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Thread 4461

Thread ID: 4461 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2003-01-15

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Hereward [OP]

2003-01-15 16:59 | User Profile

Shakespeare? Dead white male. Melville? Irrelevant. Hip hop is where it's at. We be keepin' it real, y'all.

[url=http://www.vdare.com/malkin/hiphop.htm]http://www.vdare.com/malkin/hiphop.htm[/url]

Hip-Hop Hogwash In The Schools By Michelle Malkin

Yo, yo, yo. The Los Angeles Times reports this week that teachers across the country are using rap music to “make classical literature relevant.”

When I was in school, we studied the major conflicts of “Man vs. Self,” “Man vs. Nature,” and “Man vs. Society” by reading Shakespeare, Melville, and Hawthorne. We copied famous quotations in our marble composition notebooks, memorized verses and soliloquies that have stood the test of time, and immersed ourselves in the creative genius of men and women who lived and loved centuries before us.

But universal themes and great books, which have challenged, enriched, and inspired generations of students around the world, no longer hold sway in the modern academy.

At Crenshaw High School, the major conflict being studied is “Man vs. Ho.” The revered bard is dead rapper Tupac Shakur. Times reporter Erika Hayasaki enthusiastically describes how English teacher Patrick Camangian got his students talking about the “lyrics” by the late Shakur from an uplifting opus titled “Shorty Wanna Be a Thug:" Blaze up, gettin' with hos through my pager.

Reports Hayasaki: “A lively discussion ensued about sexism, racism and how degrading terms such as "ho" -- slang for "whore" -- can be used to dehumanize and divide people. In hip-hop terms, the students were feelin' it.”

[Reading, 'Riting and Rap, By Erika Hayasaki, LA Times Jan 14, 2003.]

It’s bad enough that the demented scribblings of various hoodlums are being peddled in public high schools as literature. Even worse are the “academic” courses being taught in elite colleges.

Here’s a recent syllabus I found on the Internet from Dr. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, who teaches at the University of Connecticut’s Department of History. The course: “Hip-Hop: Politics and Popular Culture in Late 20th Century United States.” Among the educational objectives: “to discuss, at a college-level proficiency, the contributions of various artists on hip-hop and the significance of the art form in the United States and abroad.”

One unit on “development and evolution” focuses on “breaking, popping, graffiti, [and] colloquialisms, with an emphasis on the great minds of “Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, [and] Afrika Bambaattaa.” Another penetrating unit is devoted to hip-hop’s nouveau riche, and lectures on such important historical figures in rap history as “ Lil' Kim, Black Star, Puff Daddy, The Roots, Cash Money Millionaires, [and] Jay-Z.”

Dr. Ogbar is no softie, however. Students must produce a “creative writing paper” that develops a 200-250 word rhyme. He provides a helpful example and analysis:

MCs think I'm like an artery because I bring the flow, but I'm really just vain so in case you don't know, I put out wack MCs like yo momma put out the booty You think you a big baller, but you the smallest like Rudy…

Dr. Ogbar expounds on the

“use of simile to insult the opponent by comparing him/her to the smallest child, Rudy, on the popular 80s sitcom ‘The Cosby Show.’ It can also refer to Rudy, the popular 1993 movie about a small football player, thereby offering a double entendre with idiomatic slang ‘baller’ (an athlete; also used in reference to someone with wealth and power). The final multi-layered reference is to the smallest character of the 1970s cartoon, ‘ Fat Albert.’ This affirms the humiliation of the opponent and offers a witty popular culture reference.”

Another syllabus I found for an Afro-American Studies course at Harvard University, “Hiphop America: Power, Politics and the Word,” introduces young scholars to the “Hiphop ideology: Representin’, Comin’ Correct, and Keepin’ It Real.” And at Pennsylvania State University, I discovered, students were required to attend a “Mos Def Concert” and write “a page concerning Hip Hop Literacies that you observe at the performance.” Also mandatory: in-class listening sessions of “old school rap” and in-class “viewing of various female rapper’s (sic) videos.”

Welcome to the morass of self-absorbed multiculturalism, where urban “relevance” is the be-all and end-all of the intellectual experience. Where teachers are listening partners, rather than imparters of knowledge. Where Fat Albert and Prince Hamlet are equals. Where education has been reduced to the false art of “feelin’ it” and “keepin’ it real.”

Robbie

2003-01-15 21:15 | User Profile

This shouldn't come as a surprise since recently, a black professor of sorts said that hip-hop had supplanted "civil rights" in the psyche of blacks.

Roy Batty

2003-01-15 21:36 | User Profile

I wonder how Malkin's remarks would be received if she were white. I'm also wondering when white males will be pushed entirely out of the mainstream press. The article Malkin refers to is from the L.A. Times, and the writer of that article is of Japanese extraction. The L.A. Times is loaded with jewish writers (yeah, no surprise) - those that aren't jewish are almost exclusively black, Asian, latino, etc.

Even the articles on the right side of the spectrum are increasingly coming from the other side. In that, I mean the powers that be are trying to use "safe" minorities as some type of safety valve for whites, to show us that these people are on "our side". I belive Malkin's husband is jewish, by the way. No small aid in securing media work. Coupled with being Asian (Filipino), she's ready made for consumption by the unwashed masses.

