Seattle Police Altercation Excessive ? I dont think so..
I’m sure we all have seen the infamous punch video of a 17 year old girl by a Seattle Police Officer that has (as usual) resulted in calls of racism, police brutality etc. In a lot of cases the charge of police brutality is true however, my analysis of this video does not show police brutality at all.
What this video shows me is the overly aggressive nature of our youth today. First off you have one woman who the Officer is trying to restrain who is violently resisting and my question is FOR WHAT ?? what did she think was going to happen ? Did she think he was going to give up ? Did she think that she was going to win ? I have never seen a case where the Police where in a physical altercation with anyone and they just gave up.
Secondly, while the Officer was trying to restrain one young lady, her friend attempts to attack and push the Officer away. While I do have empathy and understand her motive but what did she think was going to happen ? This was not some school yard brawl where your friend can jump in and get the attacker off of you. I don’t agree with physically assaulting women in any manner but, at that moment she was a THREAT to the Officer and interfering with his duties.
In my opinion this is a perfect example of the aggressive mindset of our youth. The Black Panthers of the 60′s taught us we MUST know the LAW and react accordingly. We must again teach our youth how to interact with law enforcement because right now we are giving them justification to complete the conversion from an open society to a POLICE STATE !
Below is the video , let me know your thoughts.
The Next Mayor of Bessemer? A video interview with D.M. Blue
We recently sat down for a candid interview with D.M. Blue Mayor candidate for the city of Bessemer. It was a very interesting interview to say the least.
Why are you running for Mayor of Bessemer?
What is your campaign platform ?
Daryl Blue on Improving Bessemer
What do you want the people to know about you personally and why should they
vote for you as the new mayor of Bessemer ?
For more information on D.M. Blue visit:
http://www.blueforbessemer.com
Let’s Do Our Part to Help our brothers and sisters in HAITI
Birmingham Family let’s help our brothers and sisters by donating to the Wyclef John Haitian Relief Fund.
You can do this by:
Texting “YELE” to 501501 (with your cell phone) OR,
by donating via Wyclef’s Website www.yele.org.
Young Sista’s STOP Leaving Your Man Behind
With pants literally sagging below their knees, these young brothers stroll up and down school hallways and through neighborhoods without a care in the world.
Some of these same brothers wouldn’t be caught dead with a book in their hands, sitting in the front row of class or raising their hands to ask or answer a question.
What you going to do with your life young man? you ask… “imma rap” is the usual reply.
Don’t get me wrong yours truly could have been looked at in the same light. However, there was a semblance of a plan behind all of that mischief. Additionally, my school days (some 16 years ago) were a little less complex that it is now.
How is it that so many young brothers have this same look, this same way of speech and this same naively optimistic look at life? Why is it that after so many of these “type” brothers end up in jail, smoked out or dead that you have a fresh crop right on their heels as replacements ?
Figured it out yet? ….. WOMEN!!
Or in this case our young sisters. They are the enablers, the cannon fodder, the match to the firecracker of these young men’s souls that keeps them dwelling I ignorance, apathy, and hypermasculinity all so they wont receive that death sentence of being a “lame ass nigga!” Translation … you will not be a hit with the girls.
So as you sisters finish out your scholastic career where some of you move on to bigger and better things. Remember what you requested of the young brother when you begin to desire a “Good Man” to get married to and spend your life with.
What is it Like to Teach Black Students? (white male’s point of view)
After my 3rd re-read of this article, my anger subsided as I though back to those times where my wife (who is a character education teacher) came home with stories similar to what he is describing below. Is he sensationalizing his experience teaching our precious black children ? You be the judge…
dmac…
Article by Christopher Jackson
Until recently I taught at a predominantly black high school in a southeastern state.
The mainstream press gives a hint of what conditions are like in black schools, but only a hint. Expressions journalists use like “chaotic” or “poor learning environment” or “lack of discipline” do not capture what really happens. There is nothing like the day-to-day experience of teaching black children and that is what I will try to convey.
