Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Monday, January 07, 2008
lastly, richie spice
richie spice has the sweetest voice to me; brown skin was constantly on replay for months. plus, he's really, really handsome- i think it's the lips, but it might be the eyes.
enjoy the music i left today... i listen to many kinds, and these are some of the best of the best!
blood again
the way you're living is sickening
they got us chasing while they're winning
bomb drop again
hear seh dat anotha 25 dead up again
suicide bomber den a who sen dem
dis ya one a go straight to all bush (seven?)
how much more youths you a go mek lose dem head?
how much more youths you a go chop down dead?
talk bout some a shotta and dem don have no head
whey dem ya man ya come from?
dem a mus living dead
brown skin
righteous youths
when i tell you that the time is getting difficult
i don't want you to worry, i never want you to fret...
and only that same old babylon trying to run things to a wreck
if you think that his majesty's sleeping
you better think twice
he would never make them babylon
mash down zion heights
when there's a whole barrage of righteous youth man out there
and we ain't givin up, no where
there's a whole barrage of righteous youth man in town
and we ain't goin down, no we're never gonna stop
no way
grooving my girl
wanna keep you moving, my girl
grooving my girl
i can see the angels in your eyes...
LOVER'S ROCK, YOU KNOW? MAKES ME WANT TO SLOW DANCE REALLY CLOSE (AND MAKE OUT:p).
youths dem cold
in the streets is getting hot
and the youths dem a get so cold
searching for food for the pot
and they'll do anything to fill that gap
as federation comes and grows
you got to make preparation while the youths dem grow
if what you reap is what you sow
the youths them are the light and the future
so endorse them you know
if education is the key
tell me why the bigger heads a mek it so expensive fi we
give them key, oh set them free...
sizzla kalonji
rise to the occasion
it's for you to make the best in life
now that you've got the chance
get up and stand
do what you're doing
it's alright
you've got the clearance, that's the reference,
perseverance for the utmost that should be your preference...
talent is your evidence
help those afar off
teach those in your residence...
you got it with a clear conscience
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THIS SONG IS SO INSPIRING (TO ME), AND IT'S ONE OF MY BEST-LOVED SONGS. SO IF YOU LISTEN TO NOTHING ELSE, LISTEN TO 'BE STRONG.'
be strong
yes, you've got to be strong
and be all the best you can
the world is out there- conquer your fears
and don't you wait to long
damn nothing comes easy
you got to work hard, i'm telling you
hope and pray for the best, cause i believe in you...
give thanks for you living your life
for us being here
there's good in us and we always want to bring it out
show the world what we got
THEN---
you can chase the wildest dreams
swim the ocean shore
sail up into the sky
as simple as it seems,
there's so much more
surely worth giving it a try
confidence in yourself
there's much to accomplish, so never fail
there's new lives to explore,
new mountain peaks to scale
i know that you can be
anything you want
all you got to do
is work toward it
i know that there is love
for each and everyone
all you got to do is
give love a chance...
only for us to learn, fire burn
aye my people why won't you rise?
it's your turn...
I COULD DIE!!!!!!! THIS SONG IS SO AMAZING! i live for him!!!!
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woman i need you
let us be together
goodness is what i revere
look on the joy we bring...
friends come and tell you words
listen girl, i'm the one that you deserve
so let me take you by the hand
both of us will walk this earth
love come first
don't you know what life really worth?
i need you, like never before
african woman you're the one i adore...
queen ifrica
Genocide
babylon a use might and a try fight right...
bloodsucking vampires, so they crawl by night.
we a go burn dem burn dem, til dem know themselves
wipe the tears from your eyes, love will never leave us down, i wear a upful crown
yeeeh!
Daddy
daddy don't touch me there
i'm gonna tell on you one day, i swear
can't you see i'm scared
you're supposed to be my father
to all the mothers out there
give a listening ear
pay attention even if the man a pastor
you haffi make sure before you trust him wid your dawta
plus him wi even try fi tek yu son as brawta...
if you know seh it a gwaan and turn a blind eye
then yuh judgement a go pile up bout a mile high
--> and, while i don't agree with 'before you know it is another baby,' i love this song too!