This is not to deride valid points she makes ... but look at who is allowed to express these ideas - in not too hard hitting fashion - these days. She is syndicated around the country in mainstream papers. How many mainstream, big city papers are running insightful articles by Sobran or Francis?

Hereward

2003-01-15 21:49 | User Profile

Good points, Roy; mainstream conservatism uses minorities as mouthpieces on certain issues because white males are considered racist until proven otherwise. And on the subject of minority control of the press: I understand that the choice of issues and presentation on the front page of the New York Times is mostly controlled - sometimes entirely controlled - by homosexuals.

Robbie

2003-01-15 23:51 | User Profile

I strongly believe that White Males cannot speak their opinions in ANY paper, regardless of its leanings. Malkin may expose the dreck that happens in America, but, as Roy says, why not a Joe Sobran or a Sam Francis?? The reason is because they're White Men. Malkin is no different from David Horowitz. True, the bozos at the book chain may have purposedly called his book "Hating WHITNEY", but because he is Jewish, he was able to write that book. Michael Hoffman II wrote a book about the degenerate state of TV and how its anti-White agenda is exposed, but you cannot find that one in a Barnes and Noble. Oh, I forgot; aside from that fact that he's a Goy, he is also a revisionist historian (but not a Leftist one).

You will not see a White Male on any of these talk shows speaking the same things that a Michelle Malkin will bring up. They have been trained for too long that there is nothing worse than being "racist" and/or a "hatemonger". (And we know how Whites would NEVER want to be refered to by those terms).

White Males cannot depend on any kind of mainstream press, and that's the reality of it. After reading about the on-air debacle between John Kasich (FNC) and Matt Hale, do you think another White Male can speak his mind without having foam spewn onto him by the media pundits??

naBaron

2003-01-16 03:35 | User Profile

When I was in High School, we had a day in English class where we went over the lyrics to Genesis' "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight", was acutally pretty instructive, since it was pretty regular poetry.

Of course, we did real poetry first, and Phil Collins did not use m-f'er and bee-yotch once, much less every other word.

N.B. Forrest

2003-01-16 18:00 | User Profile

"It can also refer to Rudy, the popular 1993 movie about a small football player..."

A small WHITE football player, "Doctor". That's why the nigras find the reference so insultingly funny.

Marcus Porcius Cato

2003-01-18 01:13 | User Profile

[A small WHITE football player, "Doctor". That's why the nigras find the reference so insultingly funny. ]

Kinda like when PBS runs for the gazillionth time that same grainy newsreeel featuring unapologetic white men, in uniform no less, hosing down the hooting and screeching critters at the house of monkeys in Selma (or is it Birmingham?). I find the ensuing watersports showcasing the airborne gambols of the overly exuberant gravity defyin' air nigras complete with full two and a half reverse triple Rufus to be the unfailing harbinger of a interminable train of gut splitting guffaws that immobilizes me until the cold splash of a bucket full of realizations of present day realities returns me to my normal quiescent state of sober and reflective gravitas.

Hereward

2003-01-18 01:43 | User Profile

Do I detect a whiff of sarcasm, there, WM? :D

Faust

2003-01-18 05:50 | User Profile

I fear I do not any reason to get upset over this kind of thing. I looks like a cheap shot at an easy target to me. In other words-Neoconish! The school in NY and LA are hell holes everyone alreadly knows this. You could write many articles making fun of them or attacking them. But what's the point?

il ragno

2003-01-18 11:28 | User Profile

**You could write many articles making fun of them or attacking them. But what's the point? **

Don't discount the power - or the viciousness - of satire and sarcasm. You may not be able to recruit your buddy to your political views if you exclusively present them in a loud angry voice, punctuated with fist-slams on the table. The fear-conditioning is usually too thorough for that sort of breakthrough.

But you can break down the conditioning by getting him to laugh at the ludicrous holy icons his conditioning has taught him to worship. Emailing articles like Malkin's to loved ones and associates with an added sentence or two of barbed commentary kinda forces them to guffaw involuntarily at the Holy Negro. I myself like watching the local news with friends. Guaranteed there will be some lurid crime story from the ghetto featuring interview footage with members of Da Black Community....a perfect oportunity to vocally respond to the tv set in a ludicrous Kingfish or Rochester voice. The reaction will always be the same: giggling laughter, followed by "That is so racist/wrong/mean." Ignore the comment; the comment is the conditioning. The laughter was spontaneous and real. The laughter is the hairline crack in the conditioning - the first cut forming over your opponent's eye - that tells you they know the conventional wisdom is fairy-tale bullshit, but they don't feel safe in openly acknowledging it. Yet.

To return to the boxing analogy - what do you do at that point? Quit because the first solid right you landed didn't knock the other guy out? Or do you go to work on that bleeding cut? Same idea here. They won't allow paleos/WNs a meaningful platform to rouse the public with fiery oratory, but fiery oratory usually doesn't work unless everyone's already starving. Better to tear down the Propasphere from the inside with savage mockery and derision.