Tuesday, January 12, 2010
What happened?
June 1, 1965. This is the day that I became of member of this society. My early life was relatively normal - minus a father figure after the age of six - and I enjoyed what I would call a fairly typical upbringing for that era. After my mom and dad divorced, my sister, my mom and I moved in with my granddad and from these two people, I learned things that would eventually become a mainstay in my mental and social evolution. I was introduced to printed material at an early age. I can remember the time that an encyclopedia salesman - yeah I know that sounds antiquated - came to the door. My mom knew that I had an insatiable appetite for books and even though she really couldn't afford the books, she ordered a set anyway. I spent the next two weeks leafing through every page of those books and it was like a kid in a candy store but the books were the candy. My sister and I had our share of spankings and other light forms of punishment when actions by us presented themselves to my grand dad and mother. The entire neighborhood was composed of mothers, fathers, widows and widowers and these people were extensions of discipline to every parent's children in that neighborhood. We were raised in an environment of respect and discipline.
As Earth,Wind & Fire so famously chimed in the song After The Love is Gone, "something happened along the way" and what happened is one of the most disturbing and frightening aspects of the failure to properly rear our children. The underlying problem i believe, is the absence of a father figure in a large percentage of households. This is especially profound in African-American communities. I remember watching a Chris Rock stand-up soecial once and in one of his jokes he stated that "there's nothing worse that you can tell a kid than imma tell your daddy." I personally know the importance of that statement because I could get away with a lot with my mom but I never dared test my grand dad with anything out of the way. Single - parent households can sometimes become a recipe in disaster for some children. Now don't get my wrong, I know of some single-parent households where the children developed into productive citizens but it's not always the case. I sometimes get depressed when I encounter negative actions of our young people. I become sad because I know what happened to them and what's really perplexing is the fact that they're growing up not knowing that what they do is not normal.
"Spare the rod and spoil the child." Now do I really have to say anything more after this statement? Well, I will because this is another important factor in child-rearing that was so conveniently abolished by the "concerned" people of our society. As far back as I can remember, I have always received spankings at home, at the hands of friend's parents in the neighborhood and especially at school. Today you can no longer spank a child at school and what's really silly to me is the fact that in some states, if you discipline YOUR child in YOUR house you may face jail time if the child reports you to the police. Ok, that can be labeled as child abuse but let me get this straight, because there are some sick people out there who do abuse their children, everybody has to pay? All it takes is one call by that child to the police and that's it. You go to jail. Children know this and they sometimes use it to their advantage. So what do you have? I kid that knows that the law is basically on his or her side and he or she makes this known to the single parent who threatens them with discipline. Hmmm. The children are conditioned to gradually lose respect for that single parent and that in itself materializes into a domino effect. No respect for the parents at home evolves into no for anyone outside the home. I was reading the newspaper this past Sunday and there was a story about a child slapping a teacher at a school here in Memphis. Can you believe that? The kid actually slapped the teacher. Now where do you think that kid got the nerve to do that? It all starts at home. I thought to myself that if the kid is doing something like this at school, then what the hell is he/she doing at home? There's no way in the world that me or anyone that I attended school with would have ever done anything like that. We thought about it but, hey, discipline kept us in line.
The media has to be the most dangerous form of negative social conditioning known to man. I don't watch BET anymore. BET was once one of my favorite channels, now - like so much of television - it's been dumb downed. I used to enjoy watching BET News with Jacqui Reed because not only was she a beautiful black woman but she talked about issues that we would not hear of otherwise. After BET was sold to Viacom, the news was eliminated. Anything educational was canceled. Now all you see is scantily -clad women dancing to music that in most instances degrades them, rap and hip-hop music with baseless and materialistic content. I didn't see any of this in my teen years. There was rap but it didn't glorify violence. Eric B and Rakim never called a woman a bitch. Run DMC never uttered fuck the police. Curtis Blow never rapped about 22s and dope. Do you actually think it's possible or do you anticipate an intellectual, thought-provoking rap from Lil Boosie? I think rapper Tupac Shakur was the best thing since sliced bread but he wouldn't be as famous if he just did "Brenda's Got a Baby" type music. YOU GOTTA B THUG! Forgive them father for they know not what they do. I'm not into rap and hip hop like I used to be. Today's rap music is just a bunch of repetitious simple-minded materialistic garbage. The only bright spot in whats left of this scourge on our society is Rapper Lupe Fiasco. This dude is deep. There's one song of his entitled "Dumb It Down" and in this song he raps about his defiance of the "norm" in rap music. Since discovering this cat, I've listened to just about every song he's released and I could count the profanity in them all with a peace sign.
