myself 2 decades ago

2 decades ago, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" ruled the airwaves, Skee-Lo wished he was a little bit taller, and Bone Thugs N Harmony sang about their welfare checks on "1st of the Month" (the song probably scared enough people to the point where Bill Clinton just had to sign the welfare reform law the following year).


And 2 decades ago, I was starting high school.

A lot of young adult novels start off with the 1st day of high school being very scary!

For me, I was just glad to be out of middle school. High school was just much better!

My middle school was Kawananakoa Middle School, which was seen as the "safe option" for Honolulu middle schools, but really, it wasn't immune from having wannabee gangstas (and a few real ones, who had nothing more to prove so didn't cause as much trouble as the wannabes),  nor was it immune to really corrupt teachers (Anjo, Komae, I'm talking about you on this blog post)

Kawananakoa Middle School was split between 2 high school 

districts - McKinley (who had the more immigrant, ghetto population) and Roosevelt (with a more upper class population mixed mostly with local Japanese and Native Hawaiians)!

Me, I went to McKinley High School!

Entering high school, we were mixed with those from Central Middle School (with a reputation of having an immigrant, low-income housing population) and Washington Middle School (which split between McKinley and Kaimuki High School, mixed income but mostly urbanized middle class)

Being that Central Middle School had a "scary" reputation, one of my Kawananakoa friends who was supposed to go to Central was just so scared to have to go to the same high school with the Central kids!  

Turns out he didn't have much to worry about! He was scared in the 1st day (he said he had gang members in his class), but it turned out most of them just left him alone! Most of the real gang members are too busy beefing with their rivals that they don't even bother bullying the so-called "nerds/geeks/emos/whatevers".  They might make a few minor jokes at their expense but it's not like they slam them into lockers and flush them into toilets!  They got bigger fish to fry!

The same was true for most of the jocks at my school!  Most of them are really chill dudes.  Unlike the "jocks" portrayed on TV or YA novels, the ones in my school don't even bother bullying the so-called "nerds/geeks/emos/whatevers".  They might make a few minor jokes at their expense but it's not like they slam them into lockers and flush them into toilets! They got bigger fish to fry!

---

 AS for me, during my freshman year,  I tried to play it "low key" my first year, try not to bring too much attention to myself!  If I didn't have close friends in a certain class, I would be the more "quiet one", but that don't let that fool you. I could still crack an inappropriate joke, still mock a few girls when they were being whiny, and wasn't the best friend I should have been! A few friends turned against each other and instead of me being the diplomat, I just told them what they said each other behind their backs. Some of their jokes they said about each other were funny as hell, but over time, the whole thing just got exhausting! It was hard to juggle time between friends who don't like each other! By the middle of the sophomore year, everyone just burned out from dissing each other! 

Another thing that burned me out was that same year I went from middle to high school, my family got a house in a different part of the island! So I was commuting and using my grandma's address just to continue going to the school where at least I had a few friends!  But covering up that I'm using my grandma's address became too exhausting and caused a major rift between me and my parents! I hated (yes, hated) my parents for buying that house and hated (yes, hated) my parents for not moving back to the old community!  It got to the point where towards the end of my high school career, eff it, I just lived with my grandma full-time already!

(note: me and my parents discussed this issue with a trained professional, and we made peace on this issue recently) 

However, the main thing that keep me going strong was that McKinley High School had an exciting environment! It was the most immigrant high school in Hawaii, but it still had some local people! It was interesting to see Pacific Islanders and Asian immigrants embracing the West Coast gangsta rap trend that was popular when I entered high school! While most students embraced hip-hop (especially gangsta rap), other genres like ska, reggae, rave, punk rock and heavy metal had fans amongst our peers! Some of our peers weren't afraid to be an individual, having funky hairstyles and wearing thrift shop styles. 

McKinley High School also had the coolest traditions, from the Tiger Pride, the Bonfires, pep rallies and more! Just beware that we don't really worship that statue, being that is a relic of colonial times.  People just worship the Tiger Stripes instead!

I also had one of my favorite teachers in 9th grade -- Mr Newkirk. He was the English teacher and he made classic literature entertaining, with emphasis on performances.

I also liked my freshman PE, because it was much better than middle school PE. Back then, middle school PE was "you only play the popular team sports and if you suck, too bad". Whereas high school PE is "we got 3 teachers, so you get to chose  from 3 sports for the next 2 weeks. " It wasn't just the popular team sports, but we also had archery, billiards (walking to "Hawaiian Brian's" was the exercise), fishing (walking to so-called Magic "Island' was the exercise), lawn bowling, badminton, and more.


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High school life took a dip in sophomore year, but it got much more exciting in junior and senior years.

Learn more at

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2009/06/10-years-ago-today.html

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-double-3-years.html


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Also, I wrote another "myself, 2 decades ago" blog post 3 years ago, that one about my transition from elementary to middle school. Read it at
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/09/myself-2-decades-ago.html

A decade after Hurricane Katrina

A decade ago, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi, causing major damage.



The damage wasn't only physical, but also social and political.



The biggest city in the region that got hit was New Orleans, which is a famous tourist town, but also one of the poorest and most dangerous of major cities in the US.   The city was had long been run by corrupt leaders, long been losing jobs, and long been known as "Murder Capital of America".


When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, much of its population couldn't afford transportation to evacuate. They were stuck when the storm hit. To add insult to injury, there were school buses available but nobody even took the initiative to say "hey let's use these to evacuate some people outta here."


It's bad enough that much of New Orleans is below sea level, making the area vulnerable to flooding, especially when the levees broke.


But the disaster response by  local, state and federal officials were slow and inadequate! 


Because the majority of New Orleans population is African-American, there was a perception that the slow response by the federal government was on purpose.   It got Kanye West to go on TV and say "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  I don't agree with Kanye West on that, but I do think that George W. Bush's big mistake was hiring a FEMA director that had ZERO experience in dealing with major natural disasters!

But with Kanye West's remark, and Bush's hiring of a political crony to FEMA, Bush's reputation as president has never recovered!  A man who won re-election just a year earlier has now become someone even fellow Republicans want to distance themselves from!


AS Melisa Harris-Perry wrote, the response to Hurricane Katrina set into motion the eventual election of Barack Obama
http://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-debt-new-orleans/




But also let's remember that even the mostly European-American towns didn't get the help they need. It's just that the European-Americans were spread out amongst the various towns instead of being concentrated in a major city.

Cathy Young's "No, This Is the Story of the Hurricane"
http://reason.com/archives/2005/12/01/no-this-is-the-story-of-the-hu

To all those other Republican sins, add racism. Obviously, race and poverty are intertwined in America, and to that extent race was related to who survived in New Orleans. But the race mongers went far beyond that plain, and discomforting, fact. The trope that Bush doesn't give a damn if black people die was repeated by Moore, rapper Kanye West, self-styled civil rights activist Al Sharpton, and others.

It, too, was dramatically out of touch with the facts. Government ineptitude, like the hurricane itself, was an equal opportunity offender. People were just as neglected, probably more so, in predominantly white Katrina-stricken areas in Mississippi and Louisiana.

As Harry Shearer pointed out in The Huffington Post, "three weeks after landfall, their officials sit with populations of middle-class people largely homeless, waiting for help that still does not come. A lot of those people and officials, this being the suburbs, are white. The words from the officials' mouths...eerily echo the words cried out by black folks at the Convention Center almost three weeks ago: they keep promising buses and other help and it never comes, we feel betrayed by our own government."

But this corrective did little to displace the racism meme.

That article isn't just a "whites are the true victims" nonsense, as it also criticizes the right-wing pundits who were insensitive to the plight of the New Orleans victims.

Meanwhile, many on the right were fighting their own brand of culture wars. George Neumayr, executive editor of The American Spectator, wrote darkly about the "civilizational collapse" in ravaged New Orleans, victim of a "politically correct culture in which pathologies are allowed to fester in the name of 'progress.' " The pathologies in question ranged from violent rap music (there's nothing like a "Born a Pimp, Died a Playa" T-shirt or two to throw fear into the hearts of social conservatives) to a police department allegedly filled with criminals because of "let's-just-meet-the-quota-style affirmative action." The New Orleans Police Department does have a notorious history of corruption, but this problem long predated affirmative action.