Below The Waist
you know me nah go box yuh down baby
no, me jus wan hol you down baby
him say, gwan go put on you thong, baby
and before you know it is another baby
you know we only going through a phase
so come tell me sorry soft inna me ears
nuh nasty up me house when me jus done shine
mi cyaan search you phone, but you waan search mine
a war when de whole a dat combine
love her!
what does it all mean?
he makes me happy. shouldn't i be able to enjoy that? how can i if he's unaware- if, at any moment, he'll slip into a comfortable whiteness and choose not to challenge racism or white supremacy?
this is confusing and challenging and necessary. we must confront this stuff if we're going to make it work.
hmmm. like i said:
love is the only way to sustain any such effort. a commitment to love on a grand or minor scale. it will take a lot, but thankfully love is infinite- so, we'll see...
then there's this
Marriage squeeze
A new term has arisen to describe the social phenomenon of the so-called "marriage squeeze" for African American females.[11] The marriage squeeze refers to the belief that the most eligible and desirable African American men are marrying non-African American women, leaving those African American women who wish to marry African American men with fewer partnering options. According to Newsweek, 43% of black women between the ages of 30-34 have never been married.[12] Several explanations of this phenomenon have been advanced. It may be due to the lingering effects of social ostracism to which white American men who married African American women were subjected in the past, although a recent survey found that one in five white Americans would consider marrying across the color line.[13] It may also be the result of a desire among African American women to marry African American men due to concepts such as racial loyalty, and the internalized stereotypical belief that non-African American men would not find them attractive.[13] There is also the lingering belief that negative social stereotypes preclude them being viewed as anything but sexual objects by non-African American men.[13] Lastly, there is a desire among educated women of all races to "marry up" or at least within their social and economic class. With the great disparity that exists between African American women and African American men in this respect[citation needed], black women often face either "marrying down" or not marrying at all, when they choose to restrict their marriage prospects to African American men.[14] Another confounding factor for African American women may be the disproportionate mortality rate between men and women in the black community: there are only approximately 85 males for every 100 females by the time they reach their child-bearing years.[citation needed] Also, rates of incarceration for marriage age African American males are far higher than rates for females, further contributing to the male/female gap. As of 2002, 10.4% of all black males between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison. [15] The African American male-female disparity is highest between the ages of 25 – 29, when for every two African American men there are nearly three African American women. [16]
[edit] Education and interracial marriage
Using PUMS data from both the 1980 and 1990 US Census to determine trends within interracial marriage among White Americans, African Americans, Hispanic or Latinos, and Asian Americans, it may be seen that endogamy (marrying within race) was more prevalent for African American men at lower education levels.
In 1980, the numbers were as follows: African American males without a high-school diploma participated in endogamy at 96.5%; for those who received a high-school diploma, 95.6%; for those with a college degree and above, the percentage of endogamy dropped to 94.0%. However, the rates for African American women changed very little with different educational levels. For the African American woman who had not received a high school diploma the rate was 98.7%, high school diploma was 98.6%, with some college it was 98.2%, and college degree or higher, 98.5%. During this time there was a significant increase in marriages between whites and African Americans, maintaining that African Americans are most likely to marry whites over other groups.
The 1990 results show that rates of endogamy dropped for both males and females, albeit more for the African American male. In 1990, an African American male with a college degree and more was participating in endogamy at 90.4%; for an African American female with the same educational level, 96.4%. The results for the propensity of individuals at higher educational attainment levels to participate less in endogamy over the 10-year period were similar across races, including whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.
[edit] Immigrants and interracial marriage
It is found that racial endogamy is much stronger for immigrants as compared to natives.[17] Immigrants of African descent are 4.9 times more likely than African Americans to marry interracially.[citation needed] Additionally, immigrants of African descent have the highest rates of endogamy of immigrants. Also, African immigrants are much more likely to marry other same-race immigrants and African Americans, than to out-marry racially. Native-born white Americans are also 1.6 times more likely to marry a native-born African American than an immigrant of African descent. Female immigrants of African descent are generally more likely to marry native-born whites than their male counterparts.
[edit] Interracial marriage versus cohabitation
Rates of interracial cohabitation are significantly higher than those of marriage. Although only 7 percent of married black men have white wives, 13 percent of cohabitating black men have white partners. Black women are one-and-a-half times more likely to cohabitate with a white partner than to marry him. 25 percent of married Asian women have white spouses, but 45 percent of cohabitating Asian women are with white men—higher than the percentage cohabitating with Asian men (43 percent).[18] These numbers suggest that the prevalence of intimate interracial contact is greatly underestimated when one focuses only on marriage data.[18]
i don't know
context. we live in contexts. history is relevant. the past shaped the present. we all are shaping the future. you and your ideals don't live in a vacuum. i can't just be with you and your ideals. i need to know that you acknowledge and are aware of the world around you; of the injustices, the limitations, the challenges and the benefits that exist on the basis of race and ethnicity. i need to know that you are not just your history or the benefits accorded to your race; i have to acknowledge you and your ideals. it has to be a collaborative effort in the micro and macro, in our partnership and in the world.
love is the only way to sustain any such effort. a commitment to love on a grand or minor scale. it will take a lot, but thankfully love is infinite- so, we'll see...
