Tag Archives: reality shows

Resurrecting femininity in black females

January 25, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Dr. Samori Swygert: Resurrecting femininity in our black females

by Dr. Samori Swygert

We’re embarking on the unchartered journey of 2014. Every New Year multitudes of individuals make personal resolutions to improve themselves. I have a vision for black females.

I implore all female readers to be patient, receptive, and not prejudge what I’m saying until they’ve finished reading this article.

I want to see a renaissance of the current state of some of our black females. Female only indicates gender. I want to see more ladies and women. I’ve seen a generation of females that have lost touch with FEMININITY.

“When they reminisce over you my God!”

It’s my opinion that the entertainment industry has sabotaged our young black females. I remember when young ladies carried themselves with such grace, daintiness, and femininity. That encouraged and hearkened black male chivalry and catering. Young ladies walked and talked with elegance. They conducted themselves with impeccable savoir faire, and exuded finesse. These characteristics were like honey to us young men, it crafted an image that men wanted to protect and was worthy of cherishing.

Currently, femininity is on a decline. The lack of both mature parental involvement is responsible for the degradation of our young black girls now. Many parents are not operating in a cohesive manner to convey healthy and proper modeling for our youth. To complicate matters, the entertainment industry has reprogrammed the psyche of our youth.

“Theres a stranger in my house”

Magazines, movies, talk shows, reality shows, social media (youtube, world star, etc), certain books, videos, and music have reversed engineered the wisdom and lessons of the matriarchs of the black family. True womanhood is becoming an archaic lost science. Much of what these forms of entertainment convey are externally focused, and lack the substance that develops the intrinsic quality of today’s females.

It’s difficult to watch more than 5 minutes of reality shows like Love and Hip Hop, Housewives, and Badgirls Club because I see womanhood mutate to disrespectful barbarianism and shallow, ego driven narcissism. There is a difference between being strong/independent and being bossy, loud and dismissive. This is similar to women saying they like a confident man and not a cocky/arrogant/obnoxious man.

Rewarding bad behavior

Society and the entertainment industry perpetuate the incompatibility between the black man and woman. THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED BY REWARDING BAD BEHAVIOR. Why are there TV shows that pay black women to be “ratchet”? Why do music videos objectify black women as strippers? Why do record labels encourage and endorse black female artists to basically strip in every video and pay them for raunchy dances and lyrics? Why must black females pose nude on front covers of King, GQ, Esquire, and Source Magazine to be considered “successful” or “empowered”?

Young black girls see the public attention and fanfare these superstars and video vixens receive. They then imitate it, in hopes to garner the same exact attention. The more lewd and provocative their behavior, the higher their pay and fame. This indoctrinates their psyche as the only method and means to get what they want in life. They either have to use s*x or annoy someone into submission via rambunctious, combative, and bellicose behavior. Ultimately, many young girls are either dressing like hookers or resembling street thugs, and that’s not attractive!

The results

The results are devastating. The black man and woman are being rendered socially and romantically incompatible. This is crippling black dating and the institution of marriage. The sanctity of marriage in the black community has been rendered dysfunctional and prone to divorce. We’re carrying hazardous subliminal behaviors that were skillfully implanted (like the movie Inception) in our subconscious into our marriages and households.

Our daughters are assuming the machismo, bravado, and brute character of men like: Sharkiesha, the girl that got an uppercut on the bus, Jerry Springer, or violent brawls on Love and Hip Hop. This bad behavior fuels female incarceration, because many are participating in acts considered criminal. Thus we are also fostering a generation of THE NEW JANE CROW!

A real woman knows how to smoothly mitigate conflicts and disagreements without “showing her a$s”. As a man, it is hard to even treat a female with chivalry, kindness, and respect when they don’t carry themselves in a manner worthy of chivalry. You can’t act like a man and be angry that I don’t treat you like a woman.

