Rastafari By Bob Marley

In “Homeboy”, Malcolm X, a prominent leader during the Civil Rights era, discusses discrimination within the black community itself through the use of thoughtful imagery, eloquent diction, and symbolism throughout the essay.

“Merry-Go-Round” is a poem about a little colored child that goes to the carnival. The child wants to ride the merry-go-round, but has a problem finding the back. From where the child comes from, Jim Crow laws segregate the blacks from the whites. This poem has a lot of depth and meaning, although it sounds very simple. It also tells us the mindset of most blacks in the South in the days of segregation. I chose this poem because the boy’s innocence was touching and its deep meaning was very powerful.

A Christmas Carol begins with the information that Marley, business partner and co-owner of ‘Scrooge and Marley’ counting house has been dead for 7 years. The other half of the business owner, Scrooge; however, was very much alive and continued the business. Scrooge has sharp and angular aged features and a stiff walk. No one in particular cares about him and he makes it apparent that they know he does not as well. To certify this description of him, when his nephew greets him with a “Merry Christmas”, Scrooge mutters a “Bah Humbug” and quickly dismisses his excitement for the holiday. He thinks that Christmas is a waste of money and finding another year has passed by and one is no richer. A similar exchange occurs with another man.

The relationship between sacred and secular in this performance is secular because it has no ties to religion. Sacred is not done in this performance because it does not have a tied to religion reminding us of God. The habits rituals and routine of the Zuni Turkey Dance shows a secular meaning through the use of the performance.

In Jamaica Kincaid essay “On Seeing England for the First Time” conveys the contradiction of a young Antiguan women’s bitterness in her perspectives of learning about England versus exactly experiencing England. Furthermore, Kincaid presents the speaker’s voice as consistently bitter from the beginning by using subjective and sarcastic diction and convincing syntax.

Imagine living in a world of perfect paradise, where no one disturbs you or takes away your freedom of thought. You’re living in pure harmony and feel as if your life is going to be peaceful forever. But what if one day someone comes along and changes your world, taking away your custom beliefs and changing your culture. What would you do? In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the character Okonkwo, an indigenous member of the Ibo tribe, comes in conflict with the European settlers as they try to convert his tribe to Christianity. Even though many people choose to convert to this new system, Okonkwo, along with a few friends, respond adversely to this foreign settlement as they attempt to restore order in their native village. As the Europeans bring their religion, messengers, and government into the tribe, the outcome of Okonkwo 's response, causes him to bring his identity into query when he realizes that things that were formerly common, will always collapse in the end.

Often times, people say "you can 't understand another person 's experience until you walk a mile in their shoes.” When I first opened the nonfiction book Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin, I had high hopes, however it did not live up to my expectations. Griffin went through doing blackface for while, and claimed that he knew what it was like to be black, however he still does not understand what it is truly like to be a minority. Minorities are not allowed to switch their color on or off. There aren’t days where we are allowed to decide if we want to be White or Black, Mexican, or Asian. Although yes, he did experience racial discrimination and was involved in incidents that were clearly unjust, he still does not know what it 's like to be truly black. It is wrong for Griffin to be viewed as a hero for doing this, when all he did was use blackface and put paint on his face for 6 weeks. Although yes, he did bring to light what was hapening to black people at the time, giving someone a pat on the back for being a decent human being is wrong. Why isn’t a black scholar, or a black person who showed the injusticies of the time being celebrated and widely read about like Griffin? Why is that white people only listen to other white people?