looking at reality according to Wikipedia:
Asian and American Indian
Historically, Filipino Americans have frequently married American Indian and Alaskan Native people. In the 17th century, Filipinos were under Spanish rule. The Spanish colonists ordered the Filipinos to trade between the Philippines and the Americas. When Mexico revolted against the Spanish, Filipinos escaped into Mexico, then traveled to Louisiana, where the exclusively male Filipinos married American Indian women. In the 1920s, Filipino American communities grew in Alaska, and Filipino American men married Alaskan Native women. On the west coast, Filipino Americans married American Indian women in Bainbridge Island Washington.[4]
[edit] Asian and White
Marriages between whites and Asians are becoming increasingly common for both gender combinations (Lange, 2005). In 1990, about 69 percent of married 18-30 year-old Asian women were married to Asian men, while 25 percent of married Asian women had white husbands. [5] In 2006, 50 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian women were married to Asian men, while 41 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian women had white husbands. 60 percent of U.S.-raised married Asian men were married to Asian women, while 30 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian men had white wives (2006 U.S. Census Bureau). C.N. Le estimated that the gender gap is smaller among the American-born or 1.5 generation Asian Americans.[6] Asian Americans of both genders who are U.S.-raised are much more likely to be married with whites than their non-U.S.-raised counterparts. Not all Asian ethnicities have similar intermarriage patterns, for instance, South Asian Americans were overwhelmingly endogamous, with a small amount of outmarriage to other ethnic groups. The interracial marriage disparity for South Asian Americans was low with outmarriage to whites slightly higher for Indian American males whereas all other major Asian groups had more outmarriage for women.[6] A 2001 U.S. national survey indicated that 24% of the respondents disapprove of marriage with an Asian American. [7]
Black and White
Although mixed-race partnering has increased, the United States still shows disparities between African American male and African American female endogamy statistics. The 1990 census reports that 17.6% of African American marriages occur with White Americans. Yet, African American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to white women than African American women to white men. In the 2000 census, 239,477 African American male to white female and 95,831 white male to African American female marriages were recorded, again showing the 2.5-1 ratio. In 2007, black-white marriage remains a rare event: 4.6% of married Blacks marry whites, and 0.4% of married whites marry blacks.[8]
Asian and Black
With African Americans and Asian Americans, the ratios are even further imbalanced, with 598% more Asian female/Black male marriages than Asian male/Black female marriages. [2] However, C.N. Le estimated that Asian Americans of the 1.5 generation and of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups had black male/Asian female marriages 272% more than Asian male/black Female relationships.[6] Even though the disparity between Black and Asian interracial marriages by gender is high according to the 2000 US Census, [2] the total numbers of Asian/Black interracial marriages are low, numbering only 0.22% percent for Asian male marriages and 1.30% percent of Asian female marriages, partially contributed by the recent flux of Asian immigrants. Filipinos appear to be the Asian group most likely to marry African-Americans. [2]
Historically, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese people immigrated to the American South, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. The tenth US Census of Louisiana counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese Americans to be with African Americans and 43% to be with White American women. After the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese American men had fewer potential Chinese American wives, so they increasingly married African American women on the west coast.[9] In Jamaica and other Caribbean nations as well many Chinese males over past generations took up Black female wives gradually assimilating or absorbing many Chinese descendants into the black community or the overall mixed-race community.
[edit] White and American Indian
The interracial disparity for American Indians is low. According to the 1990 US Census (which only counts indigenous people with US-government-recognized tribal affiliation), American Indian women intermarried White Americans 2% more than American Indian men married White women.[10]
What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman?
By Alice Walker, address in support of the National March for Women’s Equality and Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., 22 May 1989
What is of use in these words I offer in memory of our common mother. And to my daughter.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
For four hundred years he ruled over the black woman’s womb.
Let us be clear. In the barracoons and along the slave shipping coasts of Africa, for more than twenty generations, it was he who dashed our babies brains out against the rocks.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
For four hundred years he determined which black woman’s children would live or die.
Let it be remembered. It was he who placed our children on the auction block in cities all across the eastern half of what is now the United States, and listened to and watched them beg for their mothers’ arms, before being sold to the highest bidder and dragged away.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
We remember that Fannie Lou Hamer, a poor sharecropper on a Mississippi plantation, was one of twenty-one children; and that on plantations across the South black women often had twelve, fifteen, twenty children. Like their enslaved mothers and grandmothers before them, these black women were sacrificed to the profit the white man could make from harnessing their bodies and their children’s bodies to the cotton gin.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
We see him lined up on Saturday nights, century after century, to make the black mother, who must sell her body to feed her children, go down on her knees to him.
Let us take note:
He has not cared for a single one of the dark children in his midst, over hundreds of years.
Where are the children of the Cherokee, my great grandmother’s people?
Gone.
Where are the children of the Blackfoot?
