Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Illiteracy as pop culture.

re: Illiteracy as pop culture.
Robert — (archived)

(When I responded to Buck's complaint over on Flame, I started to enter this discussion, so I've moved that part of it over here. Thus it begins abruptly, in the middle.)

...I think Lee's making a mountain out of a molehill by savaging two instances of lazy, bad writing. But let me really get in your faces and suggest that, despite the ugly spin only Lee can give a topic, he actually raises a legitimate general question about pop culture today. It's fashionable to be Black these days, and it's not out-of-bounds to talk about features of the fad that many people find disturbing. If you respect the English language, you're not wrong to be disturbed by the debauchery of the language by hiphop slang. If you respect the dignity of all people, you can't help but be disturbed by the violence and degradation communicated by the soundtrack of pop culture, and most of all, by the all-too-common use of the N-word that degrades all who use it or hear it.

I've heard all the theories about how the use of the N-word by Blacks is supposed to be a desensitizing thing, or alternatively, an ironic way of turning it around and throwing it back in white faces. Maybe so, but those excuses don't hold a candle to this fundamental fact: Culture is passed on primarily through language, starting at birth, and acculturation through deliberate education comes later. Keeping alive the N-word keeps alive the plantation culture, despite all our efforts to eradicate it from our culture.

Speaking as a boomer, I don't want to be accused of being my parents denouncing our rock music. But it's kind of like the flip side of the fable of the little boy who cried wolf: Sometimes not speaking up enough can lead to harm, just as speaking up too often can lead to harm. Reticence out of fear of being ridiculed as an old fogey can be an abdication of responsibility.

Or maybe I risk sounding like a Winger, bitterly complaining that the entire world is going to hell in a handbasket, and darn, kids these days, etc. etc. etc. But that's another variation on the little-boy-who-cried-wolf thing--even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then. Is it possible that Wingers aren't entirely off-base about this one? At least, no more off-base than Lee, since Lee and the Wingers share an ugly and over-the-top way of expressing any point, which must be factored-out and de-spun to find any kernel of substnce. But don't you think that anti-Wingerism has its own pitfalls if we give in to the impulse to blindly support whatever Wingers hate?

OK, I think I've stirred the pot a bit. Bring it on!

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