Most whites simply do not know what black people are like in large numbers, and the first encounter can be a shock.
One of the most immediately striking things about my students was that they were loud. They had little conception of ordinary decorum. It was not unusual for five blacks to be screaming at me at once. Instead of calming down and waiting for a lull in the din to make their point-something that occurs to even the dimmest white students-blacks just tried to yell over each other.
It did no good to try to quiet them, and white women were particularly inept at trying. I sat in on one woman’s class as she begged the children to pipe down.
They just yelled louder so their voices would carry over hers.
Many of my black students would repeat themselves over and over again- just louder. It was as if they suffered from Tourette syndrome. They seemed to have no conception of waiting for an appropriate time to say something. They would get ideas in their heads and
simply had to shout them out. I might be leading a discussion on government and suddenly be interrupted: “We gotta get more Democrats! Clinton, she good!”
The student may seem content with that outburst but two minutes later, he would
suddenly start yelling again: “Clinton good!”
Anyone who is around young blacks will probably get a constant diet of rap music.
Blacks often make up their own jingles, and it was not uncommon for 15 black boys to swagger into a classroom, bouncing their shoulders and jiving back.
They were yelling back and forth, rapping 15 different sets of words in the same harsh, rasping dialect. The words were almost invariably a childish form of boasting: “Who got dem shine rim, who got dem shine shoe, who got dem shine grill (gold and silver dental caps)?” The amateur rapper usually ends with a claim-in the crudest terms imaginable-that all womankind is sexually devoted to him. For whatever reason, my students would often groan instead of saying a particular word, as in, “She suck dat aaahhhh (think of a long grinding groan), she f**k dat aaaahhhh, she lick dat aaaahhh.”
So many black girls dance in the hall, in the classroom, on the chairs, next to the chairs, under the chairs, everywhere. Once I took a call on my cell phone and had to step outside of class. I was away about two minutes but when I got back the black girls had lined up at the front of the classroom and were convulsing to the delight of the boys.
Many black people, especially black women, are enormously fat. Some are so fat I had to arrange special seating to accommodate their bulk. I am not saying there are no fat white students-there are-but it is a matter of numbers and attitudes. Many black girls simply do not care that they are fat. There are plenty of white anorexics, but I have never met or heard of a black anorexic.
“Black women be big Mr. Jackson,” my students would explain.
“Is it okay in the black community to be a little overweight?” I ask. Two obese black girls in front of my desk begin to dance, “You know dem boys lak juicy fruit, Mr. Jackson.”
“Juicy” is a colorful black expression for the buttocks.
Blacks, on average, are the most directly critical people I have ever met: “Dat shirt stupid. Yo’ kid a bastard. Yo’ lips big.” Unlike Whites, who tread gingerly around the Subject of race, they can be brutally to The point. Once I needed to send a student To the office to deliver a message. I Asked for volunteers, and suddenly you Would think my classroom was a bastion of civic engagement. Thirty dark hands shot into the air. My students loved to leave the classroom and slack off, even if just for a few minutes, away from the eye of white authority. I picked a light-skinned boy to deliver the message. One very black student was indignant: “You pick da half-breed.” And immediately other blacks take up the cry, and half a dozen mouths are screaming, “He half-breed.”
For decades, the country has been lamenting the poor academic performance of blacks and there is much to lament. There is no question, however, that many blacks come to school with a serious handicap that is not their fault. At home they have learned a dialect that is almost a different language. Blacks not only mispronounce words; their grammar is often wrong. When a black wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” he may actually say “Whar da badroom be?” Grammatically, this is the equivalent of “Where the bathroom is?” And this is the way they speak in high school. Students write the way they speak, so this is the language that shows up in written assignments.
