From: mjcarpen@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Michael J. Carpenter)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Gang Ad Controversy #3: Clarence Page column
Date: 17 Aug 92 05:38:57 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

In article <t+9mzp=.barnhart@netcom.com> barnhart@netcom.com writes:
>Taking the glamor out of gang life
>By Clarence Page
>(1989 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary)
>Chicago Tribune
>August 12, 1992
>
>WASHINGTON--Imagine you are sitting at home watching television.
>Suddenly the image of a young neo-Nazi skinhead fills your screen.
>He delivers a Hitler-style salute while an announcer delivers this
>startling message:

<laughter> I'll post Sister Souljah's "Slavery is Back In Effect." This
commercial is kids stuff with regards to its antagonism and use of
metaphor.

You know, I'd be willing to bet the commercial used rap artists' views as
a contributing source for the ideological comparisons/contrasts the PSA
makes. A brother who ain't a brother? Rap has been saying this for a coupla
years.

>
>But the response wasn't totally favorable.  The spot's noisiest critic was
>Ald. Rochelle Washington, one of four black members of Evanston's 18-
>member City Council.  When it was screened by the city's Human Relations
>Committee, she stormed out of the meeting room and slammed the door for
>extra emphasis.
>
>In a telephone interview later, she told me she was deeply offended by
>the ad's simplistic equating of skinheads and Klansmen who killed blacks
>because of hate with "our kids" who fall into crime because of family
>and the social system's failures.

Simplistic?!!???!! I always thought the comparisons created such a sublime
sense of utter terror at the bottom line similarities: dead Black youth.
And, the message is for Black youths, not Whitey who's sitting pretty in
Evanston smoking a blunt. The target audience is all too aware of the
social system's failures; the entire point is to have them realize that
these failures can't continue to take these youths down.

>Besides, she said, gangs are not just a black problem, although the ad,
>in her view, makes it sound like it is.  "My mother once said, 'Don't
>give anybody a stick to whip you with,'" she said.  "I think with this
>ad we are, in essence, giving the Klan a stick to whip us with."

Toss the rappers in with the KKK, then.

>"Our target is teens who are thinking of joining gangs," Owen Thomas,
>the commission's executive director and an African-American, explained.
>"It is to change their perception that gangs are cool or hip."

Word.

>Fair enough.  It is certainly true that gangs are not a problem for
>blacks alone.  Just about every American ethnic group has been plagued
>by them at one time or another.  But I can't remember anyone since the
>days of "West Side Story" who has glamorized gang life as much as today's
>"gangsta rappers" like Ice-T, Ice Cube, and various other Ices do.

Damn, another dis of rap by a clueless non-listener. If rap, a genre of 
music, is not understood, what chance is it that gang activity is any more
clearer. True, the two have nothing to do with each other; but, the 
implication is that the rap artists don't give a damn about the youth when
they probably have a better understanding of the situation than the 
Evanston folx.

>Time to hear the reality behind the raps:  Klansmen have murdered at
>least 20 African-Americans since 1960, according to Klanwatch.  Street
>gangs murdered at least 1,300 blacks last year alone, according to the
>FBI.  We don't need to worry about the Klan or neo-Nazis nearly as much
>as we need to worry about "brothers" and "sisters" who do their work for
>them.

Word.