Racial Tensions & The Role Of Hip-Hop Culture

Hey.

Nowadays, the spread of music and the public’s contact with it is really standardized. What I mean by this is that, today, everyone listens to music daily. We shut it down on our alarm clocks, we listen to it on the way to work, we hear it on elevators and commercials, we work out to it, and so on. But, around the turn of the century, our attention shifted from the lyrical depth of music to beats and catchy choruses. This happened especially in Hip-Hop and Rap, where most artists started to create to sell. When commercialization became the priority, the cultural and social aspects of lyrics were pushed back, overpowered (but not replaced – some artists in the music scene stayed true) by lyrics of sexual nature, or about drugs, alcohol, partying – you name it. Hip-Hop, by origin, is very political, and it’s purpose is to shed light on and educate the youth in the projects. So, themes like police brutality, guns, and gang violence, which are still very much alive today, were an essential part of this music style. Somewhere, somehow, that essence was suppressed – but, it’s coming back.

In 2015, Kendrick Lamar released an album called “To Pimp A Butterfly” (one of my favorite albums ever). It’s an incredible album, with songs like “The Blacker The Berry”, that gives us an unfiltered and raw look at a small fraction of how black people experience race, and the way they’re seen by society and themselves. Songs like “Complexion”, where Kendrick explores how the colour of your skin means nothing when it comes to your value as a human being, and continuously says “it’s Zulu love”, referring to the Zulu tribe in Africa, who welcomed a white man to live among them. It’s an album that brings back those meaningful lyrics so connected to Hip-Hop. And, recently, police brutality and race have been recurring themes in the music scene, with Lil Bibby’s “Can’t Trust A Soul”, Ty Dolla $ign’s “No Justice”, Lil Durk’s “If I Could”, Vic Mensa’s “16 Shots”, Nyck Caution’s “What’s Understood”, and many more. This is because the rise of racial tensions and police brutality can’t be ignored, and music has always been a really powerful weapon of social action against oppression.

While there’s still a debate as to whether or not police brutality is in fact on the rise, or if there’s just more coverage of it on the media, that shouldn’t really be the point – the simple fact that it happens, that, in 2016 alone, the police killed at least 790 people, should be enough for us to consider this a problem in the modern American society. And it’s terrible that it happens, but it’s even worst how little punishment (or, often, none) there is for the officers who take people’s lives. The truth is, there is such a thing as institutionalized racism, and it’s deeply rooted in America and its people – the country itself was built on the genocide of native americans, and the work of slaves – and we can see it in how religious, medical, judicial, political and police establishments function. But there are a number of ways to combat this – it just takes a conscious and joint effort to move forward and past that, into an accepting society. It’s no easy task, so, for now, we have music to guide us.

 

S.

Guest Post – The Empowerment Seesaw

Just Call Me Elm or Something

Hey everyone! Today, I have a guest post from the wonderful S, from Element of Honesty. This blogger sent me one of the most lovely emails I’ve received in a while, and is a kind person overall. This post is one of the most amazing ones I’ve read in a long time.

Hey.

These days, we’re witnessing the peak of empowering movements. Whether it’s women, LGBTQ+, body image, race and ethnicity, or social class, the world is slowly moving towards empowering those that a typical society looks down upon. But, at the same time, a new phenomenon is surging, what I like to call The Empowerment Seesaw (which is, by no means, a recognized technical term).

The Empowerment Seesaw is what happens when, in order to uplift a certain group of ostracized individuals, we tear another group down. For example: when, in order to empower someone who has a…

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Hero And Sidechicks

Hey.

This morning, I was reading Sex Object, an amazing book by Jessica Valenti, and reflecting on my experiences with the objectification of women, when a switch turned on in my mind and I remembered something my younger self always wondered about: why don’t heroes stick to just one girl?

