Posted on 11/03/2007 5:18:18 PM PDT by TankerKC
A 43-year-old DeKalb man was charged this week with the recent vandalism of a statue of Tupac Shakur at the arts center named for the slain performer.
DeKalb police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said investigators have no reason to believe the suspect, Kenneth Anthony Wilson, had a racial motive in the Oct. 20 incident. Wilson, who lives on North Hairston Road near the center on Memorial Drive, is African-American.
A spokeswoman for the center last week said she was told a noose was placed around the neck of the statue and the incident was being investigated as a hate crime.
Parish reiterated Thursday that the object was a cross on a string. Police also said underwear was placed on the head of the statue and "defamatory" stickers and papers were left on the statue and a nearby sign.
Wilson was charged Thursday with second-degree criminal damage to property, a felony. He was being held in the DeKalb jail under a $1,500 bond.
Still is. 6 feet or so.
Statue is a joke.
Keel mah landload, KEEEL mah landload?
Seriously. He was one of the few rap stars who didn't just rap about the usual rap stuff. He's made songs that praised black women, songs about the community, and the violence he saw.
Perhaps this is why he has been reduced to a statue.
His songs contained messages in them.
That's deep in itself...
It isn't just one or the other, you know.
Best post award.
Pigeon pooped on the statue. That racist!
When Trace gitz capped in a east/west county row, holler me up. Word.
Well, you know, Kenny Chesney is *really* short!
By the way since hate crime laws are partially based on the idea of indimidation of a community at large are other statues crying out in fear? (/sarc)
Aint too short.
Depends on who defines “short.” Trace Adkins is 6’5” or something.
All this is a felony? They have really bizarre folks there in the DeKalb prosecutor's office, but more importantly, really bizarre folks in the IL legislature that provided such a law.
Lol, “Too” short, Rapper out of “oaktown”. Trace...7’2”
Notice that the statue already has a CROSS on it. Isn’t that illegal? Maybe the extra added cross was separate from the underwear crime.
The extra cross for sure is a hate crime. Actually accusing someone of being a Christian!
Pigeons will properly maintain the statue..
Not everyone here watches NASCAR and listens to Trace Adkins, OK?
Don’t be hatin, dawg.
What nearsighted person did that statue?
“The Gorgon was a maiden bold,
who turned to stone the Greeks of old,
that looked upon her awful brow.
We dig them up in ruins now.
And swear that workmanship so bad
proves all the ancient sculptors mad.”
- Ambrose Bierce
If they found the “noose” and had not caught the perp in the act, then it would have been determined to have been a horrible hate crime by evil white guys who should be burned at the stake. Riots to follow.
If one hates statutes shouldn’t it be a hate crime?
Well you have some academics on your side asserting the importance of Tupac, but the mere fact that he expressed a few thoughts beyond the usual cesspool of rap and hip hop doesn’t necessarily make him a profound thinker. However, I have never found him worth the effort for me to develop an informed opinion about his ‘work’ so I’ll have to say I simply don’t know what his life’s output was worth. I have to be skeptical of any claim that he’s some artistic genius until I see real evidence, but I confess I haven’t begun to look at his output.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur
On April 17, 2003, Harvard University co-sponsored an academic symposium entitled “All Eyez on Me: Tupac Shakur and the Search for the Modern Folk Hero.” The speakers discussed a wide range of topics dealing with Shakur’s impact on everything from entertainment to sociology.[61]
Many of the speakers discussed Shakur’s status and public persona, including State University of New York English professor Mark Anthony Neal who gave the talk “Thug Nigga Intellectual: Tupac as Celebrity Gramscian” in which he argued that Shakur was an example of the “organic intellectual” expressing the concerns of a larger group.[62] Professor Neal has also indicated in his writings that the death of Shakur has left a “leadership void amongst hip-hop artists.”[63] Neal further describes Tupac as a “walking contradiction”, a status that allowed him to “make being an intellectual accessible to ordinary people”.
A memorial of Tupac Shakur at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia
A memorial of Tupac Shakur at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia
Professor of Communications Murray Forman, of Northeastern University, spoke of the mythical status surrounding Shakur’s life and death. He addressed the symbolism and mythology surrounding Shakur’s death in his talk entitled “Tupac Shakur: O.G. (Ostensibly Gone)”. Among his findings were that Shakur’s fans have “succeeded in resurrecting Tupac as an ethereal life force”.[64] In “From Thug Life to Legend: Realization of a Black Folk Hero”, Professor of Music at Northeastern University, Emmett Price, compared Shakur’s public image to that of the trickster-figures of African-American folklore which gave rise to the urban “bad-man” persona of the post-slavery period. He ultimately described Shakur as a “prolific artist” who was “driven by a terrible sense of urgency” in a quest to “unify mind, body, and spirit”.[65]
Michael Dyson, University of Pennsylvania Avalon Professor of Humanities and African American Studies and author of the book Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur[52] indicated that Shakur “spoke with brilliance and insight as someone who bears witness to the pain of those who would never have his platform. He told the truth, even as he struggled with the fragments of his identity.”[52] At one Harvard Conference the theme was Shakur’s impact on entertainment, race relations, politics and the “hero/martyr”.[66] In late 1997, the University of California, Berkeley offered a student-led course entitled “History 98: Poetry and History of Tupac Shakur.”[67]
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