RAP question.
Out of context: Reply #44
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- blackspade0
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"For millions of young people, all around the world, the face of Black America (and increasingly, Blacks almost everywhere urban) is 'gangsta.'
This is seen in clothes, heard in speech, and even observed in how people walk on the streets. What we are witnessing is the power of culture to move across boundaries, and also, the power of America's entertainment empires to push these images to the farthest reaches of the Earth.
In some ways, it also reflects certain realities of urban life at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. It reflects the continuing power of Black culture to set the parameters of coolness, for to be Black in a society constructed upon the illusion of whiteness, is the ultimate degree of Otherness; the polar opposite.
What has spread, from coast to coast, is nihilism, anger, anti-Black violence, and the economic engine of the drug business, which is but a chemical weapon against Black communal life.
Now, the power of media projects the most mindless image possible of such people. They are mindnumbingly materialistic, sexist, and revel in the imagery of violence against their communities. And, as our loving fascination for things expands, our caring about people decreases. Things matter. Bling matters.
Videos project, not our wealth, but our inherent poverty, for it is only poor people who feel the *need* to flash; for the truly wealthy have learned that to flash is the sign of the nouveau riche; those to whom wealth is newly acquired.
Moreover, there is a deadly twist in the lure of gangsta life; it opens the door to prison, or the grave, and feeds the containment industry -- the prison industrial complex -- the institutional descendant of slave plantations, that feeds on Black pain and Black loss.
Meanwhile, the biggest Gangsta on the planet, the U.S. Empire, gobbles nations like bon-bons; invades countries like crossing the street, and treats the Constitution like toilet paper.
Now, *that's* gangsta!
Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal * "