From: Droski, M. Ted (Ted.Droski_at_visiting-nurse.org)
Date: 2004-02-21 21:14:19
...I'd go so far as to say this is an American epidemic that affects all
American cultures. Almost every aspect of what used to be considered
American culture is gone, it's all homogenized for consumption.
Everything is sterile and has little substance.
The Mom and Pop restaurants have gone away and are replaced by
McDonalds, and the McDonalds in Detroit is the same as the McDonalds in
Miami...and so is the Wal-Mart, Target, GAP, Old Navy and Costco.
There is little regional flavor to anything because it's too hard for
multi national corps to market a variety of products/services to a
variety of markets, better to make everyone the same and have them all
consume the same things.
I am 1/2 Syrian (3rd generation out) 1/2 polish, but sadly have no ties
to my any of my heritage, I'm just an Uh-meri-ken. I think 1st and 2nd
generation immigrants wanted their children to assimilate into American
society, which might have been right at the time, but a great cultural
disservice was done. And aside from early immigrants, I feel like ALL
Americans in general have just all been assimilated into a bland culture
from 1960 to present.
It's a hard slope to come back from, all peoples need to have a history.
I am slowly trying to regain some of my cultural identity, I haven't
gone so far as to do those genealogy things, but I need to know
something, anything.
You can't know where you're going, if you don't know where you've been.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Davis [mailto:earthjuice_at_prodigy.net]
However it isn't really about the race of Justin Timberlake...
It's a part of a continuing and sad story about a race of people who
were once proud of their past, used it as a mechanism to inspire their
children for the future, who have now become "comfortable" in watching
their history, music, culture and identity being hijacked by profiteers
disguised as TV producers.
20 years from now, when the history of this period of time is written my
sincere hope is that when black children read about it, they will hang
their heads in shame and ask their parents...
"what did YOU do to try and prevent this from happening..."
(and that is my $0.02)