appropo - Kanye West looks like a level 1 RPG character

Amen, amen, amen. I work with several school districts. This month I’m in a mostly white, middle-class/wealthy district class. Last month, I was in classes in the racially diverse, poor district. The idea that a bunch of second graders who are below reading level should be able to overcome being hungry, not always…

I wonder how many of these New Blacks drive themselves.

The acute accent in Raven-Symoné’s name makes me so crazy. How can it be silent with an accent? I know I need to let it go, but I just can’t.

Worth noting that Kanye had a solidly middle-class childhood, even accompanying his english professor mother to China and attending school there while she taught at Nanjing University. Not exactly a circumscribed, slum existence.

What’s worse is that I think this is also damaging for people who idolize them, see their lives, and consider that something worthy of aspiring to.

If I told my dad any of this (who is Native), he’d laugh in my face. Then be disappointed.

ANYone =/= EVERYone.

Hmm. A cognitive disconnect? Maybe. A careerist connection? Absolutely!

From where I stand, the “New Black” has been around for at least as long as Bill Cosby and Sammy Davis Jr., although not under that name. It’s simply “black people that white people don’t find threatening.” I can think of some possible determining factors — fame, affluence, even “talking white” or “acting white”.

I thought the same thing, but then I have to say that one line, “The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful” always sort of rubbed me the wrong way. Not to say that that I don’t believe in non-violence. I do. But in the context of that song it always sort of sounded like that whole “New Black” if you’re good, if you don’t…

Yes.

ah okay

Common has some shares in Starbucks and he went on the daily show around the time the race together campaign came out.

my thoughts exactly

is there kind of a weird cognitive disconnect between what Common is saying here and the song he wrote for Selma?

Chris Rock’s documentation of his being stopped by the police for driving while black seems like a pretty strong argument against some part of the “New Black” idea.

I didn’t realize Common said this kind of thing?? Admittedly I don’t know much about him beyond his music (which I love), but he seemed to take such a stand when Selma came out and with his “Glory” song, so it surprises me that he would say things like that. But perhaps that was just about publicity....