I found our topic on sport sport-industrial complex and its effects on black people to be interesting because I see the same thing in music. I talked about it in my response paper but I wanna go into more depth here

Many African Americans have had music stolen from them by white people. Things such as rock, blues, and country were stolen from African Americans and many white people succeeded in the pain expressed through these songs. Rap music differed heavily though because it was thought of as not music. It was heavily scrutinized by not only white people but even some black people. This would later make it harder for white people to assimilate themselves into rap music.

Rap also eventually took a turn with its lyrics becoming more violent and that was due to people expressing the lifestyle they were surrounded by. This furthered the demonization of rap music especially by white people because they didn’t fully understand that the music was real life for African Americans. Even now there are very few popular white rappers compared to black people. It was a lot harder for white people to break into rap because white people generally had a different experience of life than black people. It’s a lot harder to relate to something you’ve never experienced and you can’t really connect.

With the failure of white people to get into rap and the popularity of rap, music labels really tried to capitalize on them. Many rappers come from impoverished areas and are rapping to get out of their situation. Music labels feed on this and offer this money to these rappers (generally African Americans) take the majorithy of their revenue and extort them. Rappers are presented with money they’ve never had access to and they don’t know how to effectively use it and that’s what the music labels want. It gives them absolute control over the rapper and at any moment they aren’t making enough money they could be dropped just like that. To make it worse the same people who claim that rap music is “vulgar” is also the same people who are heads of these labels and only want to use them to get money. Many rappers call rap a modern day slavery.

A conversation we had in class was about how certain accommodations can negatively affect the others around you. That leads me to think about how certain things I do to comfort myself can be seen as nuisances to others.

 I often bite my nails and I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily an anxiety thing as it’s just something I do whether or not I feel anxiety at that moment. It was often expressed throughout my childhood that biting my nails was annoying because of the sound it can make. Most of the time I bite my nails it’s not something I thought of doing. It’s just something I do out of habit and it does have a calming effect on my mind so I don’t even realize. 

Another thing is my pacing or fidgeting. I pace and fidget a lot and I am never sitting still. To sit still, I have to focus on not moving and when I do my body feels very uncomfortable. I was told that I distract people with my movements and they can cause people to become stressed out when that wasn’t my intention. Sometimes the movements are based on the music I’m listening to and my natural reaction is to go with the beat. Like biting my nails this is just something I do out of habit. 

These things were never meant to cause harm to others and the worst thing is no one says anything about it anymore so I’m wondering constantly whether or not I am affecting someone. I think this puts into perspective what people with handicaps think. Since the world doesn’t accommodate them they have to worry about how their handicaps are not only affecting themselves but how they affect others as a whole. The anxieties I feel when I do these things I think to some severely lesser degree are what people with handicaps experience and if I feel stress from my things I can only imagine how they must feel as they have to struggle to feel comfortable in the world around them.

I am what is considered a rainbow baby. For people who don’t know what that is a rainbow baby is a child born after a miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal death. When I was first informed of this I didn’t have much of an opinion. I felt bad for my mother but when I was told I was young and didn’t understand what that meant for my mom. After watching Aftershock there was a thought in my head.

Was my mom properly cared for by her doctors?  I hate that I have to question this but it doesn’t help that I was also a C-Section baby. Since C-Sections are more likely to be given to black women I question was necessary or if was it just simpler for them. For my mom having a child was difficult and it could’ve been more difficult based on her race. The idea of midwifery is prominent throughout Aftershock and I think about how it might’ve changed my birth.

Even thinking of other children I think about the difficulties many people go through. Aftershock really opened my eyes to a problem that goes hidden. It ties heavily into other ideas we talk about in class such as black people getting worse treatment from doctors in general but the concept of women is slightly different. The idea of them having a higher pain tolerance comes from nothing but is still currently believed in the medical field and that worries me. There have been times when I have complained to a doctor of pain and them asking multiple times if the pain was really that bad because I seemed to be fine but I felt that I needed to present being fine. Learning the ideas of the medial field are based on old practices based on racism is genuinely scary

~Throughout the entry there will be songs I listened to especially when I was younger to cope~

People’s idea of being black is a mystery I will never be able to understand. From a young age I have always been referred to as an “oreo” or hearing my peers comment that certain people despite not being black acted blacker than me. I always found it strange how there was a specific idea of being black. I was constantly told who I wasn’t and not who I could be.

It made me feel hated and somewhat like an outcast because wherever I went I didn’t feel accepted. Even my mother would tell me how I should act as a black man but that only made me rebel even more. It made me hate who I was and I wanted to be different so badly that it caused others to denounce my blackness even more. I felt as though I couldn’t win with who I was. Of course throughout life I started to see how this affected my self-image and I have learned from that but the insecurities are still there. The saddest part is the image that people may imagine in their mind when they think of black people can come from television or media.

Many shows depict black people trerribly or the nuance of certain television shows is not understood by those that are young. Causing confusion and leading people to believe that black people act a certain way without explaining why some black people may act that way. The depictions of black people and their actions in these shows defined what it meant to act black for me. I would actively try to avoid those certain actions or make fun of those actions without understanding how they came to be. These things that black people get made fun of for such as improper grammar are effects of being enslaved for years. I was never able to understand these things as a kid and looking back at how ignorant I was genuinely causes me pain. These depictions still affect me today as I think “don’t act a certain way “to avoid any conflict. Of course now I’m very proud of who I am and how I look but the years of thinking that way is gonna take time to heal.