Wednesday, May 07, 2008 Editorial: The thugs and our society
ONE more 17-year-old is dead, snuffed out with two bullets in the head this time in Bankerohan. How many teeners have been killed this year alone? We no longer kept a tally. One thing we're sure of, the slain young ones and several others who escaped death are mounting every week.
Thus we stand back and try to ponder on what it is that besets our young among the urban poor population; and then we see young men, pants worn very low on their hips, ball caps worn with visors facing the back and pointing down, very loose sleeveless shirts, the reglamentary cigarette in hand, the swaggering walk, and the fingers splayed with the thumb and ring finger connected in a ring, "Yo!"
Gangsta rap is written all over them, that very popular music cum culture among black Americans, which has become the epitome of lawlessness, such that the most popular rappers take pride in having criminal histories -- whether real or made up. After all, it's gangsta rap and anyone who's not a gangster is a wimp.
In similar situations are the young in our ever-growing inner city settlements. They start out being close to their siblings because in squatters' areas the elder siblings are the ones who watch over the babies and the toddlers.
And then they start going out with other children, and just before they reach their teens, they follow the big boys around with puppy adoration. By the age of 13, they become part of a gang, because anyone who's not a gangster is a wimp.
Call us old-fashioned, but there is reason to worry when lawlessness, murder, sex, women for sex, and disrespect to values become mainstream music and the likes of Puff Daddy, Snoop Dogg, 2pac, and Akon who bask in their being gangstas become the present-day idols of similarly-dressed youths.
Music is a reflection of the society we live in. We must thus listen to the music that our young is crazy about, as well as listen to the music (or noise) that they are making so that we can get a better handle of what mayhem is going on in the minds of our youth.
Listen...they're rapping about murder and mayhem and sex and blings. They are celebrating an outlaw culture. A message as loud as the neighbor's videoke machine is being shouted, and all that we're doing is sitting in the comforts of our home, clucking about yet another young man who was shot dead.
We're not saying that we ban this music. That's stupid; they're going to get it in the Internet anyway, or the friendly neighborhood pirate.
All we're saying is for the community to take heed and exert every effort to bring that music back to productive thoughts, to work as a community to break the magnetism of the outlaw life among our young, because if all these young boys continue to leer at being good in favor of notoriety, then our urban poor population will always be in trouble as the slain 'gangsta' will just get younger.