It is true that some whites face a similar handicap. They speak with what I would call a “country” accent that is hard to reproduce but results in sentences such as “I’m gonna gemme a Coke.” Some of these country whites had to learn correct pronunciation and usage. The difference is that most whites overcome this handicap and learn to speak correctly; many blacks do not.
Most of the blacks I taught simply had no interest in academic subjects. I taught history, and students would often say they didn’t want to do an assignment or they didn’t like history because it was all about white people. Of course, this was “diversity” history, in which every cowboy’s black cook got a special page on how he contributed to winning the West, but black children still found it inadequate. So I would throw up my hands and assign them a project on a real, historical black person. My favorite was Marcus Garvey. They had never heard of him, and I would tell them to research him, but they never did. They didn’t care and they didn’t want to do any work.
Anyone who teaches blacks soon learns that they have a completely different view of government from whites. Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by having students write about one thing the government should do to improve America. I gave this question to three classes totaling about 100 students, approximately 80 of whom were black. My few white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.”
My students had only the vaguest notion of who pays for government services. For them, it was like a magical piggy bank that never goes empty. One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”
“Many black people make over $50,000 dollars a year and you would also be taking away from your own people,” I said.
She had an answer to that: “Dey half breed.” The class agreed. I let the subject drop.
Many black girls are perfectly happy to be welfare queens. On career day, one girl explained to the class that she was going to have lots of children and get fat checks from the government. No one in the class seemed to have any objection to this career choice.
Surprising attitudes can come out in class discussion. We were talking about the crimes committed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I brought up the rape of a young girl in the bathroom of the Superdome. A majority of my students believed this was a horrible crime but a few took it lightly. One black boy spoke up without raising his hand: “Dat no big deal. They thought they is gonna die so they figured they have some fun. Dey jus’ wanna have a fun time; you know what I’m sayin’?” A few black heads nodded in agreement.
My department head once asked all the teachers to get a response from all students to the following question: “Do you think it is okay to break the law if it will benefit you greatly?” By then, I had been teaching for a while and was not surprised by answers that left a young, liberal, white woman colleague aghast. “Yeah” was the favorite answer. As one student explained, “Get dat green.”
There is a level of conformity among blacks that whites would find hard to believe. They like one kind of music: rap. They will vote for one political party: Democrat. They dance one way, speak one way, are loud the same way, and fail their exams in the same way. Of course, there are exceptions but they are rare.
Whites are different. Some like country music, others heavy metal, some prefer pop, and still others, God forbid, enjoy rap music. They have different associations, groups, almost ideologies. There are jocks, nerds, preppies, and hunters. Blacks are all- well-black, and they are quick to let other blacks know when they deviate from the norm.
One might object that there are important group differences among blacks that a white man simply cannot detect. I have done my best to find them, but so far as I can tell, they dress the same, talk the same, think the same. Certainly, they form rival groups, but the groups are not different in any discernible way. There simply are no groups of blacks that are as distinctly different from each other as white “nerds,” “hunters,” or “Goths,” for example.
How the world looks to blacks One point on which all blacks agree is that everything is “racis’.” This is one message of liberalism they have absorbed completely. Did you do your homework? “Na, homework racis’.” Why did you get an F on the test? “Test racis’.”
I was trying to teach a unit on British philosophers and the first thing the students noticed about Bentham, Hobbes, and Locke was “Dey all white! Where da black philosopher a’?” I tried to explain there were no blacks in eighteenth century Britain. You can probably guess what they said to that: “Dat racis’!” One student accused me of deliberately failing him on a test because I didn’t like black people.
“Do you think I really hate black people?” “Yeah.” “Have I done anything to make you feel this way? How do you know?” “You just do.” “Why do you say that?”
He just smirked, looked out the window, and sucked air through his teeth. Perhaps this was a regional thing, but the blacks often sucked air through their teeth as a wordless expression of disdain or hostility.
My students were sometimes unable to see the world except through the lens of their own blackness. I had a class that was host to a German exchange student. One day he put on a Power Point presentation with famous German landmarks as well as his school and family.
