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Maybe I am being insensitive, but I REALLY think that Rosa Parks should relax a little bit. (I almost wrote "lighten up", and then I realized what an ugly turn of phrase that is. Sheesh!) First, she declined to attend an NAACP awards banquet because the movie "Barbershop" was being honored, and in that movie Ced the Entertainer's character says unflattering things about her. I have seen the movie, and the character says unflattering things about her which are then HOTLY CONTESTED by everyone else in the shop. He represents a point of view which is clearly contradictory to the point of view of the filmmakers. I think you would really have to not be paying attention to come out of that film thinking that what he says is right. And now she is sueing Outkast for using her name in a song. They tried to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, apparently, but the Supreme Court is allowing the suit.(according to Kurt Loder, without making any comment on WHY they are allowing it) Apparently the suit has something to do with "false advertising". Hmm. I conceed that aside from the chorus, the song doesn't have anything to do wtih Rosa Parks. I guess I can sort of see her point there. However, I would be willing to wager that if you went around America and asked high school kids(both black and white, but primarily white) if they had ever heard of Rosa Parks before they heard the Outkast song, you would get a whole lot of nos. And I'll bet out of those nos, there were at least some kids who thought "wonder who that person is?" and looked her up on the internet. And learned something about their history which they might not have learned otherwise. My feeling is that these days pop culture is one of the best and in some cases the ONLY way to educate kids. They don't pay attention in school a lot of the time, and even if they do, a lot of schools don't tell the whole story. This all ties in with the big ugly debate on the Alice Cooper message board, believe it or not. One of the points the racist kept hammering home is that hip hop has nothing to do with the lives of white kids, and therefore white kids shouldn't listen to it. My feeling is that if white kids listen to hip hop and get a sense of the struggle, then something good will come of it. For every kid that just grooves along to the music, another kid will hear something that makes him or her think. And thinking is ALWAYS a good thing. |
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