Just getting back from holiday vacate and read this post. Happy New Year, all….Anyhoo, just wanted to say I hear you on the Jena 6 follow-up, or lack thereof. But it’s easy to “miss the point” when the real work requires doing work every day (i.e. fighting for REAL access to everyday jobs for our young Black men and women in our local communities [construction jobs often touted by politicians so often go to other-owned companies and the other workers they employ] …. parents recognizing that the “system” is not the best way to rehabilitate their wayward young and fighting tooth and nail to keep them out of it even on so-called “minor” violations, showing up at the schools on the regular to keep our kids respectful of authority, and authority respectful of and in best service to our kids…..This is all probably a topic for a whole new convo, but I felt inspired…..Peace and here’s to new day in the new decade…..

Thanks, this was a great way to outline my end of the year post.

We all know he’s not a real singer so I highly doubt he was using it to cover up his relative lack of singing talent as is used in virtually every other use of autotune. As I stated, it was to portray a particular emotion and it was very effective as such.

808s and Heartbreak was his best work since College Dropout imo and was akin to a Coldplay or Thievery Corporation album than a rap album. If you’re not into that kind of music and approached it with the expectation of it being hip hop, you may not be a fan. But as a musical piece of work, 808s was smart, gripping, saddening, insightful and an auditory feast. I listened to it nonstop when I first got it and realized just how amazing and diverse Kanye’s talent is.

Point being, if you wanna call him an old(ish) soul for still caring about the music, great. But… He made an entire album of autotune. Ummm. We don’t believe you. You need more vocals.

(Not to mention Stevie wasn’t an arrogant a-hole no matter HOW big he got.)

Obama’s election brought many previously untrusting non-voters to the polls.

Truth. My mother is 58 56 40 30 years old and she voted for Barack Obama. This was the first time she’s ever voted in any election.

I felt that a lot of people came here (to Louisiana) to support the Jena Six a) without really knowing what they were supporting, and/or b) not realizing the social climate of this state. I won’t get on my soap box about the glacial pace at which we’re still trying desegregate our schools, as though Brown v. Board was decided half an hour ago, not half a century ago. Fewer than twenty years ago, we were this close (snaps fingers) to electing as governor the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Two months ago, a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa parish refused to marry an interracial couple. So the kind of injustice that was manifest with the Jena Six is not exactly a novel idea here. However, I know that it takes some event to galvanize people, so I’ll accept that Jena Six was it. So yes, people came together in outrage, but they left as quickly as they had come. They marched into LaSalle parish–took pictures for FaceBook to make sure the rest of us could see how conscientious they were–and marched right back home to complacency, patting themselves on the backs for what was surely a valiant foray into civil rights utopia.

But what had they done? Which of them ever stopped to look back? Almost none.

And all of that was reinforced for me when, within a year of the incident, four of the Jena Six had been arrested again–each on totally unrelated charges. YES, they should answer for their own culpability. NO, resolving the Jena Six issue is not the key to equality. But to me what happened in Jena is reflective of the disjunct among us, because there is something very very wrong with people referring to themselves as a community, uniting for a cause, supporting that cause, and somehow still failing to effectively rehabilitate the young men with whom that cause originated.

It feels like we missed the point.