Several conservative sites also ran a shrill screed by Robert Tracinski, editor of the Objectivist journal Intellectual Activist, who opined that the real devastation in New Orleans was a "man-made disaster" caused by "criminals and welfare parasites." The latter, Tracinski wrote, were "a mass of sheep" unable to help themselves due to "lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness."

Of course, Tracinski has no more idea than the rest of us how many of the refugees were on welfare and how many were working poor, how many suffered from "lack of initiative" and how many simply lacked the transportation to get out of town. The welfare state does cause social pathologies. But it might have been a little more decent to at least wait until all the "sheep," alive and dead, were plucked from the waters.

Such decency seemed in short supply in the weeks following Katrina. As the city began to retrieve its dead and the final tally was still expected to be in the thousands, some Republicans launched into a spin cycle, suggesting that 10,000 dead in a nation of 300 million wasn't that bad and pointing out that household accidents cause more annual casualties in America and the 2003 heat wave killed more people in Europe.

Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott rightly took them to task for this callous and clumsy attempt at damage control. Then he immediately turned to a numbers game of his own: Whatever the eventual death toll from Katrina, he asserted, it would take away the World Trade Center bombing from the right as a propaganda tool in the War on Terror because conservatives would no longer be able to "ritualistically invoke the '3,000 dead' to the same sonorous effect." One has to wonder if a body count below 1,000 would have been a disappointment.

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As for my thoughts on Hurricane Katrina at the time it was still fresh news, you can check out
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2005/09/hurricane-katrina-some-of-my-thoughts.html


here's a few samples from that blog post

Even after a devastating disaster, there are those who pimp the pain of the destruction for political persons.

Already, some left-wingers blamed Bush, saying his inaction towards global warming has caused the hurricane.

Meanwhile. conservative preachers have said the hurricane is punishment to New Orleans for hosting gay parades and "Girls Gone Wild" videos.

Meanwhile, Islamic fanatics say the hurricane is Allah's revenge on the US!

Another conservative minister said that the looting of stores after the storm is the fault of liberals for not allowing religious indoctorination into public schools.

Bush is blamed for not having rescuers moving fast enough to save everyone.

To all those complainers mentioned, I want them to shut up already! Their comments aren't helping anyone, all they do is irritate us!

In that blog post, I also talked about the looting, and the soft bigotry of low expectations of the excuses made to defend the looters!

my thoughts on the NWA movie

I very rarely go to the movies. It's been 9 years since I last been to a movie theatre.

Tickets, and snacks are too expensive, plus rarely do I ever want to spend 2 more hours sitting down looking at a screen! I mean,  I don't even have time to watch TV!

But while I don't really care much for movies and television, I am a major music fan!  Music is a much more time efficient form of entertainment for me!

But with the movie about the legendary gangsta rap group NWA in theaters, I just had to watch history in the making!


1) My experience at the theater itself

With real life gun violence at movie theatres and with concerns that the NWA movie Straight Outta Compton would attract gang members, there were rumors that extra security would be needed.

Yes, I saw 2 police officers in the theater, but there wasn't a big army making movie-goers feeling like this was a police state!

The lines waiting for the specific room for Straight Outta Compton was very long, but there was no pandemonium. The only thing the staff was strict about is just telling everyone "make sure you have your ticket stub and your ID when we open the room."

The only commotion inside the room was just people  coming in late trying to find empty seats in the dark!  Minor stuff!


--

As for the previews, it just reminded me how much I lost interest in action movies. When I was a kid, I used to watch the Terminator moives, James Bond movies,  90's era martial arts movies, etc.  But as I said, I haven't been to the movies in years. I haven't even seen a single "Fast and Furious" movie!

Even the new previews for upcoming action movies didn't interest me!  Whatevers!


