behaviors about which Cosby was concerned: "It's a culture of anti-intellectualism among blacks. That's not a very flattering explanation, but to the extent that it has any truth it demands confrontation.”
According to black economist [and FMNN commentator] Walter Williams, who wrote a review of McWhorter’s book, “McWhorter says victimhood leads to separatism and anti-intellectualism follows from separatism out of a sense that educational excellence is a ‘white endeavor.’ Thus, the ‘black Cult of Anti-intellectualism casts top scholarly achievement as treachery.’ “
And Williams adds, “Black anti-intellectualism is not a poverty phenomenon. It is observed in sons and daughters of middle- and high-income blacks living in well-to-do neighborhoods attending good suburban schools.”
Williams concludes: “I, for one, have confidence that if black youngsters spent as much time and effort studying math and English as some of them spend playing basketball, they'd produce the same excellence in math and English. The fact racism kept blacks out of college and professional basketball and football years ago doesn't stop us from today's domination. And the reason isn't affirmative action, it's excellence.”
The movement among the woman at Essence regarding rap is hopeful sign. If enough in the black media community speak out, a positive cultural change might allow a perception of education as a benefit within the hip-hop community rather than – at least partially – a “sell out.”
SOCIAL INSECURITY
FreeMarketNews.Com, Jan. 6, 2005 - The Bush administration has sent up a trial balloon proposing changes in the formula which sets initial Social Security benefit levels, which would down the line, cut promised benefits by almost one third.
The inflation rate would be used to calculate first-year benefits for retirees rather than the rise in wages. Since wages tend to rise more rapidly than inflation (and because there are real questions as to just how accurate the government generated inflation numbers really are), the effect on benefits would be quite pronounced.
In an article posted on WashingtonPost.com Post staff writers Johathan Weisman and Mike Allen analyze the President’s initial proposals. They quote David John, a Social Security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation who states: “This is going to be very much like sticking your hand in (sic) a wasp nest. And the reaction will be similar.”
Another part of the plan, of which only a few details have been disclosed, involves the creation of personal investment accounts where workers could place a portion or their funds that would otherwise be earmarked for the Social Security Trust Fund.
As Wiesman and Allen remark, “The change would save trillions of dollars in scheduled expenditures and solve Social Security’s long-term deficit, but at a cost. According to the Social Security Administration’s chief actuary, a middle-class worker retiring in 2022 would see guaranteed benefits cut by 9.9 percent. By 2042, average monthly benefits for middle and high-income workers would fall by more than a quarter. A retiree in 2075 would receive 54 percent of the benefit now promised.”
For a number of years, the money taken in by Social Security has been sent to the General Fund or paid out to current retirees. Politicians have literally made careers out of voting more benefits and other add-ons. (And of course they do not have to worry about contributing themselves.)
Under the current system, with fewer workers supporting more retirees, at some point, the wheels will have to start coming off. Officials have played with the numbers, purporting to show the System’s solvency. But the reality is that the light in the tunnel is the approaching train wreck of prohibitively higher taxes, reduced benefits or insolvency.
Of course the government can “solve” the problem by monetizing the debt – printing enough new money to let inflation take care of the deficit. Then retirees can get their promised benefits in nominal dollars, but will have to save a bundle just to buy the wheelbarrow that will be necessary to carry their money home.
Lest readers feel that ‘ a little inflation is a good thing’ they might want to consider that a US dollar bill early in the last century, now has the purchasing power of around one cent.
PETULANT PETA
FreeMarketNews.Com, Jan. 6, 2005 - US News’s “Washington Whispers” reports that former president Jimmy Carter has been snagged by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for criticism because he likes to catch and release fish. His current book “Sharing Good Times” shows him holding an Atlantic Salmon he caught while fly fishing.
On the Jay Leno Show, Carter had mentioned how painful it was when he accidentally had to have a fish hook removed from his face. PETA’s Karin Robertson, who would like to see Carter stop fishing altogether, remarked "Our hope is that this experience may have given you a little insight into the fish's point of view."
Karin holds the title of “fish empathy project manager” for the organization. PETA has, in the past, evinced great sympathy for fish, with exec Bruce Friedrich observed poignantly that fish "can't go to the hospital."
However, Karin may be interested to note that biologists believe the lack of development of a fish’s brain (in a salmon, the size of a pea) enables them to have sensations as when mouthing food, but most likely precludes the ability to feel pain as we understand it.
Also if it were not for the 20% mandated Federal tax that fishermen and hunters pay towards habitat and resource restoration each time they purchase outdoor equipment, there would be many less fish around to be concerned about.
In England, PETA partisans precipitate persecution by throwing rocks into waterways where fishermen are attempting to angle, in hopes of scaring fish away. One wonders how depth-charging trout and bass with boulders compares to having a small hook (often barbless) removed from their mouths as they are gently released back into the water to carry on with their lives.
Alaskan Brown Bears may need scrutiny too. When they have captured a migrating salmon, the fully alive, soon-to-be meal is gently pressed to the ground under the bear’s paw; the bear then peels away the fish’s skin lengthwise from head to tail, before removing large chunks of its flesh. Now that’s insensitive!
SCHOOLS CAN CHART A NEW PATH
FreeMarketNews.Com, Jan. 6, 2005 - An editorial in USA Today entitled “Charters: Success or Failure” talks about the seemingly conflicting research about the efficiency and success of the nation’s charter schools. They contend that, in reality, the wrong things are being measured. And in lumping all charter schools together, one ends up with mostly meaningless measurements.
Some schools are designed as ‘magnets’ for specialty programs or students with specific levels of proficiency. Some attempt to help dropouts, while others design their curriculum around the performing arts. Without looking at distinctions in a given school’s purpose, it can be misleading to draw big-picture conclusions as to their efficacy.
Instead independent education researchers list specific behaviors that innovative and successful charter schools embody. They insist on rigorous instruction, are innovative and tend to welcome accountability.
One interesting category cited was that of the Aspire charter schools in California. They “practice 360-degree accountability”, wherein letter grades are awarded to teachers by the parents and administrators. Parents, students and teachers sign agreements as to academic expectations, and agree upon what consequences will ensue if they are not met.
Some charters succeed and others do not. In the free market of learning, the latter should be both expected and allowed to fall by the wayside. Just like the business world in which many of these students will one day find themselves, it should be produce or perish.
The editorial ends on a constructive and hopeful note. It states: .................For the full article visit us @ www.FreeMarketNews.com
How can someone say dis here about da negroid community? Rap iz uh real art, an' da artists need ta be respected fo' da genuises dey iz. White peeps iz always just trying ta hold da negroid nig down. slap mah fro!
< /sarcasm off>
< /ebonics translation end process>
Unfortunately the days of Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson are long gone.
bump
"What Weathers and the staff at Essence are coming to see is what a lot of people in this country have been feeling – and speaking out about - for a long time. A considerable portion of rap music is degrading to both genders: to those who watch the videos; to those who attend the concerts; to those who buy the records."
So, are the whites who have been saying it, "for a long time", no longer racist?
So, are the whites who have been saying it, "for a long time", no longer racist?
"No, we're still racists. Sucks having taste, doesn't it?"
I don't think it has to do with taste, at least not with me, it's more to do with superior math skills. 2+2 = 4.
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