Controversial is the term that many people used in response to "I'm Not Racist" by Joyner Lucas. When the rap song was released along with its video in late 2017, everyone had an opinion about it. The song received about as much negative feedback as it did positive. CNN said this was "the brutal race conversation no one wants to have" whereas Vulture called the song "exhausting." Regardless of the nature of the feedback, the song accomplished its goal of starting a conversation about racism. At least that seems to be Lucas's purpose considering the shocking nature of the lyrics. One thing we can be sure of is that this viral hit got the attention of a great deal of people. As soon as we hit the play button, we are met with a white man in a bright red "Make America Great Again" hat. With this image, we can already assume that this man is a supporter of Donald Trump, which is uncommon in the world of hip hop and makes him seem out of place. When he starts lip syncing to the …show more content…
Each line is a direct rebuttal to something said by the Trump supporter. "With all disrespect I don't really like you white...that's just where I'm at" is how the verse begins and already we see both similarities and differences to the first verse. While the black man is just as disrespectful as the white man, the black man makes no attempt to cover it up or soften the blow. "Screaming 'All Lives Matter' is a protest to my protest," he continues. The All Lives Matter (ALM) movement has been an arguable one since it began. The problem with the ALM movement is that it was created in response to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. ALM does not create a solution for the problem being protested against in the BLM movement. BLM has never meant that any other lives do not matter, just that black lives matter too. ALM only draws attention from BLM's purpose and essentially creates more of a problem than a
The verses each deliver a message of equality and the chorus is repeated with the intention of the audience considering their input towards reconciliation. The chorus is repeated 3 times, which is usually done to reinforce the central idea within a song. There are two separate verses, one that starts with the words “black fella white fella” and the other, which starts with “all the people of different races”. This format is repeated to help emphasise the idea that equality is important, regardless of your skin colour. The text structure is ordered in a way that tells a story about equal opportunity, and the way it is formatted is important in communicating this
Kim Addonizio’s “First Poem for You” portrays a speaker who contemplates the state of their romantic relationship though reflections of their partner’s tattoos. Addressing their partner, the speaker ambivalence towards the merits of the relationship, the speaker unhappily remains with their partner. Through the usage of contrasting visual and kinesthetic imagery, the speaker revels the reasons of their inability to embrace the relationship and showcases the extent of their paralysis. Exploring this theme, the poem discusses how inner conflicts can be powerful paralyzers.
“Immigrants at central station, 1951”, this poem is about the Skrzynecki family waiting to depart on a train at central station to a migrant. The first stanza describes the time and the atmosphere of the where the family were the family is situated. The poem begins by capturing a brief moment in time from the whistle declaring its arrival to the scene of leaving with it. “It was sad to hear the train’s whistle this morning” these words provoke sadness where it usually brings joy. This tell us that the Skrzynecki family were sad due to the fact that they were about to travel to the unknown. “All night it had rained.” The imagery in the first stanza is depressing, the poems tone here is sad. As the poem goes on it says, “But we ate it all” the metaphor here is used for positiveness. No matter how depressed they were they still enjoyed it. The second stanza is about
The contrast that develops in the poem On The Subway would be the race and the way both characters are dressed. From the poets tone a reader could infer that she was prejudice towards the boy.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
“If I was gay / I would think hip-hop hates me / Have you read the YouTube comments lately? / ‘Man that's gay’ / Gets dropped on the daily / We've become so numb to what we're sayin.'” In these few lines, Macklemore brings up the fact that the genre of hip-hop has become one that is “anti-gay.” Hip-hop is a very common genre of music and it reaches a large population of people, mostly young people who will have an effect in the future of America. This is Macklemore’s target audience: the general public who can make a difference. Macklemore has surprised many by coming out with this popular, pro-gay, hip-hop song. It is rational to see that he took a stand against the issue as well as a risk in his career by supporting this idea. The listeners understand that those lines are very truthful; the hip-hop genre and most of society has become anti-gay. Almost all of his audience is familiar with YouTube and can understand where Macklemore is coming from in these lines. Most of his audience has seen comments on YouTube similar to “Man that’s gay.” Macklemore is bringing attention to the fact that his audience has become numb to harsh words like so and the general public has lost a sentimental feeling. Macklemore goes on to give an example of the desensitizing of society by giving the reference to “faggots”, “a word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores
Similar to other social movements including the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Lives Matter campaign has forced incumbent politicians to get involved and for upcoming candidates to make a stance on the issue. The mistreatment of African Americans by police offers has been criticized by movements such as the All Lives Matter and the Blue Lives Matter campaigns, which aim to condemn the Black Lives Matter movement by stating that this movement is seen as anti-white and ignorant of all other races and violence against them. Nevertheless, those in union with the campaign argue that the campaign sheds light on a specific injustice happening in the African American community and brings the world into solidarity with those
Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was created to show the injustices that were being taken against the African American community. What no one was able to predict was the fact BLM started to actually discriminate and overlook members of their own race due to subtle differences like gender or sexual orientation. This type of overlook had to be correct by the BLM community in order to show solidarity inside the movement in order not to overlook anyone inside the African American race.