2) The movie itself


I loved it!  A great story!  Great re-enactments. Most of the actors resemble the rappers, except for the guy who portrayed Dr Dre. The actor just wasn't fat like Dre was!

But yeah, it was great to see re-enactments of all the stories I read and interviews I listened to about NWA!  It feels much more real acted out than just reading it or just hearing of it in interviews.

It started with Eazy-E's running from a SWAT raid. Time to get a legal gig!
Then with Dre's music obsession and his mom's demand to get a "real job"
Then with Ice Cube on the school bus writing rhymes in his notebook.

The movie showed heavy-handed police tactics.
The movie showed Dre and Yella's time as nightclub DJs. ( I loved the 80s funk that they played in the movie)
The movie showed Eazy-E connecting Ren to Dre, and having all the other guys coming together
The movie showed Eazy-E's 1st attempt to rhyme! (even though he didn't write his rhymes, his songwriters sure knew how to match their rhymes with Eazy-E's personality)
The movie showed Jerry Heller joining the business.
The movie showed the reaction to "F--- the Police"
The movie showed them in concerts. ( I didn't even know they played in NBA arenas)

The movie then showed the conflict with group member's angry at Eazy-E and Jerry Heller's handling of their finances.
The movie showed Ice Cube's anger not just at Heller, but even in his next record label Priority Records. ( I didn't even know about that part! If true, then Ice Cube was doing Suge Knight things before Suge Knight did his famous "Suge Knighitng" of Eazy-E.

The movie showed NWA and Ice Cube 1st listen to each other's insult songs! (the audience laughed when Jerry Heller was so upset at Cube's anti-Jewish insults towards him while ignoring what Cube said about everyone else in the room)

Their response to Rodney King's verdict and the LA riots

Then of course, Dre leaving NWA and starting Death Row!
Dre getting annoyed with the chaos that comes with being around Suge Knight!
Eazy-E trying to reconnect with Dre and Cube!

And of course, the sentimental part -- Eazy-E getting ill and being in the hospital!

I thought the movie was going to end there, but it ended with Dre leaving Death Row Records.


===================

It was funny to hear Lonzo (Dre and Yella's boss during their DJ days) yelling at NWA that "reality rap" is a waste of time and nobody wants to hear it! It was also funny that when Jerry Heller was trying to convince older white executives to invest in Ruthless, one of them said "let me know when you see the next Bon Jovi". Ha! I like Bon Jovi but I don't  think their story would sell $50+  million in tickets in one weekend!


Of course, there's only so much you can put into a 2.5 hour movie (which in itself kinda long for a movie), so there are a whole bunch of complaints about what got left out!

Feminists were upset that movie didn't address Dr Dre beating up Dee Barnes! ( I think he should've gone after the producers/editors of her show.  The producers/editors need to seriously and publicly apologize for putting her in that position).

Michelle Maglalang Malkin was mad that the movie didn't address Ice Cube's "Black Korea" song (which came after he left NWA)

There's so many things that could've been placed in "extra scenes" for future DVD releases, which can include not just what was just mentioned but also

• Eazy-E's visit to President George HW Bush's fundraiser
• NWA's response to Tim Dog's "F*** Compton" song
• Dre Day's video and Eazy-E's response
• Eazy's work w/ Bone Thugs N Harmony
• Eazy's plan to work  with the Chicano rap community (which according to Heller, was Eazy's next plan) 
• Ice Cube and his Westside Connection, and their anti-East Coast battles

Of course, you can only put so much in a 2.5 hour movie, but it would cool to see all that re-enactment in bonus clips available for future DVDs.


============

Going back to the feminist response to the movie. It is totally understandable that they were outraged that Dre's attack on Dee Barnes wasn't addressed in the movie even though it happened while he was still in NWA!


But some also claimed the movie only showed women as either nagging moms/girlfriends or groupies. Yes, there were some of that! And yes, they weren't so nice to some of the groupies.

But they also showed ( in the 2nd half of the movie) Ice Cube's loving relationship with his wife, Eazy's wife caring for him when he was dying of AIDS, as well as Dre respecting Nicole (his future wife) wishes to not take their relationship "too fast" when he invited her to his home.