Growing up watching tv and reading, I was always exposed to this kind of objectifying mentality. I watched James Bond, I read Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and little me, who had yet to experience first-hand objectification, couldn’t grasp why Langdon and Bond both had a new romantic or sexual interest in each movie/book. This was, I now realize, because I was also exposed to an opposing mentality: the standardization of exclusive relationships. In both movies and real life, little girls get the message that they should have a monogamous, closed relationship, with the intent of getting married forever, when they like someone. So it confused me that women had to get married, but those heroes could go through girls like they went through bullets. Of course, at the time, I didn’t see it as a gendered issue – the thought of women and men being seen and treated differently was unfathomable in my innocent young mind. But that question stuck with me for years and, as I became aware of how each gender is perceived and expected to act, I just felt like even tv had been spoiled for me. Learning about how women having multiple partners was shameful, but men doing it was encouraged and even praised, really hit me hard, and, slowly, made me start resenting art in all forms, realizing that underlying misogynistic messages and indoctrination of submissive and objectifying behaviours were everywhere, even in my favorite cartoon, or children’s song.

Objectification can come in many, intimately connected, forms: sexualization of a person’s body through the removal of their head or any other way of stripping them away from their identity; use of the body as a replacement for an object; affirming the idea of violating the physical integrity of a person by representing them in incapacitated positions in relation to someone of the opposite sex, therefore perpetuating polarized dominance; suggesting sexual availability, and presenting it as a defining characteristic of the person; use of someone’s body as a canvas.  In relation to this, there’s a generalized tendency in publicity to cut women up in pieces and use their body parts as advertisement for products, so the female body itself becomes a product, available for purchase. It’s blatant in movie posters, for an example, where a woman’s body is sold as a symbol of sexuality and desire to appeal to the public. The posters for the movies Kingsman, Dirty Grandpa, The Comebacks, Secretary and Suicide Squad all feature the same thing: a woman’s butt and legs. The Wolf Of Wall Street features a woman in her underwear wrapped in money. And, not only is this objectification of women important to point out, but it’s also pivotal to note the lack of female leading roles. In 2012, out of the 67 top films of the year, 55 of them were starred by a male.  In order for us to combat a huge industry, criticism is, well, critical. It’s also crucial to note that, although this is a recurrent problem in our society and culture, it’s a lot worse in mass and social media and Hollywood, because the attempts at perpetuating male dominance are so flat-out obvious, and because of the importance and impact these industries have in forming young minds. Everyone is exposed to newspapers, magazines, movies, tv series, talk shows and cartoons, but those five-year-old boys are looking up to James Bond, while the girls can’t identify with a female role model who saves the world. Yes, there are movies where women take center stage, and the industry is changing, but female dominance in a positive light is still seen as abnormal, and this is one of those instances where representation and the feminist movement pushing it forward are of extreme importance in educating the next generation.

One thing I deeply believe in is that the defining meaning of feminism is no longer one of conquering the same rights for the sexes. Truly, the new wave of feminism is not just about equality in a sexual context, but it’s about equality in general, and that means that any form of oppression is condemned and that any oppressed group is uplifted. In the book The Lenses of Gender, the great Sandra Bem explores just that. She dissects, among other things, how the oppression of women is deeply connected with the systemic discrimination of people based on gender and sexuality, because their gender-subversive identity defies and violates the androcentric, gender-polarizing, and biologically essentialist definition of a “real” woman or man. So, issues related to the oppression of women are intimately related to other forms of oppression, and, therefore, it’s up to feminism to empower all sexual minorities and genders in their battle, just like it does to women.

Finding frames through which to view these people in all of their complexity in humane ways is essential in battling the established and institutionalized propensity to objectification. Roles where women and minorities play parts with emotional depth, rather than being one-dimensional mannequins, along with actively listening to them, and focusing on eliminating the stereotypes that surround the “proper” characteristics and roles of each sex and gender, are imperative steps towards equality.

That bitterness is now gone, in part because I’ve grown accustomed to double standards, but also because I found that the message is starting to come across a lot more. Fair representation is something so simple, yet so powerful in shaping young minds. Girls and boys should be able to learn that the position of women in society shouldn’t be one of disposable sexual organs, who serve to please a man who saves the world, but rather one of equality and freedom. Both men and women can be in monogamous relationships, just like both can save the world and have tons of sex.