Zhao Zhenkai also known as Bei Dao is a Chinese born in Beijing, China. He’s one of the most outstanding, extraordinary and distinguished Chinese poet of his generation. By many, he’s seen and considered as one of the major writers in modern China. Bei Dao which literally means “Northern Island” is the pen name of this Chinese poet and he’s won copious international awards for his poetry, he’s been nominated severally for the Nobel Prize in literature and he’s an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and letters. He’s also an author of short stories. He’s known through his writing as a critical thinker who creatively constitute a driving force culture and he’s seen as a pervasive, Insuppressible media machine that is incessantly grinding lives into story lines and human voices into carefully gleaming sound bites. Bai’s poetry core concern at this time is a solicitation for the reimposition of personal space and life’s ordinariness against a general indigence of humanity in china for the past ten years. Bai has written many poems which challenge the issue of a corrupt society, abuse of power and bloody landscape of the fascist dictatorship in China. Some of Bei Dao’s books of poetry and essay include, Blue house (2000), Unlock (2000), Midnight Gate (2005), The August Sleeper (1988), Old Snow (1991) and at the Sky’s Edge Poems (1991-1996) and untitled.
This research paper speaks of the poem “The Tattooer” that talks about Japanese culture where men are superior and women are seen beneath the men of society. The poem "The Tattooer" shines the light on many of Tanizaki's standard society themes. And in this the tattooer desires the pleasure of his art; the tattooer takes much pride in the tattoos that he creates on the flesh of humans and also endures pleasure from putting pain on the empty canvases with his needle. In “The Tattooer” by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro the tattooer desires the pain inflicted on his canvas but then the perfect body is seen and he realizes that he must now tattoo for the beauty of the tattoo and is soon controlled by women.
Did I Miss Anything? is a poem written by a Canadian poet and academic Tom Wayman. Being a teacher, he creates a piece of literature, where he considers the answers given by a teacher on one and the same question asked by a student, who frequently misses a class. So, there are two speakers present in it – a teacher and a student. The first one is fully presented in the poem and the second one exists only in the title of it. The speakers immediately place the reader in the appropriate setting, where the actions of a poem take place – a regular classroom. Moreover, the speakers unfolds the main theme of the poem – a hardship of being a teacher, the importance of education and laziness, indifference and careless attitudes of a student towards studying.
In multiple different occurrences the protests have angered others more than just gain awareness. Sadly a large number of people are more upset with the stop of traffic and other inconveniences caused by the protests, rather than the deaths of unarmed black men and women. The protest are doing their job to gain attention, but in the eyes of some they are doing it in the wrong way. One big rally cry the movement has had is “hands up, don’t shoot” which came after the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson Missouri. It was said that before he was killed he stated “my hands are up, don’t shoot me” which we find out afterward is not true. Anyways hands up don’t shoot, spread like wildfire and grabbed everyone’s attention. It was placed on the big stage, including sporting events, and areas of high traffic. Many common people support Black Lives Matter, but there may be some flaws in it as well. Clearly the main idea of the movement is good, and black lives really do matter. However would it not be safe to say that all lives matter rather than just black ones? It is true there have been many cases against African Americans and they may be targeted more often than other races. From another point of view, there would be riots in the
The statement “All Lives Matter” was brought into context because people believed that not one group should be the center of attention or signaled out in the United States was it comes to policy brutality. The statement is also used to stay away from the use of racism in these types of situations and focus on America’s people as unified or that not one person is different than the other. The Editorial Board from The New York Times states that “The Republican party and its acolytes in the news media are trying to demonize the protest movement that has sprung up in response to the all-too-common police killings of unarmed African-Americans across the country. The intent of the is to cast the phrase “Black Lives Matter” as an inflammatory or even hateful anti-white expression that has no legitimate place in a civil rights campaign”. Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee described the situation perfectly by saying “If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were he alive today, he would be “appalled” by the movement’s focus on the skin color of the unarmed people who are disproportionately killed in encounters with the police. This argument betrays a disturbing indifference to or at best a profound ignorance of history in general and of the civil rights movement in particular.” As we all know
Whenever you hear about an African American getting killed by the United States police, you never see All Lives Matter supporters protesting. The intentions of the All Lives Matter movement seem to be more spiteful, as opposed to helpful. Every time African Americans yell “Black Lives Matter”, outrage from other racial groups tends to emerge as they yell “All Lives Matter” back. It seems like the All Lives Matter movement is more of a tug a war game with Black Lives Matter, rather than an activist organization designed to bring cognizance to police abuse. If All Lives Matter is based on justice for everyone, supporters of the group would understand that African American people are treated like second class citizens in the judicial system. Therefore, the black community created Black Lives Matter to stop the United States police from murdering them. All Lives Matter was designed to disregard the inequity of African