============

With all that said, I am glad that I took the time to watch Straight Outta Compton. Anyone interested in pop culture history should watch that movie. It should also be shown in college classes about pop culture and intellectual freedom.

UHM Summer Session 2015

 I  have just completed summer school (2015 edition) at UH-Manoa.

There were two summer sessions. Session 1 was from May 6 to July 2. Session 2 was from July 6 to August 14.

Session 1

For Session 1, took LIS 693: Library Services for Youth in Custody!

No, we didn't actually have to work in a youth prison, we just read books and articles about providing library services in juvenile detention facilities.


This was an online class taught by Joe Coyle who works as a librarian in a juvenille detention facility in Illinois.

Unfortunately, Coyle wasn't able to actually come to Hawaii to visit us. He just listed the readings, and we just posted comments online as well as submit papers. 

We started learning about what goes on in juvenile detention facilities, as well as what type of circumstances that makes it more likely to for a juvenile to be locked up.

We learned about general library services for teens in general.

We then learned about how library resources services are provided for youth in juvenile detention facilities.  Some of them include

• no hardcover books (which be made into a weapon). Inmates get paperbacks, which are more fragile
• Some facilities allow inmates to visit the library, others just cart the books to the inmates
• restrictions on the type of material (ie. glorify violence or drugs, sexual content, etc.)
• internet use (usually filtered so they can't send threats nor access explicit material)
• culturally relevant materials (ie. "street lit"  - books about inner city life)
• book discussion as therapy:  using literature to understand one's situation and how to better deal with less than ideal situations

We also had to interview someone who worked with youth in custody.  I tried to contact the librarian at the local youth facility. He responded that his time there was almost up, and that I could email him the questions. He didn't respond back.

Luckily, Mr Coyle hooked me up with David Inocencio, the founder of The Beat Within, an organization that conducts writing workshops in juvenile facilities as well as publish some materials written in those workshops.  

You can learn more about what I learned in the class by checking out that LIS 693s (Sum 15) projects page at http://pwegesen.wix.com/pablowegesendlis#!lis-693a-sum15-projects-page/c875

screenshot from the LIS 693a (Sum 15) projects page page 

Session 2

For Session 2, I took Books & Media for Young Adults.

In the library world, "Young Adults" do not refer to those in the early 20's.

In the library world, "Young Adults" actually refer to teenagers - middle school and high school!

I know what some of you are thinking  ---- teenagers aren't adults, they don't pay rent, they can't vote, they're not allowed to do what adults do.  

But there's this perception that calling teenagers "adolescents" or "teenagers" is condescending! Whatevers!

Anyways,  our class was taught by a local public librarian who specializes in "Young Adult" materials and services.

We learned about the controversial issues that are addressed in "Young Adult" literature including but not limited to

• alienation
• sexual abuse
• suicide
• racism
• LGBT issues
• family abuse
• and more

Sometimes, things did get contentious, when one student talk about media & body image issues. I told the class I think that body image issue has more to do with evolution than the media, and that student wouldn't even let me finish. She ranted about "cultural constructs" and whole bunch of nonsense I refuted at http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-stuff-happens-everywhere-not-just.html

The strange thing is this type of disruptive nonsense NEVER happened to me when I was majoring in sociology during my undergraduate years! And sociology as you never, is a topic with tons of controversial topics. 

That student did apologize, but then I had to have meeting with the professor and the LIS Chair (who I don't even trust, due to how he handled my internship issue at HSL) because I was "yelling". One, that "yelling" is NOTHING how loud I can really yell. Two, I only raised my voice because that other student kept interrupting me!  Yeah, I know that me raising my voice isn't good practice for being a librarian dealing with crazy patrons.  But still....................

Luckily after that, there was no drama!

--
Anyways, our class had some quest speakers who talked about

• high school librarianship
• Young Adult nonfiction
• dystopian novels
• graphic novels, comics and manga
• booktalks 
• YA awards

We were also supposed to have a Native American novelist speak to us via Skype, but she had a family emergency that day!