You know, people always seem to have remedies for any problems in our society but we have yet to address the most important commodity in our social existence and that is our young people and the devastatingly negative social conditioning that they encounter on a daily basis. It's all so sickening. I know because I come from a time when things were different. Is it possible to go back in time?
As Earth,Wind & Fire so famously chimed in the song After The Love is Gone, "something happened along the way" and what happened is one of the most disturbing and frightening aspects of the failure to properly rear our children. The underlying problem i believe, is the absence of a father figure in a large percentage of households. This is especially profound in African-American communities. I remember watching a Chris Rock stand-up soecial once and in one of his jokes he stated that "there's nothing worse that you can tell a kid than imma tell your daddy." I personally know the importance of that statement because I could get away with a lot with my mom but I never dared test my grand dad with anything out of the way. Single - parent households can sometimes become a recipe in disaster for some children. Now don't get my wrong, I know of some single-parent households where the children developed into productive citizens but it's not always the case. I sometimes get depressed when I encounter negative actions of our young people. I become sad because I know what happened to them and what's really perplexing is the fact that they're growing up not knowing that what they do is not normal.
"Spare the rod and spoil the child." Now do I really have to say anything more after this statement? Well, I will because this is another important factor in child-rearing that was so conveniently abolished by the "concerned" people of our society. As far back as I can remember, I have always received spankings at home, at the hands of friend's parents in the neighborhood and especially at school. Today you can no longer spank a child at school and what's really silly to me is the fact that in some states, if you discipline YOUR child in YOUR house you may face jail time if the child reports you to the police. Ok, that can be labeled as child abuse but let me get this straight, because there are some sick people out there who do abuse their children, everybody has to pay? All it takes is one call by that child to the police and that's it. You go to jail. Children know this and they sometimes use it to their advantage. So what do you have? I kid that knows that the law is basically on his or her side and he or she makes this known to the single parent who threatens them with discipline. Hmmm. The children are conditioned to gradually lose respect for that single parent and that in itself materializes into a domino effect. No respect for the parents at home evolves into no for anyone outside the home. I was reading the newspaper this past Sunday and there was a story about a child slapping a teacher at a school here in Memphis. Can you believe that? The kid actually slapped the teacher. Now where do you think that kid got the nerve to do that? It all starts at home. I thought to myself that if the kid is doing something like this at school, then what the hell is he/she doing at home? There's no way in the world that me or anyone that I attended school with would have ever done anything like that. We thought about it but, hey, discipline kept us in line.
The media has to be the most dangerous form of negative social conditioning known to man. I don't watch BET anymore. BET was once one of my favorite channels, now - like so much of television - it's been dumb downed. I used to enjoy watching BET News with Jacqui Reed because not only was she a beautiful black woman but she talked about issues that we would not hear of otherwise. After BET was sold to Viacom, the news was eliminated. Anything educational was canceled. Now all you see is scantily -clad women dancing to music that in most instances degrades them, rap and hip-hop music with baseless and materialistic content. I didn't see any of this in my teen years. There was rap but it didn't glorify violence. Eric B and Rakim never called a woman a bitch. Run DMC never uttered fuck the police. Curtis Blow never rapped about 22s and dope. Do you actually think it's possible or do you anticipate an intellectual, thought-provoking rap from Lil Boosie? I think rapper Tupac Shakur was the best thing since sliced bread but he wouldn't be as famous if he just did "Brenda's Got a Baby" type music. YOU GOTTA B THUG! Forgive them father for they know not what they do. I'm not into rap and hip hop like I used to be. Today's rap music is just a bunch of repetitious simple-minded materialistic garbage. The only bright spot in whats left of this scourge on our society is Rapper Lupe Fiasco. This dude is deep. There's one song of his entitled "Dumb It Down" and in this song he raps about his defiance of the "norm" in rap music. Since discovering this cat, I've listened to just about every song he's released and I could count the profanity in them all with a peace sign.
You know, people always seem to have remedies for any problems in our society but we have yet to address the most important commodity in our social existence and that is our young people and the devastatingly negative social conditioning that they encounter on a daily basis. It's all so sickening. I know because I come from a time when things were different. Is it possible to go back in time?
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