When a woman is super-independent (to the extreme), we don’t feel the need to treat, cater, woo, or bend over backwards because we assume you can do everything for yourself. Leave some room and work for us to do, allow us the opportunity to demonstrate our utility. Historically speaking, the only thing we’ve ever really had in America as blacks was that trustful bond between husband, wife, and children.

I envision a retreat back to that graceful paradigm to rediscover feminine allure, attraction, etiquette and beauty. Hollywood I’m not letting you dictate who my Queen is! We need our elder matriarchal leaders to re-install the software into our black females. Ladies you are more than a piece of A$S, you are an ASSET!

I’m just expressing my feelings. I don’t know the innate intricacies of the female psyche. I don’t like finger pointing, it never yields resolution. Thus to be fair to my female readers, I’ll share my open letter I wrote to young black males here: http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/11/news/samori-swygert-letter-younger-black-brother/

what are your thoughts?

Socio-Cultural Commentary

Black Apathy

January 24, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Dr. Samori Swygert: Black Apathy

There comes a time when your genuine care and concern brings your greatest frustration and disappointment. Merriam-Webster defines the word; Apathy, as a lack of feeling or emotion. The more time progresses, I find myself getting frequently frustrated with my conversations among people.

I can bring up Jay-Z, Real Housewives, Scandal, Kim Kardashian, Lil Wayne, some new song, some crazy trend/fad, who’s h**o$*xual, what designer dress Beyonce wore to an award show, a controversial statement made by a star, some Hollywood pregnancy, some Hollywood divorce, what Twitter war is happening, the latest Facebook post, and everybody has a comment. Everybody has a soapbox and everybody has a copious amount of dialogue.

However, when I initiate discussion on issues of substance that has a true impact and ramifications on our lives and future, people become mum. I mean people literally go mute, silent, and comatose.

If a tree falls in the forest does anyone hear it?

You can forward an email with an article about the erosion of your civil liberties and privacy, the misuse of your tax dollars, closing of schools, an elementary school kid gunned down, raiding of your pension plans, government fiscal plans that threaten your retirement, HBCUs closing, corporate control of our food supply and environment, the Neo-Colonization of Africa, urban gentrification, incarceration, police abuse, technology phasing out human labor, or something of historical significance that bares relevance to current conditions, and you’re lucky if you get 2 responses.

It’s like as long as problems don’t affect their immediate circumstance, and disturb the norm of their status quo, then they don’t care. The attitude is like: ”as long as my family ain’t shot”, ” well I have a house, and I ain’t homeless”, “well I’m employed so….”, “he must have done something for the police to arrest him so…”, “well I live in America, not Africa..”. This lackadaisical, cavalier, nonchalant disposition that a good portion of our people walk around with kills me.

I’m not stupid

I’m not stupid. I’m fully aware that people have the demands and responsibilities of their daily lives. Many people have the obligations of work, children, spouses, school, caring for aging relatives. The ease of watching TV, movies, listening to music, and just “kicking it”, allows for a release from the stress. I get it, I really do!! However, where is the balance????

Lawrence Fishburne Screams “WAKE UP!!!!”

We can’t continue to ignore real issues. Ignoring issues doesn’t remove them. At some point in time we have to be proactive and intervene on our own welfare, and the welfare of our fellow human beings. Am I my brother’s keeper? Where is our community? Does, “What you have not done for the least of my brothers” ring a bell?

We are in society where a conglomeration of forces are plotting, dictating, choreographing and orchestrating our future, and we are sitting back unconcerned and mute. Corporate, governmental, media, and social Think Tanks are steadily crafting legislation, laws, and policies to be incorporated into our daily lives and a good portion of us are sitting docile.

Moves are being made incrementally, and gradually, but we choose to smirk and laugh at the nuances as if they are nonthreatening. We sit and believe in this imaginary moral code of our politicians when they are bought by high-paying lobbyists. People even prefer that you not mention or talk about these issues with them.