The novel Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin, tells the story of a white novelist from the south who seeks to write about the relationships between blacks and whites. He embarked on a personal mission in the late 1950's to experience the hatred and intolerance toward blacks that was widespread in the South. In order to see what life was truly like as a black man in the south, he proceeded to undergo medical treatments to alter his skin to a black pigment temporarily. No longer seen as a human being for other targets, he discovered how oppressed blacks were to a point of no hope. He walked the streets one night as a black man, despised and feared by whites but was respected by his black peers. When Griffin received news that a white jury denied a case of a black lynching, Griffin decided to go to the heart of south Mississippi to check it out. At the bus station, he acquired looks of hatred from the white passengers on the bench. Once on the bus, he and the other black passengers were forced to stay back while the whites departed at a rest stop. The discrimination from the bus driver forced the rest of the passengers to hold their bladders and knew that if an accident were to happen on the bus, it would just be another reason for white people to hold against them. In another incident, a racist teenager shoved him against a wall and mugged him while shouting out the N-word. He recalls that he was once hungry and the clerk refused to sell food to him based on the color of his

“If a White man became a Negro, what adjustments would he have to make?” (Griffin pg. 2) First published in 1961, Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin is moving yet troubling autobiography about a privileged white man in America who has taken on the role of a Black man, a much more deprived status. Griffin is narrator, author, protagonist and main character. From both a black and white perspective, the writer hopes to better understand and convey what life was like for the African-American’s at the time. The writer is passionately committed to the cause of racial injustice, and his concern and despair emanate through the well-written journal-type pages. His descriptive writing making the reader feel they are with him throughout.

Religious songs represented the practices of Christianity. Two examples of the religious songs I listened to from the PBS “Music in life” module were “Do Lord, Remember me” and “Run Old Jeremiah”. The song “Do Lord, Remember me” showed that it was repetitive. The song lyrics “Do, Lord, do, Lord, Lord, remember me” was constantly being repeated throughout the whole song, while a banjo accompanied the artist voices. The artist asked the lord when he’s on his knees praying do lord

Black single mothers have overall negative stereotypes linked to them, their children, and their financial situation. Single black mothers are getting labeled as Gold diggers, lazy, con-artist, non-supportive, emotionally unstable, and uneducated. To make their reputation even worse most of the songs in the Hip Hop community make hypocritical songs that generalize all single black mothers based on their particular experience. Hip Hop narratives such as “Faith” by Kendrick lamar and “Baby Mama” by Fantaisa, challenges the race stereotypes about co-parenting. Not all Hip Hop songs reinforce the negative stereotypes about single black mothers. Songs like “Faith” by Kendrick Lamar is a great song that represents the struggle single mothers go through.

Music is the only medium that blesses both man and God at the same time and as such to see it as an entertainment factor within our worship services is a gross misunderstanding of its purpose. Music is made up of three elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm. Mankind is also made up of three parts: spirit, soul and body (1 Thess 5:23). It can be argued that music and the triune, or trichotomy, of mankind are intrinsically linked i.e. melody is likened to the spirit, harmony to the soul and rhythm to the body.

Crowned as "The Queen of Soul", Aretha Franklin is one of the most honored female vocal artists of the last 50 years. She is an American soul singer, songwriter as well as a pianist. Her soulful, soaring voice has earned her mythic status over the years. It has been said that Aretha was a child prodigy of the golden age of gospel and was the anointed successor to gospel singers Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson. Many idolize her and her musical intelligence to this day. She is said to be one of the most quintessential sounds of America alongside The Beetles, The Stones, and Louis Armstrong.

Music not only has issues in discrimination and racism but also in religion. In an article by Lake State Publications (2002), the transformation of music started during the early Christian era. It said that only Gregorian Chants were recognized in sacred ceremonies. However, secular and non-religious songs became rampant when the church had an unlikely encounter with the French Nobles called troubadours causing them to write the very first secular songs and ask the ministers to sing them to the public. Secular music continued to gain importance to the masses and vocal music became more important

“The Blacker the Berry” by Kendrick Lamar was released February 9th, 2015. This incredibly racially motivated song has created controversy throughout America because it tackles racism, hypocrisy, and hatred head on. Although Stephen Best argues that the past defines the present without question, and Hartman believes that many important African American stories have been silenced due to lack of evidence, Kendrick Lamar’s song “The Blacker the Berry” complicates and adds to their arguments by introducing a certain level of hypocrisy that forces the listener to understand a much more complicated moral position than is generally allowed, perhaps an inevitable one.