Archive for May 10th, 2004

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Mary Mitchell writes about something that’s just baffling to me. There are parents who are actually out there attacking kids who aren’t their own. As everybody knows, back in the day a friend’s parents had the right to lay it on you, if they caught you messing up too, but this ain’t that. One of the examples she cites is that of a boy who lost a fight on day 1. On day 2, Butt-Kicked comes back to school with his parents. When Nice with His Hands comes in, Butt-Kicked jumps on him. Then Butt-Kicked’s Mom jumps in while the pop watches. Now that’s just crazy. Here are some problems I have with this– and these are some initial reactions:

1. What was the teacher doing during all this? Could be that the pop was holding the teacher back, but that’s problematic in either case
2. Are they intentionally raising a punk? Is his mom gonna come around when he gets his butt kicked in high school, when the boys are bigger than her?
3. How immature is the mom, that she has to physically accost a 13-year old?
4. Is Nice With His Hands’ mom gonna look for Butt-Kicked’s mom? If she does, is it a lock that NWHH’s mom will beat BK’s mom?
5. How old are these parents? I’m thinking that many parenting difficulties arise because of the chronological proximity of parent to child. I believe that this manifests itself in a variety of forms, but it’s very visible at school. Young parents are less likely to do well in school, and therefore less likely to hold education in high esteem. (I recognize the chicken-egg conundrum there) Not valuing education themselves, the probably don’t stress the importance of education to their own children, who make fools of themselves and make learning difficult for other students. Same thing goes for actual content. If the mama can’t multiply and don’t care that she can’t, it’s likely that the baby ain’t gon’ be able to multiply either.
6. Paternal involvement means nothing if he’s a jackass.

They’re reopening the Emmett Till Murder Case. In times past, I probably would have been really excited about this, but at this point, I’m not sure what there is to be gained. I don’t know that there’s a political motive at work, but the timing seems to be awfully convenient. I would imagine that Black folks are supposed to be happy that an attempt is being made to right a monumental historic wrong, but I think we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Nowadays, it’s not some renegade rednecks Emmett would have to look out for (or maybe he just wouldn’t have to be as concerned), it’s those cats in the ‘hood. Like Biggie said, things done changed.

This is an accident. I wasn’t really meaning to change the template, I just wanted to see what another one would look like. After all that, though, I don’t think it’s all that bad. I’m just trying to make sure everything that’s supposed to be here is here.

At any rate, this is finals week, so I may or may not have too much going on. If I do get some writing done, here are some potential topics:

- The offense of the gospel
- New Paradigm, pt 2
- hip-hop generation gap
- misogyny in hip-hop (I keep putting it off, but I need to do it.)