my old white homies...

[R_P_A_S]

I grew up in Florida, now I live on the west coast. I recently saw some pictures of some friends of mine from back in 1996 to 2002. all my white friends i grew up with. some where close homies some were just people I knew. they were alright guys. I mean we all knew each other and were friends. BUT lately this guys now got tattoos,shaved heads and gold, and platinum teeth. I always thought that particular look appealed more to blacks. anyways I think they look ridicolous and It bothers me to a certain extent. they even use the words "nigga" to adress each other and others.

last fall when i visited florida i noticed a complete change in their attitude, speech and look. as if they were "trying to be black" nothing wrong with "trying to be black" but I dont think thats what being black is all about. obviously they have some sort of identity crisis going on this guys. or just lack culture.

do you think is fucked up of my part to dislike them? because I just cant stand them. not because "they wanna be black" but i guess because they look stupid and i feel they are ignorant. than again I, not associating this look they trying to immitate with real blacks. I dont know guys. what do yall think? how do we lefties feel about this kind of people?

[Janus]

how do we lefties feel about this kind of people?

They're simply trying to follow certain trends of clothing and behavior which they find appealing and interesting. Of course, there is always the chance that it is a phase depending on who is doing it.

It really has more to do with the hip hop culture and looking "cool" than anything racial in nature.

[La Comédie Noire]

I think anyone who takes on that attitude is suffering from a lack of personality. I don't like to call it "being black" though i like to call it "what they tell you is being black". I know many black people who don't act like that at all, some have gone so far, and i agree, to call it acting stupid.

So inconclusion i think the attitude your talking about is being forced on the black man by the media to keep him down.

As for you deciding not hanging out with them it's okay. Your not doing it because of racial issues your just doing it because you dont like the new personality.

last fall when i visited florida i noticed a complete change in their attitude, speech and look. as if they were "trying to be black" nothing wrong with "trying to be black" but I dont think thats what being black is all about. obviously they have some sort of identity crisis going on this guys. or just lack culture.

very well put.

[Raisa]

Hahahahahahahaha hahaha.

I LOVE it.

[Hiero]

You need to do what Chappelle did in a skit. Drop them off at a poor black community, and tell them to go hang with their homies.

[rouchambeau]

A naive attempt to address their own privilege?

[Rawthentic]

I doubt that is the case. I believe that as a comrade said, it is based on the hip-hop culture and on fitting in a t school and amongst peers. Sometimes feel like punching the individuals that do this, especially the non-blacks that address themselves as "niggas", when it is a racist term that even blacks should not use in my opinion since it is self degenerating.

[Ander]

I find this extremely annoying. A couple of guys in my grade act the same way...they say "fool" after every sentence, say "dawg" and "homie" and all that bullshit. It's clearly all an act because they only speak that way amongst each other but when they talk to me, for example, the "dawg" is replaced with "dude" or the "fool" with "man."

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Hiero@Aug 13 2006, 06:54 AM
You need to do what Chappelle did in a skit. Drop them off at a poor black community, and tell them to go hang with their homies.

G-G-G-get out of my car that was a funny skit

[which doctor]

Are you a White middle-class American from suburbia? Do you want to be?

With an open mind and a few hundred dollars you can obtain the look and feel of a young, urban Black or Latino gangsta. With all the new fashion lines coming out from big-name hip hop icons like Roca Wear (Jay Z), Sean Jean (P. Diddy), & Phat Farm (Russell Simmons), the barrio is now within reach. They won't make you ghetto...but at least you'll be ghetto fabulous.

But why be ghetto?

As Bob Goldman & Stephen Papson explain in their work, Sign Wars, "Otherness is both romanticized and feared. This contradiction is rooted in the bourgeois codes of civility that repress the individual, for example, by defining sexuality as a matter of impulse control. Middle-class youth feel judged and limited by a system that catalogues and orders their behavior. Their accumulation of cultural capital...feels dull and bland compared to the vibrancy and passion expressed by the alienated other" (1996: 161).

And how?

Typically resistance along racial lines has become manifest in music, dance, and visual arts. Graffiti writing, break dancing, and rap frequent advertisements that seek to commodify minorities and their attempts to dissent. Because rap as a form of resistance has already been appropriated, redirected, and commodified by mainstream society it is sometimes difficult to see it's connection to dissent. But don't be fooled...

http://www.lclark.edu/~soan370/2002ads/dis...e/raceindex.htm

[TC]

I don't think we should think of it as "trying to be black" because being black is a matter of inherited physical apperance not adhereance to any particular music subculture, which is what they're doing.

They are trying to affect a hip-hop music subculture look, why are white kids who affect a gothic subculture look or an emo subculture look or a punk look not seen as trying to be anything except part of a music/entertainment/media genre?

Or, to use another example, is Condi Rice, who dresses in the clothing style of the north eastern predominantely white elite, has straightened her hair and wears it in a style much more common in upper-middle class and upper class white women, and speaks with, what would have to be described as a sort of affected yankee WASP accent despite being a southern black...is she trying to be white? No i don't think so, she's just adopted the mannerisms, style and apperance of her ruling class subculture, the fact that her subculture is predominantly white whereas R_P_A_S's friend's subculture is predominantly black doesn't mean they're pretending to be or making fun of members of the other race.

[R_P_A_S]

someone like Malcom X would destroy kids like this for acting and dressing in such manner. He would ram a new asshole to half this rappers who are no different than the blacks from the early century who were use for comic relief and to "make white folks laugh at the poor funny n*gger"

[Nickademus]

i would simply take it as them not having the capacity to be their true individual sevles or them not knowing their own selves. is it wrong for you to hate them ... in a way but you have obviously moved beyond them and their limited capacity....

rap music (aka the new black music) is bought primarily by white suburban males ages 17-30 (if i remember correctly). they have no understanding of where the music truly comes from and what it represents but they like the image so they try to emulate it. If you've ever seen the movie OFFICE SPACE there is a brilliant scene in it where a white computer technician is in his car listening to some hard core rap at the top of his stereo. he see's a black guy selling flowers moving down the side of the road. he instantly locks his car doors and turns down the music. i would suspect your former friends are much the same

[encephalon]

It's called ALIENATION, people. It's what has served as the foundation of every social movement in the US for the last 50 years (particularly, masculine, though I'm sure feminie movements are just as susceptible).

Seriously, have you all become numb to the effects of alienation? It's rather easy to see how it affects society, and most importantly: those whom it affects shouldn't be discriminated against. Did they grow up in "black" culture? Absolutely not. Did they grow up with a sense of who they are within the typical paradigm of privileged white culture? ABSOLUTELY not. They are a reflection of a crisis in bourgeoisie mentality (which stems to the working class), and most of these people are just as decent as the next person.

They simply glorify that which they were taught is wrong with American society--namely, black culture (or african-american, if you will, though I find that name more derogatory than the former). They were taught that black culture is bad and white culture is good, and they have absolutely rejected that. Which, in my mind, is a positively terrific thing.

[afrikaNOW]

A terrific thing? I think Paul Mooney said it best.
"Everybody wanna to be a nigga but nobody wanna be a nigga"