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You can learn more about what I learned in the class by checking out that LIS 682 projects page at  http://pwegesen.wix.com/pablowegesendlis#!lis-682-projects/c1l2f

screenshot from the LIS 682 projects page

Other Stuff


This might be the last summer session I will take at UH-Manoa. I am on schedule to graduate with my master's in Library and Information Science this coming December. I got an internship coming up!


This summer's been hard with so much work due in short time and the shorter campus library hours during the summer.

Being that I'm the LIS rep in the Graduate Student Organization (GSO), I introduced and drafted a resolution calling for longer library hours during the summer. You can learn more at http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2015/07/gso-resolution-to-extend-summer-library.html

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I also did some volunteering that the Friends of the Library of Hawaii sponsored booksale at McKinley High School (Go Tigers!) though I got sick the last weekend of the booksale and couldn't make it! Oh well!
---

Anyways, the summer is done. Time for new adventures!

GSO resolution to extend summer library hours

At UH-Manoa, we have shorter library hours during the summer, causing major inconveniences for students taking summer classes.

While this summer is almost over, that doesn't mean we can't advocate for that to change for future summers.

I drafted a resolution (with editing suggestions from others) for the campus Graduate Student Organization (GSO) to officially advocate as an organization for extended library hours for future summers.

It got approval at last night's  GSO meeting.


Here is the final draft

UH MĀNOA GRADUATE STUDENT ORGANIZATION

2445 Campus Rd., Hemenway Hall 212

Honolulu HI 96822

A resolution to increase the library hours  at Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library for future summers!

WHEREAS,   during the Fall and Spring semesters, Hamilton Library is open on Monday -  Thursday (8am - 10pm), Friday (8am - 6pm), Saturday (9am - 5pm) and Sunday (noon - 10pm); and

WHEREAS,   during the Fall and Spring semesters,  Sinclair Library is open continuously from Sunday at noon until Friday at 6pm, and on Saturday(noon - 6pm); and

WHEREAS,   during the Summer Sessions, the library hours are dramatically reduced, with both Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library only open Monday-Friday ( 8am - 6pm) and Sunday (noon - 6pm) with no Saturday hours; and

WHEREAS,   during the Summer Sessions, the students lose 28 hours of access to Hamilton Library every week due to the reduced library hours; and

WHEREAS,   during the summer sessions, students lose 76 hours of access to Sinclair Library every week due to the reduced library hours; and

WHEREAS,   the lack of available nighttime hours at Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library deprives library access to students who have daytime responsibilities; and

WHEREAS,   the students at UH Mānoa are reliant on Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library for access to books, audio and visual materials, computers, research materials, microfiche, archives, a quiet individual and group study space,  presentation practice rooms, and reference librarians; and

WHEREAS,   not every student at UH Mānoa has their own home computer and need to use the computer labs at Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library to do online research and complete their assignments; and

WHEREAS,   not every student at UH Mānoa has a quiet study space at home and need to use Hamilton Library as a quiet study space to concentrate on their required readings for their classes; and

WHEREAS,   the compressed nature of the Summer Sessions give students less days to complete their assignment, it becomes more important that Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library be accessible for longer daily hours during the summer; and

WHEREAS,   there are at least 7,000 students who are taking summer classes at UH-Manoa, many of whom could benefit from the increased summer library hours; therefore

BE IT RESOLVED    That the Graduate Student Organization requests the Summer hours at Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library be increased beginning in Summer 2016.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED         That this resolution be sent to Interim Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman, Office of Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Interim Vice Chancellor for Students Lori Ideta, Vice Chancellor for Administration for Administration, Finance & Operations Kathy Cutshaw, Interim Vice Chancellor for Research Brian Taylor,  Dean of Graduate Education Krystyna Aune, Dean of Students Mike Kaptik, University Librarian Irene Herold, Associated Students of University of Hawaii, and Ka Leo O Hawaii

(note: while most positions listed under BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED have the personal names, the one for Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs doesn't have a name listed due to personnel changes that is currently ongoing. We just listed the Office name instead)

(another note: for the 9th whereas, only Hamilton Library got mentioned because it is more suited to quiet studying whereas Sinclair Library is more suited for group studying (ie. working on group projects, etc.).  While Sinclair's computer  lab has a quiet policy, those who need quiet space to review printed material and do other non-online activities would be better off at Hamilton)




I'll keep you updated if our resolution has significant impact!

more whining about cultural appropriation

The cultural segregationists are at it again, making people feel unearned guilt for (gasp...........omg...........noooooooooo) using fashions that originated from people of different ethnicities!