Gone.
Where are the children of the Lakota?
Gone.
Of the Cheyenne?
Of the Chippewa?
Of the Iroquois?
Of the Sioux?
Of the Mandinka?
Of the Ibo?
Of the Ashanti?
Where are the children of the Slave Coast
and Wounded Knee?
We do not forget the forced sterilizations and forced starvations on the reservations, here as in South Africa. Nor do we forget the smallpox-infested blankets Indian children were given by the Great White Fathers of the United States government.
What has the white man to say to the black woman?
When we have children you do everything in your power to make them feel unwanted from the moment they are born. You send them to fight and kill other dark mothers’ children around the world. You shove them onto public highways in the path of oncoming cars. You shove their heads through plate glass windows. You string them up and you string them out.
What has the white man to say to the black woman?
From the beginning, you have treated all dark children with absolute hatred.
Thirty million African children died on the way to the Americas, where nothing awaited them but endless toil and the crack of a bullwhip. They died of a lack of food, of lack of movement in the holds of ships. Of lack of friends and relatives. They died of depression, bewilderment and fear.
What has the white man to say to the black woman?
Let us look around us: Let us look at the world the white man has made for the black woman and her children.
It is a world in which the black woman is still forced to provide cheap labor, in the form of children, for the factories and on the assembly lines of the white man.
It is a world into which the white man dumps every foul, person-annulling drug he smuggles into creation.
It is a world where many of our babies die at birth, or later of malnutrition, and where many more grow up to live lives of such misery they are forced to choose death by their own hands.
What has the white man to say to the black woman, and to all women and children everywhere?
Let us consider the depletion of the ozone; let us consider homelessness and the nuclear peril; let us consider the destruction of the rain forests_in the name of the almighty hamburger. Let us consider the poisoned apples and the poisoned water and the poisoned air and the poisoned earth.
And that all of our children, because of the white man’s assault on the planet, have a possibility of death by cancer in their almost immediate future.
What has the white, male lawgiver to say to any of us? To those of us who love life too much to willingly bring more children into a world saturated with death?
Abortion, for many women, is more than an experience of suffering beyond anything most men will ever know; it is an act of mercy, and an act of self-defense.
To make abortion illegal again is to sentence millions of women and children to miserable lives and even more miserable deaths.
Given his history, in relation to us, I think the white man should be ashamed to attempt to speak for the unborn children of the black woman. To force us to have children for him to ridicule, drug and turn into killers and homeless wanderers is a testament to his hypocrisy.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
Only one thing that the black woman might hear.
Yes, indeed, the white man can say, Your children have the right to life. Therefore I will call back from the dead those 30 million who were tossed overboard during the centuries of the slave trade. And the other millions who died in my cotton fields and hanging from trees.
I will recall all those who died of broken hearts and broken spirits, under the insult of segregation.
I will raise up all the mothers who died exhausted after birthing twenty-one children to work sunup to sundown on my plantation. I will restore to full health all those who perished for lack of food, shelter, sunlight, and love; and from my inability to see them as human beings.
But I will go even further:
I will tell you, black woman, that I wish to be forgiven the sins I commit daily against you and your children. For I know that until I treat your children with love, I can never be trusted by my own. Nor can I respect myself.
And I will free your children from insultingly high infant mortality rates, short life spans, horrible housing, lack of food, rampant ill health. I will liberate them from the ghetto. I will open wide the doors of all the schools and hospitals and businesses of society to your children. I will look at your children and see not a threat but a joy.
I will remove myself as an obstacle in the path that your children, against all odds, are making toward the light. I will not assassinate them for dreaming dreams and offering new visions of how to live. I will cease trying to lead your children, for I can see I have never understood where I was going. I will agree to sit quietly for a century or so, and meditate on this. (love this)
This is what the white man can say to the black woman.
We are listening.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
have you ever
the end.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
by the way
i'm totally self-absorbed.
absolutely narcissistic.
isn't it apparent?
just so you know that i know.
AND
i love this woman:
she's coming to philly in january, but it's for npr. she'll be in brooklyn that night. maybe i'll go catch the show.
i live for her!
happy new year
why am i never satisfied?
how is it possible to feel bad for challenging someone too much? is part of the relationship compromise lessening the extent to which one is oneself?
If thou must love me (Sonnet 14)
by Elizabeth Barret Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
i know i have choices, and yet i make none.
how can i not feel trapped? i'm trapped by my own stagnation, my self-inflicted ossification! i don't have to work where i work! i don't have to be in this relationship! i don't have to get this degree! i chose these things. i made decisions. and i can decide again.
i suppose sometimes i get a little caught up in self-pity, but i am far from impotent. i need to appreciate my life more. and i do appreciate it.
it is a good life. it is my own creation. and it is evolving.