What will it take for us to wake up? Will the government have to take away our right to vote, lock up our spouse, take our kid, ration our food supply, place us on curfew, move us to the far outskirts of town, prohibit our education, dictate who we worship, dictate how many kids we have, force feed us medication, and put us in a uniform before we click our heals and realize we are not in Kansas anymore? This has happened before you know…..slavery in America, Japanese camps in America, Vagrancy Laws, apartheid in South Africa, certain policies in China, Nazis in Germany. History does repeat itself you know. Don’t think this can’t happen!

The atrocities of dictatorship are only prevented by the vigilance, and diligence of the people it seeks to dominate. Currently we show little interest in vigilance and diligence. It hurts when you have to conveniently “dumb down” your conversation to sports, entertainment, gossip, and other BS to get any communication.

So many people got a wake up call when the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff happened. People were furloughed, out of work and crying. People were trying to figure out how to pay mortgage, student loans, buy food, pay car notes, pay child support, and etc. When congress came to a deal and ended the standoff, people receded back to their old ways and habits. Did anybody learn anything from that? Just as easy as that happened, it can happen again at a moments notice.

People please help me ring this bell. Do as they do in church and “nudge your neighbor”, and tell them ” it’s time to wake up”, sleep time is over.

Socio-Cultural Commentary

Hollywood is kidnapping our kids!!

November 18, 2013 admin Leave a comment

Hollywood is kidnapping our children?

by: Dr. Samori Swygert

It’s imperative that we become vigilant stewards and guardians of the quantity, and most important the quality of entertainment that our children ingest. Outbreaks of violence have become almost predictable and clockwork. However, as concerned citizens and family members we must take a proactive position in the intervention of the fate of our youth.

Routinely we hear about a massacre, a mass shooting, gang shootout, new recreational street drug, some new lewd and inappropriate dance, or behavioral trend. We must ask ourselves, “where is all this coming from?”. We can no longer expect the entertainment industry to have a moral conscious in the production of their material.

We are in an era where the family infrastructure is being redefined on a daily basis. Traditionally, we were accustomed to mom, dad, sister, and brother. Currently, these roles have been usurped and hacked by this digital age contagion. This has substituted the TV for mother, Computer for father, Cellphone for brother, Radio for sister, and has eroded the family bond. These new mediums consistently inundate and bombard our children with messages that are repeatedly proving to be hazardous for the youth.

The world has morphed into a narcissistic, attention driven, and instant satisfaction society. The entertainment industry is culpable in the deterioration of society, but rarely is the entertainment industry reigned in for responsibility of material and palatability of content.

Take a sober view and assess the covers of the magazines in your grocery store lines, the video games advertised, the movies featured, the records in rotation, reality shows aired, music videos produced, new age books published, and tell me if you see a recurrent decadent and destructive theme.

The entertainment industry is profiteering hundreds of billions of dollars off the demise of our children! Sexually explicit videos, movies, and books have pushed adolescent sexual promiscuity, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases to a new plateau. When we fail to regulate, monitor, filter, and talk about this material with our children, we allow the entertainment industry to subconsciously impose hazardous behavior into our children’s psyche, and the children passively accept it as innocent entertainment.

Hollywood makes the profit, and we are left with the byproducts to deal with ( early pregnancy, teen abortion, STDs). The oversaturation of sex in books like 50 Shades of Grey, and other lustful ghetto street literature induce a dangerous curiosity into the minds of adolescents that are not yet mature, or responsible enough to manage all aspects of adult behavior by themselves. Sex is a beautiful thing with the right person, and most importantly in a marriage.

However, the ubiquitous and omnipresent emphasis of sex has to contribute to the scores of young children sexually abused, raped, digitally abused on the internet (via compromising videos and pictures) and trafficked.

Do you remember the Steubenville rape case, where these young men engaged in raping an unconscious high school female, and then posted the pictures all over the internet via cellphone pictures, and destroyed this teenager’s reputation and physically violated her without consent? The allure of trying to become famous by asserting their male sexual prowess got these young men serving jail time.