From time to time during the presentation, blacks would scream, “Where da black folk?!” The exasperated German tried several times to explain that there were no black people where he lived in Germany. The students did not believe him. I told them Germany is in Europe, where white people are from, and Africa is where black people are from. They insisted that the German student was racist, and deliberately refused to associate with blacks.
Blacks are keenly interested in their own racial characteristics. I have learned, for example, that some blacks have “good hair.” Good hair is black parlance for black-white hybrid hair. Apparently, it is less kinky, easier to style, and considered more attractive. Blacks are also proud of light skin. Imagine two black students shouting insults across the room. One is dark but slim; the other light and obese. The dark one begins the exchange: “You fat, Ridario!” Ridario smiles, doesn’t deign to look at his detractor, shakes his head like a wobbling top, and says, “You wish you light skinned.”
They could go on like this, repeating the same insults over and over.
My black students had nothing but contempt for Hispanic immigrants. They would vent their feelings so crudely that our department strongly advised us never to talk about immigration in class in case the principal or some outsider might overhear.
Whites were “racis’,” of course, but they thought of us at least as Americans. Not the Mexicans. Blacks have a certain, not necessarily hostile understanding of white people. They know how whites act, and it is clear they believe whites are smart and are good at organizing things. At the same time, they probably suspect whites are just putting on an act when they talk about equality, as if it is all a sham that makes it easier for whites to control blacks. Blacks want a bigger piece of the American pie. I’m convinced that if it were up to them they would give whites a considerably smaller piece than whites get now, but they would give us something. They wouldn’t give Mexicans anything.
What about black boys and white girls? No one is supposed to notice this or talk about it but it is glaringly obvious: Black boys are obsessed with white girls. I’ve witnessed the following drama countless times. A black boy saunters up to a white girl. The cocky black dances around her, not really in a menacing way. It’s more a shuffle than a threat. As he bobs and shuffles he asks, “When you gonna go wit’ me?”
There are two kinds of reply. The more confident white girl gets annoyed, looks away from the black and shouts, “I don’t wanna go out with you!” The more demure girl will look at her feet and mumble a polite excuse but ultimately say no.
There is only one response from the black boy: “You racis’.” Many girls-all too many-actually feel guilty because they do not want to date blacks. Most white girls at my school stayed away from blacks, but a few, particularly the ones who were addicted to drugs, fell in with them.
There is something else that is striking about blacks. They seem to have no sense of romance, of falling in love. What brings men and women together is sex, pure and simple, and there is a crude openness about this. There are many degenerate whites, of course, but some of my white students were capable of real devotion and tenderness, emotions that seemed absent from blacks-especially the boys.
Black schools are violent and the few whites who are too poor to escape are caught in the storm. The violence is astonishing, not so much that it happens, but the atmosphere in which it happens. Blacks can be smiling, seemingly perfectly content with what they are doing, having a good time, and then, suddenly start fighting. It’s uncanny. Not long ago, I was walking through the halls and a group of black boys were walking in front of me. All of a sudden they started fighting with another group in the hallway.
Blacks are extraordinarily quick to take offense. Once I accidentally scuffed a black boy’s white sneaker with my shoe. He immediately rubbed his body up against mine and threatened to attack me. I stepped outside the class and had a security guard escort the student to the office. It was unusual for students to threaten teachers physically this way, but among themselves, they were quick to fight for similar reasons.
The real victims are the unfortunate whites caught in this. They are always in danger and their educations suffer. White weaklings are particularly susceptible, but mostly to petty violence. They may be slapped or get a couple of kicks when they are trying to open a bottom locker. Typically, blacks save the hard, serious violence for each other.
There was a lot of promiscuous sex among my students and this led to violence. Black girls were constantly fighting over black boys. It was not uncommon to see two girls literally ripping each other’s hair out with a police officer in the middle trying to break up the fight. The black boy they were fighting over would be standing by with a smile, enjoying the show he had created. For reasons I cannot explain, boys seldom fought over girls.
