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"I waz kinda nigga in my mama's belly"
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Brother Where R U?
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Archive 2000-01
or: Brotha Where R U?
(INTRO) "Where are you going?" -R. Steiger:Gillespie. "Where white folks aren't admitted!" -S. Poitier:Virgit. Inspector Tibbs was in the heat of the night... (by N. Jewison, 1967).
Never mind that no-global movement leaders are trying to convince the common people to stay close to their towns, to defend their own historic privileges. I guess the globalization goes with the flow... It's a trend of people that enter a new country with hopes and fears. The global village is starting from every neighborhood you are living in. In my 200,000 people city —to keep it real— you may discover that public parks are full of men and women from former Soviet Union's countries: they are used to have party on the park benches... On a sunday morning you may listen to the church black choirs from the venues of the African immigrants who put on the good dress... A brand new butcher's shop displays both Italian and Arabian neon sign and offers meat respectful of the Muslim use... Walking the city center the most part of restaurants are running by Asian or North-African innkeepers... US-styled McDonald's fast food is well established in every shopping center along the grand beltway... So what? Globalization is not to come loose, is already at any corner of any Italian city and small town. And it is not an ideal vision of the world, not a law or project or maneuver managed by someone above there. It's about mobility! Let it go... I unveiled the Internet is as good as its cyberspace develops useful response to ethnic communities whose members want to easily communicate each other wherever they are living.
SET1 The Black Album.
This article begins to explore the African-American community on the Net. Maybe THE most famous ethnic group on this planet because of its frequent civil claims led by famous fallen leaders in '60s against the racial isolation; 'til the L.A. riots and Million Man March in '90s...
BLACK IS BLACK is the subtitle of this review about the black websites. Inspired from that street culture that is worth more than a college education, the black has certainly caught on a fake self-destructive mode of its character. There is reason to believe in a new generation of people able to establish itself at least one notch up in the social pecking order. By using the Internet as a personal tool to better communicate with one other. It's also a community without deluding of the Internet as an absolute medium of social changes. Come.
MARKETER: "I want u to remember the thirty million Afro-Americans in the US". A minority by numbers, a community by culture, a market by particular wants and needs. So it's such a shame when the Net —like heaven— was always owned by the white folk. The premier African-American portal, and online urban music destination, started in Feb. 2000. C@ www.BET.com
WOMAN: "When I was little, I wanted to be a movie star". At the center of the black it's plenty of women wanting to get more than a phone sex job. U betta know more and more big advertisers —for example Evian, Martini, Revlon, Swatch— are hiring black models to represent THE internationally vaunted beauty. Black goes marketable! I presume these professional women are hot witness to tell us about things r changin'. Among the beautiful ones black actress Halle Berry gets a kind of hero for young people. A woman's gotta have it, C@ www.hallewood.com
MAN: "Excuse me, I'm new over the Net and I wonder if you could kindly direct me to a web location aimed to the black people". Is there a great difference from other websites? Absolutely. It varies not only the language or design but the priority of topics -->for example you may enter www.blackplanet.com, that is a must for the black belt to browse. More than 2.8 Million Members (as of June 2001) accounts this website that is "a ground-breaking online community for the African diaspora".
READER #1: "Black people didn't find out nothing they need to know in white papers". The findings are not a whimper. Nobody ashamed to be black today. It seems to me that black Americans feel exactly enthusiastic about being a first class of men in several activities from sport to music. In addition the black people are supposed to be as strong as their purposes of self-affirmation and their daunting life experience. While on this album pretend u are a black person and think about how u'd be. U gotta get up, move up, show up! C@ www.blacknet.co.uk
COOL CATS: "So fresh, so clean...". Why is a common habit for the black community to consider hip hop as a revolution made of the bombastic art associated to the music vibes? Sexual energy plus political consciousness always beat the complacency and the self-complaining. There is something to do with native tongue. It has been written that "African-Americans are the only ethnic minority group to lack a separate language" (Ben Sidran). This native tongue they find thru the black music. A language that is as fresh and dynamic as the need to keep it always inviolable and uncompromisable. An urgency of clean, hardcore semantics. Listen to soul music here... C@ www.vibe.com
WHITE MAN: "We see the American flag being lowered to half-mast". This time ethnicity does come behind —though a virtual land exists for anyone black. Not one place, rather a great sense of union of members linked to the same identity. A continent-shaped thought rather than a country to share. Is the Net helping to connect to this ethnic community? Most African-Americans say yeah, that might be good... C@ www.the-hood.com
THE NEXT THING: "U ought to advertise". The television series Roots brought the anguish of slavery to our parents' living rooms, like the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin did the same for our ancestors. If history is bunk, let's jazz up the trade a bit. I'm just an observer but black modes and demeanors have not definitely entered Europe —that as older, wider (money-spending) market is just able to assimilate everything different by economic appropriation. Today Western culture is oppressed by the fear of the melting pot in countries as Italy very little touched until now by an actual mixture of races. Why can't we live together? Meanwhile the commercial strategy is going to go ethnic for many traditionally white industries. C@ www.diesel.com
READER #2: "I don't know what he's trying to say. Do u know what he's trying to say?".
SET2 - Afro-American users. The black community surveyed recently in its online habits is shaped by the following remarks:
- they prefer to visit ethnic websites;
- they are relatively young Internet users and mostly women;
- they demand much contents for the children;
- they prefer to use the Web for job hunting or developing relationships;
- they believe different ethnic groups have same needs on the Internet;
- they access the Internet more often at work than at home.
I never smoked but I had many companions who did it! Enter here another community...
SET3 - I would like to praise:
- "Ethnicity in the electronic age. Looking at the Internet through a multicultural lens", a report produced by The Cultural Access Group, www.accesscag.com. I sum up from that survey.
- "One Day When I Was Lost. A Scenario" by James Baldwin. "Sentences" on this page come from that book.
- All the movies from director Spike Lee, who outrageously tells stories based on our ethnic strengths and weaknesses.
(OUTRO) "A white man wants first to win, then make good impression. A black man wants first to make good impression and then win" so Woody Harrelson —as Billy— said to Wesley Snipes —as Sidney— on the movie "White Men Can't Jump" by Ron Shelton (1992).
PS. For this black album don't call me whitey, nigga! I waz kinda nigga in my mama's belly.
PPS. Words Up!