That Noise The Kids Are Listening To These Days

I've only felt like a grown-up, like a real bonafide grown-up, only twice in my life (that I can remember). The first was at 17, mere weeks before I left for college, and Ahmad's "Back In The Day" was all over the radio. Then again, so was "Flava In Your Ear" and "Juicy", so y'all with fuzzy memories are forgiven for forgetting that one. Anyway, that song's chorus ('back in the days/when I was young/I'm not a kid anymore/but some days/I sit and wish I was a kid again...) used to invade my brain with impunity during the summer of '94, and to a soon-to-be 18-year-old kid about to head for college pretty far from home, those lyrics encapsulated my mindset back then -- excited, nostalgic, and terrified all at the same time. Most of all, I felt like I was embarking on a one-way trip, one from which I knew I wouldn't (or couldn't) ever return. I remembered that feeling on my 18th birthday when my first-year dorm RA told me, "Happy birthday. You are now legally responsible for everything you do." My floormates and I responded soon after by literally taping the poor guy to the third floor dorm hallway. With duct tape.

I've fought this "growing up" thing kicking and screaming for as long as I could, but several things over the years (mainly bills and the existence of my 18-year-old sister) have shown me that I'm not as young as I used to be. And that's fine. I find myself looking forward to my thirties more and more. Ask me again in five months, but for now....

A few days ago, I'm sitting in front of the TV flipping channels and I see a commercial for one of those CD compilations, Now That's What I Call Music, Vol, 4,593 or thereabouts, and I swear that thing features just about every musical abomination of the past year. Just a sampling:

Nelly, "Grillz"
Chris Brown, "Run It"
Bow Wow, 'Fresh Azimiz"
Dem Franchise Boyz, "Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It"
Black Eyed Peas, "My Humps"
Ray-J, "One Wish"

I feel like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon...I'm getting too old for this shit. You can argue that the 106th and Park generation has passed me by, or that pop/r&b sucks these days, or that you can't expect much when pop music is ruled by high school juniors, but there's no denying the veritable cornucopia of suck listed above. I could segue into that old reliable "remember when music used to be good?" rant, but that would take too long and you've heard it all before. But seriously, y'all? Damn, music really, really sucks these days. I guess I'm just getting old. Sigh.

Silent All These Years

I've been really trying to reserve judgement on this whole Duke lacrosse team fiasco until all the facts came in, but I can't keep quiet any longer. What made me finally blow my top was, of all things, a tiny little item on msnbc.com, describing AJ's crippling crisis of conscience. After 5+ years of serving up hot sex on a visual platter to extremely impressionable teenagers as the co-host of BET's "106th and Park", this guy actually has the nerve to issue a mea culpa -- nearly a year after bouncing to greener pastures.

Whatever, dude.

During a panel discussion at South Carolina State University last week, after admitting he couldn't watch his own show with his young niece in the room, he actually implored the audience to "pick your five favorite songs...write down every word that's in your five favorite songs. Read it back to yourself and think about what has been put into your head."

It's a bold statement, and a welcome one, and it would be much more so if he wasn't, y'know, the guy who helped put them there.

Now, let's think about those impressionable kids on the Duke University lacrosse team, the ones who allegedly took a black woman they hired to strip for them into a bathroom, beat her and raped her. Lest anyone think this is one of those nebulous he said/she said incidents that occur frequently on college campuses, remember that Durham police took at least four acrylic fingernails from the scene as evidence. We may never know who did so, but you better believe this woman was attacked by someone.

I saw this on the news and assumed this was an unfortunate, yet isolated, incident until I read these absolutely harrowing accounts of black female Duke students being sexually harassed by white students under the impression that these women enrolled at one of the country's top universities to be, as one of the students put it, someone's "video ho." As one female student put it, "As a black female, you go to a party, you're expected to dance, you're expected to be sexually provocative. You [are expected to] want to be touched, to be grabbed, to be fondled."

And who do you think put that expectation there?

Before your lips even form the words "Sally Hemings", I am well aware of the complicated relationship between sisters and white men. Hell, Thomas Jefferson founded my alma mater. I know. And I know that both AJ and Free were under ironclad contracts. And I think that neither is a valid excuse. Like I said before, I think that AJ's statement was a welcome one. I just don't know how a grown-ass man, a grown-ass Black man at that, can look out over a sea of 15-year-olds (one of which could easily be his daughter) that look like him and not ponder the social ramifications of showing them videos like "Disco Inferno" before now. I know people have families to support and bills to pay, but...ain't that much selling out in the world.

Maybe I'm placing the blame in the wrong place (I wonder what Debra Lee has to say about any of this), but all I see is a bunch of teenagers of all races (remember that the ratings for "106th and Park" surpassed TRL's years ago) screaming and hollering for hypersexualized images of Black women that are beamed out all over the world. Those teens grow up to attend college and/or go out in the world and encounter Black women of all stripes -- with those images still dancing in their heads. Sometimes, those teens encounter a sister who embodies all of those youthful hypersexualized images, for better or worse.

Now, I'm not suggesting that videos lead to sexual assault. Not even close. However, when, as one of those black female Duke students said, "they assume that that's what you do at a party," you have to wonder where the assumption comes from. And you have to wonder why, instead of protecting the victim and treating her as the sexual assault victim she is, some have rushed to judge this poor girl. Some in the blogosphere who should really know better have been trying to use her occupation to somehow justify this attack. Rush Limbaugh called her a "ho" on his nationally syndicated radio show and no one said shit.

They assume that that's what you do.

It's out of hand now. It's been out of hand. It's a damn shame that it's come to this. It's time to check our heads right now and see what's been put there all these years.