Pregnancy was common among the blacks, though many black girls were so fat I could not tell the difference. I don’t know how many girls got abortions, but when they had the baby they usually stayed in school and had their own parents look after the child. The school did not offer daycare.
Aside from the police officers constantly on patrol, a sure sign that you My black students had nothing but contempt for Hispanics. Whites were “racis’,” of course, but they thought of us at least as Americans.
Security guards are everywhere in black schools-we had one on every hall. They also sat in on unruly classes and escorted students to the office. They were unarmed, but worked closely with the three city police officers who were constantly on duty.
There was a lot of drug-dealing at my school. This was a good way to make a fair amount of money but it also gave boys power over girls who wanted drugs. An addicted girl-black or white-became the plaything of anyone who could get her drugs.
One of my students was a notorious drug dealer. Everyone knew it. He was 19 years old and in eleventh grade. Once he got a score of three out of 100 on a test. He had been locked up four times since he was 13.
One day, I asked him, “Why do you come to school?”
He wouldn’t answer. He just looked out the window, smiled, and sucked air through his teeth. His friend Yidarius ventured an explanation: “He get dat green and get dem females.”
“What is the green?” I asked. “Money or dope?” “Both,” said Yidarius with a smile.
A very fat black interrupted from across the room: “We get dat lunch,” Mr. Jackson. “We gotta get dat lunch and brickfuss.” He means the free breakfast and lunch poor students get every day. “Nigga, we know’d you be lovin’ brickfuss!” shouts another student.
Some readers may believe that I have drawn a cruel caricature of black students. After all, according to official figures some 85 percent of them graduate. It would be instructive to know how many of those scraped by with barely a C- record. They go from grade to grade and they finally get their diplomas because there is so much pressure on teachers to push them through. It saves money to move them along, the school looks good, and the teachers look good.
Many of these children should have been failed, but the system would crack under their weight if they were all held back.
How did my experiences make me feel about blacks? Ultimately, I lost sympathy for them. In so many ways they seem to make their own beds. There they were in an integrationist’s fantasy-in the same classroom with white students, eating the same lunch, using the same bathrooms, listening to the same teachers-and yet the blacks fail while the whites pass.
One tragic outcome among whites who have been teaching for too long is that it can engender something close to hatred. One teacher I knew gave up fast food-not for health reasons but because where he lived most fast-food workers were black. He had enough of blacks on the job. This was an extreme example but years of frustration can take their toll. Many of my white colleagues with any experience were well on their way to that state of mind.
There is an unutterable secret among teachers: Almost all realize that blacks do not respond to traditional white instruction. Does that put the lie to environmentalism? Not at all. It is what brings about endless, pointless innovation that is supposed to bring blacks up to the white level. The solution is more diversity-or put more generally, the solution is change. Change is an almost holy word in education, and you can fail a million times as long as you keep changing. That is why liberals keep revamping the curriculum and the way it is taught. For example, teachers are told that blacks need handson instruction and more group work.
Teachers are told that blacks are more vocal and do not learn through reading and lectures. The implication is that they have certain traits that lend themselves to a different kind of teaching.
Whites have learned a certain way for centuries but it just doesn’t work with blacks. Of course, this implies racial differences but if pressed, most liberal teachers would say different racial learning styles come from some indefinable cultural characteristic unique to blacks. Therefore, schools must change, America must change. But into what? How do you turn quantum physics into hands-on instruction or group work? No one knows, but we must keep changing until we find something that works.