S.

 

Judgement Of Exposure

Hey.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about our fears as humans. Living in society, other people’s judgement of who we are or appear to be is a key factor to our relationships. But, when meeting someone new, we choose what we want to expose about ourselves, in a way that we build our best image. And this seems quite simple and normal, but, if you think about it, is it really? Some who’s new in your life doesn’t expect you to expose your deepest core to them, but expects honesty. Honesty, I think, is the mild version of exposure. To be honest about yourself, about your identity, about what makes you you, is, in theory, the basis for a good relationship. So, where does exposure come into play, and why do we fear it so much?

By definition, exposure can mean experience (the fact of experiencing something or being affected by it because of being in a particular situation or place), attention (the fact of an event or information being often discussed in newspapers and on the television) or being made public (the fact of something someone’s done being made public). And, here, you have three cases of exposure: 1. Experience – revealing some experiences you had during your life is something completely normal when you’re talking to someone. Revealing past trauma or bad personality traits is unthinkable if you just met someone, but telling them something as simple as “I had a dog” is usually fine; 2. Attention – Exposing yourself is especially hard because of how unpredictable others’ reaction is. This is why we tend to only reveal ourselves to people we know best – people whose reactions we can somewhat predict; 3. Public eye – The unknown is scary. So, thinking that people you don’t know anything about know a deep secret of yours is bound to make you uncomfortable.

Keeping secrets to ourselves and limiting exposure is our way to guard and control the way others perceive us. But, in doing so, it’s easy to get caught up in building a “perfect” persona, for fear of judgement. And we don’t just do this when it comes to our secrets or personality, but in our tastes and passions too. We pretend we love movies and tv shows we never watched, we pretend we don’t like songs we definitely love (the origin of “guilty pleasures” – which, by itself, creates “forbidden” and shameful tastes). Yet, when you get close to someone, you start shedding those layers of parent education, societal expectations, self-guarding, and repression, to reveal a more unfiltered and raw you. So, it gets almost impossible, and definitely tiring, to keep up a pristine and unreal image of yourself. Flaws are human, and that’s scary. It’s not easy dealing with the fact that an honest and close relationship comes with exposure and, yes, a bit of judgement.

My point for this post is for you to be honest and real about yourself. Not only is being something you’re not draining and exhausting, but, in the long run, people will catch on. Don’t be afraid to say you love Justin Bieber, or never watched Star Wars. Don’t be afraid of enjoying watching TLC. Don’t be afraid to show your quirks, to share your story, or to reveal something less positive about yourself to those you bond with.

 

S.

Syria Today

Hey.

In my previous post, I covered the Syrian War, the reasons behind it and how its events played out. So, if you haven’t checked that out, I definitely recommend that you do it. But, in this post, I want to talk about the other side of this war. I want to talk about the people, what’s left of the country, the impact the war had, and what’s changing.

The Syrian War has killed around 470,000 people. Around 4.8 million Syrians are refugees outside of Syria, with Turkey hosting 2.7 million of them. Fifty percent of Syrian refugees are women, and a third are children, according to UNHCR data. The percentage of Syrians killed or injured is 11,5%, while 45% of the country’s population was displaced, 6.36 million internally and more than 4 million abroad, fueling the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe. ‘Of the 470,000 war dead counted by the SCPR, about 400,000 were directly due to violence, while the remaining 70,000 fell victim to lack of adequate health services, medicine, especially for chronic diseases, lack of food, clean water, sanitation and proper housing, especially for those displaced within conflict zones.’ – The Guardian. Close to 1 million Syrians have requested asylum in various countries, particularly Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and the European Union. This year alone, around 2.500 migrants have died while trying to flee from the war. ‘Health, education and income standards have all deteriorated sharply. Poverty increased by 85% in 2015 alone.’ ‘Consumer prices rose 53% last year.’ Syria has an inflation rate of 48.09%, and food inflation rate of 57.47%.  ‘Employment conditions and pay have deteriorated and women work less because of security concerns. About 13.8 million Syrians have lost their source of livelihood.’  According to Amnesty International:

• Gulf countries including Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.
• Other high income countries including Russia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea have also offered zero resettlement places.

