Thursday, April 08, 2004
i can't resist
this is in reb's profile (and check her april 5 entry):
Help out a girl with journalist's block!
I'm trying to do an article on Asian American youth culture -- specifically as it relates to azns and the Internet, but any variety will do. My Park Avenue-residing wealthy Jewish female professor thinks AA culture is just white culture (or, occasionally, an imitation of black culture). What do you guys think? Sound off! Give me an angle for this story -- I need specifics to convince her.
next, you gotta go read kat's april 7 entry/response to all this foolishness...
and now, for a few of my thoughts.....
well, kat did a good job listing a number of things off the top of her head, and being that the one thing i'm not is asian, i don't know that i can add too much to it in my current state. i'm just gonna supply the auca indians from ecuador (they're a fairly un-westernized people who killed a group of missionaries, including jim eliot, in 1955) as another example for her list of indigenous people groups that have yet to become wholly inundated by western culture, whatever that is. and i'm only going to claim credit for adding the info on opium so that, in the off chance that reb ever reads this, she will know that i too contributed to the deconstruction of said professor's extremely flawed cultural understanding (or lack thereof). gotta stand by my girl, especially since she's right.
all that is to say that kat is correct in her basic thesis that there is no culture, outside of the aforementioned isolated populations, that has not had contact with and borrowed ideas and customs from another. there is a positive (unscientific) corrolation between how modern and mainstream said culture is and how much it comes into contact with other cultures & borrows from them. looking again at "white" america (in the terms of our professor NOT-friend), there are tons of modern instances where the dominant white culture has borrowed and assimilated aspects of other people groups into it's own. kat's list is much more extensive, and i'm sure that's partly due to the fact that her wheels are spinning much faster out of indignation, but i can think of two salient, continuous and contemporary examples of borrowing from the african-american culture:
1) music - this can really be developed into several subgroups, one for each type of music (jazz, blues, rock & roll, and more recently r&b and hip hop). from the black creole culture in new orleans to original jazz greats such as thelonius monk, duke ellington and miles davis, from jimi hendrix's innovative experimentation with the waa pedal that lead to modern distortion techniques among mainstream hard rock and grunge bands, from kool & the gang, the sugar hill gang, nwa, run dmc, and countless other inventors of rap to eminem (props) and wannabes (remember vanilla ice? snow? don't front like you don't know what i'm talking about...informer). even pop, the mainstream of mainstream white america, would not be what it is today without who? michael jackson. and no matter what he looks like now, he was black back in the 70s when it all started. so britney, n'sync, westlife, and all the rest of you suckers can thank him if you can catch him between reconstructive surgeries.
2) or we could mention white suburbia being filled with teenagers walking around in fubu, rocawear, sean john, and other hip hop clothing lines. the general style of baggy clothing, while not originated by any single group, was definitely brought back in style by the hip hop/gansta/ex-con (they didn't have belts in prison for hopefully obvious reasons). when i was in middle school, baggy clothes were the sign of drug dealers and generally delinquent behavior. now it's considered abnormal among the cast of 7th heaven if your pants don't hang halfway off your butt.
i don't like to assume (cuz that only makes an ass outta u & me) but i'd be willing to bet that this professor is some over-educated liberal thinker. this is what happens when you spend all your time reading, writing, and being intellectual....you lose touch with reality, start living in a fantasy and dream up all these ridiculous and illogical ideas and 'ways of living' that don't function in the real world. people like her are the ones who come with with darwinism, modernism, post-modernism/relativism, existentialism, yada yada yada, blah blah blah, and whatever other crap philosphy you can think of. they don't work. and man, there is nothing that irks me more than someone who thinks they have a handle on reality and know what's going on when really, they have no clue. seems like the upper east side has made someone a little too comfortable.
what i would really like to know is, what does this prof think "white" culture is? is it "mainstream" america (which, i think we all know, is really an amalgam of cultures from around the entire world)? is it england? france? spain? france? germany? russia? any number of eastern or southern european cultures? is it europe as a whole? i sure hope not, cuz that would be one fractured, divisive, and self-hating culture. no way that definition would fly among cultural anthropologists, i'm sure. i'd be interested in hearing her definition, if for nothing else to confirm my suspicions that there's really no logical basis for her original comments.
i realize half of this addresses the original topic and the other half became a pseudo-summary of what i think about the philosophical basis of modern secular society (it's garbage, in case you need a refresher). i also realize this has done little to nothing in regard to answering the original question of finding a topic that the prof might accept, but i would contend that white culture cant stand up to the nebulous definition the prof has provided, so there's no way she can deny reb the opportunity to write about asian (or is it white? or black? i'm so confused....) culture.
symphonic melodies: the fugees - fu-gee-la
brain eats: i'm tired of thinking right now
this is in reb's profile (and check her april 5 entry):
Help out a girl with journalist's block!