Public school has certainly changed since anyone reading this was a student. I have a friend who teaches elementary school, and she tells me that every week the students get a new diversity lesson, shipped in fresh from some bureaucrat’s office in Washington or the state capital. She showed me the materials for one week: a large poster, about the size of a forty-two inch flat-screen television. It shows an utterly diverse group-I mean diverse: handicapped, Muslim, Jewish, effeminate, poor, rich, brown, slightly brown, yellow, etc.-sitting at a table, smiling gaily, accomplishing some undefined task. The poster comes with a sheet of questions the teacher is supposed to ask. One might be: “These kids sure look different, but they look happy. Can you tell me which one in the picture is an American?”
Some eight-year-old, mired in ignorance, will point to a white child like himself. “That one.”
What’s In a Word ?
Bitch, hoe, motherfucker, nigga, chicken, cluck,…
ready to click on another link ? I would understand based on the mental image those words conjure up. However, for some reason those words seem to be common place in the black community and have become as common as the word “you”.
Brothers, think about it, does it seem to be part of being a black male that we refer to our woman as either “bitch” or “hoes” , “chicken” etc.. Whether we are conscience of it our not these words produce an unconscious image of a person that isn’t to be respected always degraded and only to be used for bodily pleasure.
Sisters, every time you refer to that man in your life or a brother you have had a relationship with in the past as “that nigga” , “lame ass nigga” etc.. a negative mental picture is presented and your innate concern for his well being is tossed to the wind. This makes it easier to put that brother in the system for child support or in jail.
Black folks, take a look around.. listen to other races as they speak about themselves. You will be alarmed to find that we are (generally) the only race of people in America that uses negative words in reference to our men and women. Could it be a coincidence that we are also the only race in America where our young men kill each other in such large numbers ?
The problems of the black community are much deeper that words however, I do believe that changing “OUR” language toward one another would be a GREAT start. Lets try brother, sister, king and queen from now on and see how that works.
Twelve Major Brands That Will Disappear Soon
A number of well-known brands disappeared in the last year in large part due to economic forces. Many of them were in the retail industry, led by Circuit City. ATA and Aloha airlines are gone. Gateway Computers has effectively disappeared after being bought by Acer. It still has a website, but the brand is no longer marketed.
As the recession deepens and stretches out quarter after quarter, more companies will close or will shut divisions. More brands will disappear because their parents firms fold or can no longer afford to support them. Other brands will be obliterated by mergers.
“West Meets South” – An interview with one of Bham’s hottest producers/artist’s E. ROSS
April 28, 2009 by dmac
Filed under Entertainment, Featured | 
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Artist: E. ROSS
Record Label: Deadline Music Group, Inc.
U: What is your place of residence?
E. Ross: Birmingham but the way of Los Angeles.
U: How long have you been creating music?
E. Ross: For about 7 years. Producing and writing.
Song: Feelin' U Summertime
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Song: Go 2 Wurk
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U: How would you describe your sound?
E. Ross: My sound is Street-Soul Hip Hop.
That’s the best way to describe it. I put my soul into every song I write and produce. I am influenced by hip hop and I come from the streets so, put it all together and you get Street-Soul Hip Hop.
U: Name of your upcoming / current album and where can we get a copy?
E. Ross: Right now I’m working on a mix-tape called, The Nfluence. It will be available on www.myspace.com/iameross in August. It will be free to download.
U: What was the inspiration for your single(s) you released on your current album?
E. Ross: The inspiration for “Feelin’ U Summertime“, which is my single off of The Nfluence mix-tape, is just enjoying the summertime. Will Smith aka the Fresh Prince diff inspire me to write a record like Feelin’ U Summertime. 
I wanted a real feel good record like summertime. Something the young heads and old heads could relate to. I think I made another classic summertime record with this one right here.
U: What artists have inspired you?
E. Ross: No one artist. Hip Hop culture in general has inspired me. From the old school to the new school. By me growing up half my life on the West Coast and half my life Down South, I was able to take from both cultures and develop my style and sound. I thank moms and pops for that.
U: What message / feel do you want your fans / critics to walk away with after hearing your music?