At least 28,277 civilians have died in shootings and mass killings. At least 27,006 civilians were killed in mortar, artillery and rocket attacks. At least 18,866 civilians were killed in Syrian government air attacks. At least 8,871 civilians were killed after being kidnapped, detained and/or tortured. At least 984 civilians were killed by exposure to chemical or toxic substances.

These are the facts. But these are people we’re talking about, not numbers. Actual lives of people who are terrified, hurt, hungry, dying, being tortured, barely surviving, in fear. These are people who are being taken from the world. So, what’s changing? Well, for starters, in September 12, a cease-fire was announced, after an agreement, between the US and Russia, that all attacks would cease, except those against ISIS and groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. Secondly, ISIS is losing ground on all fronts. Also, a lot of its militants are on the run. But, the thing about war is that it’s unpredictable. No one except for the minds behind it can influence the outcome, but it’s impossible to know what that outcome will actually be. But we don’t have to resign to watching the news, or reading articles about Syria – there are things anyone can do.

 

S.

Shedding Light | Syria

Hey.

I’m thinking of starting a post series called “Shedding Light” on global war zones. Naturally, Syria is a hot topic, because of ISIS and the refugee crisis, but not much is known about how or why the war started. The media doesn’t do a great job covering this either, since it’s not in the best interest of gun manufacturers and the government for us to be informed. But, before I get to that, which I will in my next post, I’ll explain what happened for the Syrian war to start.

Everything started in 2011 when Bashar Al-Assad, the current President (and dictator) of Syria, ordered for peaceful Arab Spring demonstrators to be shot. If you don’t know what Arab Spring is, it’s a revolutionary movement that spread all across the Arab World in late 2010, where protestors and demonstrators uprose against their oppressive regimes. They wanted democracy, free elections, employment, human rights, economic freedom, and the creation of an Islamic regime, to name a few. By July, some protestors start shooting back, backed up by some Syrian troops that defected the army to join the rebellion. These people formed a group called the Free Syrian Army, and so began the civil war. This brings extremists from across Syria and around the Arab region, who join the rebels. This is when Al-Assad ‘backs the rebellion up’ by releasing Jihadist prisoners to join it, so that their extremism would make it harder for foreign countries to fund and support the Free Syrian Army. Fast forward to January 2012, al-Qaeda forms a new branch in Syria, called Jabhat al-Nusra, at around the same time that Kurdish groups take up arms against Assad’s rule in the North, and actually manage to become independent. But Iran, Assad’s most powerful ally, starts sending troops to help him. At the same time, the rebels start getting money and weapons from the oil-rich countries in the Persian Gulf, who seek to oppose Iran’s influence, and send their help through Turkey. In response, Iran sends Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia group, to fight alongside Assad, to which the Gulf states respond by sending even more money and weapons, this time through Jordan. At this point, Syria is divided by two groups – the mostly-Sunni powers, supporting the rebels, and Shiahs on the other side, supporting Assad. But everything escalates when the Obama administration secretly authorizes the CIA to equip and train Syrian rebels, while requesting that the Gulf states stop funding and arming extremists, which doesn’t happen. In August, Assad uses chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta, a Syrian town, to which the US responds by threatening a military strike. But the problem is that Russia had been supporting the Syrian government since the early stages of this war, and this created a dispute of power and dominance, with the US against Assad, who’s supported by Russia. The military strike doesn’t happen, but, just weeks later, the first US-trained group reaches the rebellion, along with weapons. What really transforms this war is when a mostly-Iraqi-based al-Qaeda affiliate breaks away from the group over internal disagreements over Syria. This group calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. But instead of fighting Assad, they fight the rebels and the Kurds, creating their Caliphate in Syria. That summer, they march across Iraq, seizing territory. In response, the US begin their airstrikes against terrorists and ISIS, and the Pentagon starts its own rebel-training program to fight ISIS, and not Al-Assad. And, while the program was a bust, what really shone through was that the US’s priority was now fighting ISIS, and not Assad. In August of the same year, Turkey starts bombing the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, and not ISIS, even though the Kurds oppose it. There’s a lot of confusion as to what is primary threat: Assad or ISIS? And, because the US and Turkey are supposedly on the same side, does that mean that, like Turkey, the US opposes the Kurds? While the whole war’s been unfolding, Assad’s been losing ground, to both ISIS and the rebels. So, in September 2015, Russia, Syria and Iran set up a joint operation to act on Syria. As a result, Russia bombed anti-Assad rebels, some of which backed up by the US, claiming it was fighting ISIS.

