“American Gangster” and the Hip-Hop Generation

Bambu, a militant rapper from LA, blogs about the movie American Gangster:

i’m glad this movie sucks. if this movie was better than malcolm x (which it ain’t) that wouldn’t sit well with me. why the fuck do we idolize frank lucas anyway? because he flew to saigon to buy heroin? because he came from nothing and turned himself into the biggest heroin trafficker in new york? he killed a lot of his own people! a lot! with the biggest voice in the world today, we, as the hip hop generation, have decided to make albums based on the lives of these people… we’ve taken the names of italian mobsters, we put pimps in our videos and we treat the mothers of our people like cigarette butts on the street. why? jay-z can make any kind of record he wants. he can make a record about elmo and muthuhfuckuhs will buy it — what does he do? jumps back in the studio after watching this weak ass movie!!! inspired by frank lucas. would he have done the same if they did a noteworthy movie on bobby seale? or assata shakur? probably not. let’s stop glorifying those figures in our history and in our present who get rich over the graves of our own. c’mon, hip hop generation, wake up…

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Imagine…Being Your Husband’s Very Own Baby Machine

Holly, at Feministe, blogs about a new Nintendo DS game called “Imagine Babies:”

That’s right… it’s a game about TAKING CARE OF BABIES! I’ll give you one guess who it’s aimed at. OK, I’ll just tell you: it’s part of a series of games aimed at girls from the ages of 8 to 14, from video game giant Ubisoft — better known as the publisher games like Splinter Cell, Myst, Rayman, and Prince of Persia. According to their press release, the other titles in the series will include Imagine™ Fashion Designer, Imagine™ Animal Doctor, Imagine™ Master Chef, and Imagine™ Figure Skater.

Wow, Imagine™ all the things a girl can do! Making food, and making clothes, and making babies!! What’s next, Imagine™ Shoe Shopping and Imagine™ Housecleaning?

Link via Apurva.

Imagine…Being Your Husband’s Very Own Baby Machine

Holly, at Feministe, blogs about a new Nintendo DS game called “Imagine Babies:”

That’s right… it’s a game about TAKING CARE OF BABIES! I’ll give you one guess who it’s aimed at. OK, I’ll just tell you: it’s part of a series of games aimed at girls from the ages of 8 to 14, from video game giant Ubisoft — better known as the publisher games like Splinter Cell, Myst, Rayman, and Prince of Persia. According to their press release, the other titles in the series will include Imagine™ Fashion Designer, Imagine™ Animal Doctor, Imagine™ Master Chef, and Imagine™ Figure Skater.

Wow, Imagine™ all the things a girl can do! Making food, and making clothes, and making babies!! What’s next, Imagine™ Shoe Shopping and Imagine™ Housecleaning?

Link via Apurva.

On Youth and Resistance

Brownfemipower writes:

But no matter how hard it is, how much it hurts us/strikes us down off our pedestals, we must begin to look deeply into ourselves and into our communities and challenge everything we know about being parents and about being elders. We must begin rethinking all the actions of our youths that we have labeled as “trouble making” (dropping out of school, getting pregnant, abusing drugs/alcohol, figeting endlessly, not doing homework, etc). We must begin considering how the actions of our youths can be reconsidered (as Grace Lee Boggs argues) as “Opting Out” of a violent system as a form of self-preservation rather than dropping out to make our blood pressure skyrocket–And most importantly, we must consider how we can share our hard earned knowledge such that “Opting out” becomes harnessed into mobilization efforts that are truly world changing for our youth.