Look at videogames like: Grand Theft Auto, Black Ops Call of Duty, Thrill Kill, and Soldier of Fortune and observe how pervasive gun violence, and brutality are interweaved in the plot. Think about movies and TV shows like : The Purge, Blow, Kill Bill, Breaking Bad, Lock Up Raw and a plethora of others and ask yourself “why is drug culture, prison life, and random acts of violence so celebrated now?”.

We have arrived at the clichéd fruition of, art imitating life and life imitating art. When shooting episodes like Virginia Tech, Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado, Columbine High school, and Jonesboro, Arkansas occur, think about what the youth are consuming. Think about what they are being conditioned and indoctrinated with under the veneer and alias of entertainment. We arrest adolescents on the streets for drug dealing and incarcerate them for the violent acts associated with the drug culture. However, we give Emmys and Oscars to the producers of shows that prompt youth to experiment with this dead-end lifestyle. NPR published an article this week detailing a research study in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study revealed that as of 2009, PG-13 movies have more gun violence than Rated-R movies.1

The music has become the soundtrack to self destruction. When we can turn on the radio and they are rapping about shooting, killing, drugs, sex, and frivolous wasting money, we have a few seconds left before its all over. The music videos have become soft porn, and encourage our young daughters and sisters to mimic the mannerisms of strippers.

Reality shows teach our women nothing but raucous, ratchet behavior. Think about shows like Real Housewives of Atlanta , Love and HipHop, Bad Girls Club, and others. The shows basically demonstrate and instruct young women how to scream, argue, and instigate violent conflicts without any modeling of positive, mature, lady-like conflict resolution. The emphasis is this ultra-diva like female that is money hungry, argumentative, irrational, and self-centered. This is not the type of woman any man wants as a wife, but these shows have our young women believing this is the path to womanhood. The men depicted in these shows are just as bad. Routinely the males are father to multiple baby mommas, absentee, consistently delinquent, players with excuses and stories to explain poor decisions they made.

Ironically, I can express what I’m saying by using a movie. A movie came out a few years ago called, Inception. The plot involved an agent that performed a psychological manipulation called, Inception. While performing Inception on his target, he was able to implant thoughts into their mind without them knowing, and the person would then execute the desired goal.

What am I saying?

We need to press the reset button and return to family and community. We need to have regular communication with our family members and neighbors and redevelop concern about what our kids are doing. We need to actively and regularly review our children’s phones, tablets, computers, TV shows, radio shows, and videos on Youtube, World Star HipHop, and any other electronic/ digital forms of social media, because our kids are under attack. The results are devastating and the devil doesn’t leave his fingerprints at the scene of the crime. He just leaves you with the tragedy to clean up, and the bill to pay.

Who profits?

The financial profit lies in high yield earnings for the private prisons for those that engage in illegal drug activity, pay day for drug companies that get new patients on Plan B abortificient pills, Antibiotics, or Antiviral medication from high risk sexual activity, a stimulus plan for gun and ammo manufacturers. Every time a mass shooting occurs, gun sales skyrocket because people feel the government will ban firearms, and people buy as much as possible to avoid being gunless.

The fashion industry makes a killing from young teens purchasing clothing to mimic and emulate the characters or stars in movies, music, and magazines. The movie industry and gaming industry makes more for the production of more films and games. The whole time we as a community are suffering the collateral damage of reckless indoctrination of our youth. It’s 2013 do you know where your children are?

People are to scared to speak up and call BS (bulls$it) when it happens. Benefactors of the industry say it’s “creative and edgy”. That’s a lie, it’s self destructive BS, and people are scared to be called a hater for voicing real concerns. These actors won’t complain, and will call you a hater because you are interfering with their paycheck, reputation, endorsements, and contracts. I don’t care about these bought and paid for minstrels, the posterity of our black youth are not for sale!! I may be on my soapbox, but so what, somebody has to speak up! Like Gil Scott Heron said, ” we got to do something to save the children”. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!!!???

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