E. Ross: Here is an artist that stands out from the Hip Hop music today. An artist that really loves what he does and you can hear it through his music. I want people to be inspired by my message and walk away with a good feeling about my music.
U: What effect do you feel your city has on your music?
E. Ross: My city has me keep an open mind on different ways to be creative with my music.
U: How do you feel about the current state of Hip Hop?
E. Ross: The current state of hip hop. Wow, where do I begin with this one. I think hip hop is at a place of founding itself again. Remember when you had a balance of music from the west, east, south and north. That’s what’s missing. A balance of all kinds of music being played on radio and music videos. The balance is not right down the middle. It’s one sided. That one side is MONEY. I think hip hop will found itself again but right now it’s out exploring the world.
U: Do you feel the music Industry cripples creativity?
E. Ross: Really I think it’s about the artist and what he or she is about. Some artist doesn’t know how to be creative and that’s where the industry comes in at. Sometimes I hear artist say this is not really who I am as an artist. But this is who they won’t me to be as an artist. And that’s where the industry cripples creativity by not letting the artist be who they are.
U: When you’re not in the studio, what do you do to have fun?
E. Ross: I’m always in the studio that’s where I live, but I also like chilling with the FAM, watching movies and grilling out.
U: On a Sat night in Birmingham we would find you..
E. Ross: Any lounge spot hanging out networking with people. Having me a Grey Goose and pineapple living the good life.
U: What can we expect from you in the future?
E. Ross: The Nfluence mix-tape in August that will be available on my MySpace page. Producing and writing for other recording artist. Maybe a Grammy, who knows what the future holds but I will tell you this, I’m planning for it right now!
Check me out and add me @
www.myspace.com/iameross
www.facebook.com username: Airrik E Ross
www.twitter.com/iameross
iameross@gmail.com
A Sitdown with Birmingham’s own… Tommie Lee
Artist: Tommie Lee
Record Label: J.R. Records
Urbanham: What is your place of residence?
Tommie Lee: Birmingham, AL.
Urbanham: How long have you been creating music?
Tommie Lee: Since 2001
Urbanham: How would you describe your sound?
Tommie Lee: 1 of a kind
Song: Take
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Urbanham: Name of your upcoming / current album and where can we get a copy?
Tommie Lee: My current album is Forever Yours and you can email dafurnace.jrrecords@yahoo.com to order an album.
Urbanham: What was the inspiration for your single(s) you released on your current album?
Tommie Lee: Take a vacation is the single off the album. During the making of the album I was kind of stressed out so I was consistently saying I needed to take a vacation. The song is basically saying to step out of reality where ever you are to escape from your woman / man, kids, job, or just anything that keeps you down in your life. My music is made to take you away in your mind and make you explore all possibilities.
Urbanham: What artists have inspired you?
Tommie Lee: I like all kinds of music from hip hop to rap & from R&B to alternative. I’m and artist so I let them all influence me.
Urbanham: What message / feel do you want your fans / critics to walk away with after hearing your music?
Tommie Lee: I try to put out a positive message for people especially males to see what I have been through so they will not make the same mistake I made. I want to show the music industry that Birmingham has at lot of talent to offer. We are the best kept secret of the South, so to the critics you don’t have to love what we bring but the history of Alabama brings out more pain of the constant movement that we all are still involved in.
Urbanham: What effect do you feel your city has on your music?
Tommie Lee: It’s what I see everyday.I feel that because I’m from Birmingham I have a strive harder than the next artist that may be from a bigger city that may be more involved in the entertainment industry.
Urbanham: How do you feel about the current state of Hip Hop?
Tommie Lee: It’s constantly going through changes.Right now the current artist are putting out music people want to dance to and a few years ago it was mainly the hard rappers stating their claim on the industry. I feel like we all have a gift for what we do. I do me and that’s what people will hear.
Urbanham: Do you feel the music Industry cripples creativity?