First, let's look at this screenshot of a facebook post  from earlier this month!

You see my comments: This is how to talk to cultural segregationist punks who complain about cultural appropriation!

People like Amandla Stenberg like to silence people with racial guilt, whining about "how dare white people take styles from African-descendants" as if jazz didn't use European instruments, and as if hip-hop producers weren't using German EDM pioneers Kraftwerk as a MAJOR inspiration! 



Amandla Stenberg and people like her like to call Kylie Jenner and her Kardashian relatives "white"?  Those people are part-Armenian! 

Armenia is in the Middle East!

If the Kardashians weren't famous, they would've been easy targets for profiling by federal security agents! 

And if you want to talk about oppression, let's talk about the Turkish genocide against the Armenians that happened a century ago!

Let's talk about the "lucky" Armenians who were lucky to escape to Europe and North American, some of them the ancestors of  celebrities like

• college basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian
• heavy metal band System of a Down
• and of course, the reality TV stars, the Kardashians

And let's also talk about that even after Turkish massacre of the Armenians ended, Russia took over Armenia, who only gained their independence when the Soviet Union dissolved!

You see, people like Amandla Stenberg act as if the only important oppression in history was the European enslavement of her African ancestors! 

Amandla Stenberg doesn't understand that her pain and trauma doesn't exempt her from assertive criticisms when she says stupid, racist stuff! 

Stenberg also needs to remember that hip-hop stars used so-called "cultural appropriations" like

• use of lowriders in 90s-era gangsta rap videos
• expressing love for Spanish Harlem girls (like Puffy's "Senorita" and Wyclef produced "Maria Maria")
• DJ Quik's sampling of an Indian song he used for Truth Hurts & Rakim's "Addiction"
• Jay-Z's sampling Punjabi music
• Wu Tang Clan's name and their constant reference to Chinese culture
• 2pac & Snoop Dogg dressing like Italian mobsters
• and much much more

I LOVED those "cultural appropriations". We need MORE cultural appropriations.

Keep those cornrows Kylie Jenner!

------------------------------

Another facebook post of mine

If you want to protest against "cultural appropriation", we should start by denouncing North American acitivists who think their Asian ancestry makes them proper spokespeople for people who are ACTUALLY FROM Japan! 

And who is one of those activists? Amber Ying ------

uh, since when is Ying a Japanese last name?

It's not, yet, a person of Chinese ancestry thinks she can speak for people FROM Japan?

Let's hear it from a REAL Japanese person

(note: sorry for the different sized screenshots, both are from the same facebook post)


Thank you Nako Kobayashi!

As for Amber Ying, she is Cultural Appropriator, and a SEVERE HYPOCRITE! 


----------------

So yeah, let's continue to integrate cultures!

Don't let anyone shame you for using or doing things from other cultures!

Make aggressive criticisms against cultural segregationists!

WORLDWIDE CULTURAL INTEGRATION FOREVER!

Classic Film Footage of Myself

Back in October 2013, I took part in the Banned Books Week activity at UH-Manoa. The activity was sponsored by the American Library Association student-chapter (ALA-sc), where we discussed book censorship.

 Dr Andrew Wertheimer (who was at the time the LIS Chair) filmed a few students reading a passage from controversial books.


I read a passage from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" which you watch right below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TcbOskPVPE





I didn't even view that clip until yesterday, when  I went on YouTube and I typed in a few names of LIS program to see if any of them had their own video content or if they had speeches being filmed. I typed in "Andrew Wertheimer" and lo and behold, that video was in the listings :)