Week 10

This was an interesting read, the material was interesting but it was a little dense. The article went to delve into how the brand of rap dubbed "gangster rap" has had an effect on the black community. A lot of people think the lyrics are a "critique of, and criminalization of black youth" and I would tend to agree. A lot of the lyrics incite violence against police or other, often misogynistic or criminal ideas. BUT, a lot of these lyrics are just expressions of youth angst rather than credible threats. Started in LA, mainly with poor or working class African Americans but spread all over the nation with groups like NWA taking the nation by storm. Their famous song "fuck the police" drew national attention for being a highly controversial look into police brutality. But NWA wasn's set on inciting violence, rather they called themselves hood reporters who spoke on the relevant issues. Through the article they went into a ton, from frequent use of racial slurs to gender conflicts in inner city youth. Overall this brand of rap wasn't meant to criminalize behavior or spread violence but was a way for those youth in these areas to express themselves and speak about their lives.

Week 9

This week was interesting because it changed the way I saw the Black Panther Party. I’ve been educated to believe that the Black Panther Party were extremists, brought to believe that by those who are most likely themselves uneducated on this issue. After reading all the points of the Black Panther party I realized their whole purpose was trying to prevent police violence, promote equality in housing, jobs and justice and promote equality in the greater community for mistreated blacks. The points weren’t willy nilly by any means either, each was supported by reasoning and/or solutions. Side note: a decent number of the points in the Black Panther demands were unrealistic, like paying restitution to every black person or freeing all black people from jail. BUT, the point of these demands was to make people see the inequality, which it certainly did. In addition to these points were the rules, holy cow there were a lot of rules about many aspects of daily life. So after reading this my view went from radical extremist to good intentioned and well disciplined members of the community going out trying to make change. The Young Lords……...I’d never heard of them, until now. After reading their plan it seems as though they have a similar plan as the panthers, promote community equality and protecting their people. The Young Lords fell into a similar boat in terms of how realistic their terms were, like liberation of all third world people and community control of land and resources. Overall, what I got from these demands is an understanding. By reading the demands of these groups and the reasoning behind it I got a better perspective on how problems were effecting their lives and what exactly those problems were.

Week 8

This week’s articles followed the trend of continued racism in institutions of law enforcement and imprisonment in the US. The first articles I read were about violence against Native Americans and the #sayhername. These articles were about bringing to light the unfair treatment that so often goes unpublished in popular media, against native Americans and women of color. A lot of the time, it seems, a certain face is assigned to a certain type of violence, and that marginalizes other groups who still experience violence. We see this with the rates of incarceration and police shootings parallel in Native American and Black populations while the face of violence against people of color is always black. As a result, or possibly a cause, of these issues is increased rates of substance abuse, suicide and lowered access to education in Native American populations. One of the articles gave good insight into this by taking a look at the PIC in indigenous California and how native Americans and especially NA women faced and continue to face poor treatment and in some cases downright abuse. The author talks at length about how she was drugged into sleeping all day, only going outside to go to court. Essentially the government was controlling every aspect of Native American life, yet again. This makes itself evident by the fed sticking their nose into Native Americans affairs and doing things like arresting native Americans for fishing on their own land. This unfair system of imprisonment shows itself for other races as well, namely African Americans. The way the article explained it the time just after the civil war was just about the same as the time before. The laws had changed to allow black people to be free so somebody had to think of a way to lock them up again. As a result, many new and often discriminatory laws were established to unfairly target blacks and bolster the southern system of free labor after the emancipation proclamation. That may seem like years and years ago, and it was, the tree may be dead the roots still remain and were seeing evidence of that today. 

Week 7

This week’s articles covered a lot about how different cultures perceive and accept sexual or gender differences that fall outside of certain societies “norms”. Also, this week also covered some parts about intersectionality but I’ll get to that later. With the gender status and feature article as well as the Asian-American Lesbians it sort of went into how gender and sexual identity are established in different cultures and how that can affect sexuality. For the European and Asian-American cultures, gender and the features that go along with it are prescribed at birth. Essentially you grow into this set of behaviors and traits set forth based on gender. But, if you are any point outside the perceived norm, it's cause for scrutiny. In the Asian-American Lesbians article they refer to the lack of any education on sexual orientation as well as the strict family structure and pride as being reasons for someone not coming out, even leaving the community entirely instead of coming out. In addition, when they do come out these women can face discrimination and receive the same stereotypical submissive labels prescribed to their straight counterparts. Wow, that is truly awful, but that’s not a surprise. Many traditional cultures from the middle east to Africa have these archaic beliefs, but one group set itself apart. When I read the part about two spirits in the gender status and features it only further solidified an already existing belief, before we came around Native Americans were doing it right. The Navajo, in particular, had a number of genders and gender/sex categories that coexisted without problems. It wasn’t until the Europeans came around that things in that part of their lives got particularly dicey. Also, I read the joteria article. The interworking of the gay Mexican subculture are interesting but I have far more to say about how I saw Intersectionality in these articles. The subjects of these articles, usually gay people of color, fall under the largest scope of intersectionality. These groups, many of whom would face some form of oppression based on another factor are now are being judged on race, gender/gender norms and sexual orientation. Facing these challenges based on who you are makes life far from a walk in the park. That being said intersectionality in these communities is key. By coming together under a banner for which all underrepresented people, many of whom have their own unique experiences, people can incite change.