So, Syria is now divided into four groups: the Kurds, the anti-Assad rebels, Assad, and ISIS. And, while it’s simpler to just say this, no one really knows where the supporters of each of those groups stand, not even the supporters themselves. But it’s obvious that, like in most wars, old tensions play a huge part in new tensions. In my next post, I will cover the state of Syria today and what’s changing for the better.

 

S.

P.S.: Special thanks to Vox, for making this little and very informative video. I definitely recommend it.

 

Procrastination & Overdoing it

Hey.

Today I wanted to write something a bit different from my ‘usual’ content (usual in quotations, since I don’t post regularly, or often). These days, I have a lot of free time – but it’s not spent doing anything even remotely productive. Why? Well, that’s because I tend to something very common nowadays: procrastination.

We’ve all experienced this. We have dishes to wash, but the new episode of ‘Downton Abbey’ is on. And, while you may have been in a different situation, the premise is the same: you had something to do, but made a conscious decision not to do it, because something else was just better. Scientifically, there are several reasons why we do this. One, it controls our mood: if you avoid an unpleasant task, you avoid being in a bad mood; two, studies actually show that our brains perceive our current and future self as two distinct people – so, we don’t have the perception that something that gives us short-term happiness might be detrimental in the long run. And it makes sense, from a hedonistic point of view: why give up your present happiness and pleasure for the chance of that happening in a distant future, that you can’t even control?

But, besides this, I have another problem related to procrastination. You see, I not only avoid unpleasant tasks for short-term happiness, but I also postpone doing things that I love to do. Which makes me realize, we want to avoid doing thinks imposed to us, whether by others or by ourselves. I have no problem watching YouTube videos for hours, but if I decide I need to watch a select group of videos, I probably won’t. And when I’m in a situation where I’ve procrastinated on a number of things, they start burning in the back of my mind, and I inevitably end up feeling like I’m failing on life. And I don’t know if this is common, but I end up feeling stressed over the amount of things I let go of.

I also tend to procrastinate when I’m overdoing it, in a sense that I’m trying to do too many things at a time, which is perfectly normal in the hecticness of daily life. If you have a career, whether studying or in a professional environment, and, on top of that, have hobbies and passions, then it’s normal to stretch out your time and try to fill it up as much as possible. But I find that when I feel overwhelmed by the many plans I’ve made, or tasks I need to do, I feel a need to escape by simply doing something else entirely, something that doesn’t require the dedication of writing an essay or painting.

So, what do we do about it? Well, the thing is, I don’t really know. And, really, I have no credentials for helping anyone. For me, I think it takes finding the motivation and willpower to do something consistently to realize how much you can and enjoy doing it. Just like right now: I absolutely love writing, but I hadn’t done it for months, simply because I was sloppy and prioritized a three-minute video on how mosquitoes suck your blood, when I had the chance and motivation to write. But, if you feel like you’re overworking, it’s not bad to take a break on a hobby, most importantly because it’s unhealthy to stress over the many things you procrastinated on doing. Above all things, prioritize your physical and mental health.

 

S.