April Joyner

Awesome post on hip-hop and gender by loveisthicker. Here’s an excerpt that got me thinking:

When I sit with young Black and Latino men in halfway homes, prisons, and high schools, I listen to them. I once critiqued one of my students for finding Lil Wayne to be his favorite rapper. I said, “But he’s not a very positive role model. He disrespects many women…” To which this young Black man began to express the relationship that felt he and Lil Wayne shared: to struggle, to defy all odds the system set for him to fail, and to financially attain a wealth that put him in the position to be heard. Though he could hear my frustration, he did not directly identify with it. I had to reach further. His conditioning as a young man was far more affected by the failing of a system than that of a Hip Hop artist. The artist was merely, a coping mechanism, a dream and a vision. This does not take responsibility away from the portrayals of artists but it also demands context in our critiques of artists.

If I am ever to reach these young men, how do I first, see where they are coming from? What is their story and how do they get to be who they are? What is invested in our lack of education? Have they ever been loved, truly? What is love to us and how does it differ? How do we hold our brothers accountable without demonizing them? As women, how do we hold ourselves accountable in our critiques of men?

Gene Marks, in a column on Inc.com

…when he made the infamous remark, “You didn’t build that.” Of course, people seized on those words rather than the whole of his speech. That message is very much open for debate—a lot of entrepreneurs think the government impedes rather than encourages the growth of their businesses—but I think it’s a distortion to claim that President Obama thinks business owners aren’t responsible for any of their successes.

kateoplis:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

—

Elizabeth Warren on paying it forward. (Re: this)

Wow (or should I say ouch?). Proof positive that a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Credit: Stephen Crowley, New York Times

Via BagNews Notes and @dglspl.