Tommie Lee: I would have to say yes. You have a lot of times were music executives control what they put out, who makes the beats,and what they will talk about. I want to keep my creative edge and make music that people feel.
Urbanham: When you’re not in the studio, what do you do to have fun?
Tommie Lee: I’m straight from the south I like hanging with my family & friends.
Urbanham: On a Sat night in Birmingham we would find you
Tommie Lee: at the club or wing spot
Urbanham: What can we expect from you in the future?
Tommie Lee: I’m working on my next album Forever Yours: Volume II
Whites rate neighborhoods lower if they see blacks in them
by: Todd Johnson
Source: www.articlesofinfo.com
Moving into a new neighborhood doesn’t always come down to what the houses look like or how much they will cost. For hundreds of white respondents in a recent study, race matters too.
Randomly selected white adults from the Chicago and Detroit metropolitan areas were shown videos of identical neighborhoods and asked to evaluate items such as the cost of housing and the quality of area schools.
While the neighborhoods in the videos were identical, the residents were not. Some respondents saw neighborhoods with black residents, others saw the same neighborhoods with white residents or a mixture of both.
According to the research released in November, whites who saw white residents in the video rated the neighborhood more favorably than whites who saw black residents in the same neighborhood.
The study was co-authored by Maria Krysan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Reynolds Farley, a research professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.
Krysan and Farley provide insight below on the study’s findings.
What is new about this study on residential segregation?
Krysan: We showed people actual videos. This grew out of a dissatisfaction of earlier studies, where people had to imagine neighborhoods and racial compositions, and then we’d ask them questions about it. We thought that wasn’t a good way to do it. When you can see a neighborhood, it’s not as blatant as a question would be about race. Today, race is a sensitive topic. It’s difficult to get people’s attitudes more specifically.
Were the results surprising or consistent with your previous research?
Krysan: I can’t say that I was surprised by the results. If you have a situation where whites are living in a neighborhood and then blacks move in, [whites] may have stereotypes of what may happen to that neighborhood and might cause them to leave. That’s called white flight. It was certainly prevalent and most visible in the 1970s. The other dynamic is when whites make decisions to move because they got a new job, for example, that they choose the white neighborhoods.
This study shows that race is still a significant factor in how whites evaluate neighborhoods. What factors contribute to whites’ perceptions?
Farley: There’s a history in the U.S. of negative stereotypes about black people. Whites tend to think that in neighborhoods where blacks live, property values don’t go up, crime might be more frequent, the schools may not be very good.
Krysan: It’s complicated. It’s part of the story of race in America that we haven’t gotten past. There are still stereotypes that whites hold about these groups, but also about the neighborhoods where they live.
The study that was just released analyzes the responses of white adults. Were similar responses taken from black adults and what were the results?
Krysan: Our survey included African-Americans and Latinos, but that data hasn’t been fully analyzed yet. It got too complicated to try to put those results in the same paper. Race did matter for the other groups. But the reasons race matters for African-Americans is different than it is for whites and we want to provide historical context.
Farley: Race made a difference to blacks, but it mattered considerably less than whites.
Blacks preferred neighborhoods with black residents and pretty expensive homes, but it was less salient a factor in their evaluations.
What will help neighborhoods become more racially diverse?
Krysan: We need more policies and programs that try to overcome these barriers to integration. Places like the [Oak ParkRegionalHousingCenter] is probably the most noteworthy example. Part of what they do is break down the stereotypes people may have about living in Oak Park. These are the types of affirmative marketing programs that are needed today.
Farley: The color lines are not drawn as firmly now as they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago. It seems to be going away, but it’s not going to disappear in the next 10 or 15 years. I give a lot of tours in Detroit, which many assume is a crime-ridden and troubled city. But there are about two dozen very attractive and racially mixed neighborhoods that people know very little about. You have to do the work that gets a wider array of people, both white and black, to consider these types of neighborhoods. That’s the first step.