I'm trying to do an article on Asian American youth culture -- specifically as it relates to azns and the Internet, but any variety will do. My Park Avenue-residing wealthy Jewish female professor thinks AA culture is just white culture (or, occasionally, an imitation of black culture). What do you guys think? Sound off! Give me an angle for this story -- I need specifics to convince her.
next, you gotta go read kat's april 7 entry/response to all this foolishness...
and now, for a few of my thoughts.....
well, kat did a good job listing a number of things off the top of her head, and being that the one thing i'm not is asian, i don't know that i can add too much to it in my current state. i'm just gonna supply the auca indians from ecuador (they're a fairly un-westernized people who killed a group of missionaries, including jim eliot, in 1955) as another example for her list of indigenous people groups that have yet to become wholly inundated by western culture, whatever that is. and i'm only going to claim credit for adding the info on opium so that, in the off chance that reb ever reads this, she will know that i too contributed to the deconstruction of said professor's extremely flawed cultural understanding (or lack thereof). gotta stand by my girl, especially since she's right.
all that is to say that kat is correct in her basic thesis that there is no culture, outside of the aforementioned isolated populations, that has not had contact with and borrowed ideas and customs from another. there is a positive (unscientific) corrolation between how modern and mainstream said culture is and how much it comes into contact with other cultures & borrows from them. looking again at "white" america (in the terms of our professor NOT-friend), there are tons of modern instances where the dominant white culture has borrowed and assimilated aspects of other people groups into it's own. kat's list is much more extensive, and i'm sure that's partly due to the fact that her wheels are spinning much faster out of indignation, but i can think of two salient, continuous and contemporary examples of borrowing from the african-american culture:
1) music - this can really be developed into several subgroups, one for each type of music (jazz, blues, rock & roll, and more recently r&b and hip hop). from the black creole culture in new orleans to original jazz greats such as thelonius monk, duke ellington and miles davis, from jimi hendrix's innovative experimentation with the waa pedal that lead to modern distortion techniques among mainstream hard rock and grunge bands, from kool & the gang, the sugar hill gang, nwa, run dmc, and countless other inventors of rap to eminem (props) and wannabes (remember vanilla ice? snow? don't front like you don't know what i'm talking about...informer). even pop, the mainstream of mainstream white america, would not be what it is today without who? michael jackson. and no matter what he looks like now, he was black back in the 70s when it all started. so britney, n'sync, westlife, and all the rest of you suckers can thank him if you can catch him between reconstructive surgeries.
2) or we could mention white suburbia being filled with teenagers walking around in fubu, rocawear, sean john, and other hip hop clothing lines. the general style of baggy clothing, while not originated by any single group, was definitely brought back in style by the hip hop/gansta/ex-con (they didn't have belts in prison for hopefully obvious reasons). when i was in middle school, baggy clothes were the sign of drug dealers and generally delinquent behavior. now it's considered abnormal among the cast of 7th heaven if your pants don't hang halfway off your butt.
i don't like to assume (cuz that only makes an ass outta u & me) but i'd be willing to bet that this professor is some over-educated liberal thinker. this is what happens when you spend all your time reading, writing, and being intellectual....you lose touch with reality, start living in a fantasy and dream up all these ridiculous and illogical ideas and 'ways of living' that don't function in the real world. people like her are the ones who come with with darwinism, modernism, post-modernism/relativism, existentialism, yada yada yada, blah blah blah, and whatever other crap philosphy you can think of. they don't work. and man, there is nothing that irks me more than someone who thinks they have a handle on reality and know what's going on when really, they have no clue. seems like the upper east side has made someone a little too comfortable.
what i would really like to know is, what does this prof think "white" culture is? is it "mainstream" america (which, i think we all know, is really an amalgam of cultures from around the entire world)? is it england? france? spain? france? germany? russia? any number of eastern or southern european cultures? is it europe as a whole? i sure hope not, cuz that would be one fractured, divisive, and self-hating culture. no way that definition would fly among cultural anthropologists, i'm sure. i'd be interested in hearing her definition, if for nothing else to confirm my suspicions that there's really no logical basis for her original comments.
i realize half of this addresses the original topic and the other half became a pseudo-summary of what i think about the philosophical basis of modern secular society (it's garbage, in case you need a refresher). i also realize this has done little to nothing in regard to answering the original question of finding a topic that the prof might accept, but i would contend that white culture cant stand up to the nebulous definition the prof has provided, so there's no way she can deny reb the opportunity to write about asian (or is it white? or black? i'm so confused....) culture.
symphonic melodies: the fugees - fu-gee-la
brain eats: i'm tired of thinking right now
