Deep Thought: Is anything acceptable?

As funny as this strip was to me there was an undeniable truth to it.  Lately it does seem like black people will accept just about anything.  From music to television to politics to the way we raise our kids we seem to accept just about anything (For the record I don’t have any kids I’m speaking collectively).  Why is that?  (I always ask this question in hopes that somebody will leave me their opinion lol)

When it comes to music the majority of black youth have turned into superficial listeners.  You can understand that better if you read my hip hop post.  We are so hypnotized by the melodic beats that are presented to us that we do not realize that the lyrics are poisoning our soul.  Ok, I listen to all kinds of music; rap, pop, rock and roll, alternative (Maroon 5 is that issue), oldies etc.  I have a very eclectic taste of music and it shows.  When I listen to rap music I listen to it rap music.  I try to catch on to the style of the artist, see if he uses any figurative language or how he tells a story, I don’t try to apply it to my everyday life.  Some impressionable youth do and that causes problems.  Everybody wants to be a thug but nobody wants the consequences that come along with it.  On television it looks appealing and on the radio it sounds good but in real life jail time and death are not options you want to chose.  The way it is glorified in mainstream rap to kids sets up a mindset in children that they feel they have to imitate a rapper to be successful.  I lie to you not.  I had this 8 year old kid come up to me free styling telling me about child support and the cops.  Try to tell me I’m wrong.

For a lot of white people all they know about black people is what they see on television and hear on the radio.  When you watch TV what do you see?  Television has changed drastically from the Cosby Show and Family Matters, where each episode would have message along with a comedic element to it, to The Parkers and Method and Red, where the focus is solely entertaining the audience by exploiting racial stereotypes.  Method and Red may be the best example of this.  The storyline was basically these two black guys move from the ghetto to an upscale white neighborhood where there white neighbors try to get them evicted.  This show was by far the most stereotypical show I have ever seen and I wonder how it got on the air.  It viewed black people as loud, ghetto, uncivilized and uneducated.  Thank God the show was short lived but in its short life it managed to give people who have had no prior encounter with blacks a false image to how black people live. 

Final Words:

Even though the comic strip may have been a little extreme there is truth to it.  If we continue to accept anything as ok it might turn out like in “Finding Nemo” where the fish’s parents saw Marlin, Nemo’s dad, realized he was a clown fish and expected him to be funny when he wasn’t.