Serius Jones vs. Jin

The media item is a free style battle, where to rappers go back and forth with one another basically talking trash about one another. Who ever dilivers the best pick up lines wins the battle and they each get three rounds against each other. The battle that I chose to play is against Serius Jones (a black male) and Jin (a chinese male) and it was aired on MTV a few years back on a show called Fight Klub. In the battle the majority of the crowed seems to be black and their appears to be no one Asian in the crowed. This will be a key factor in determining the outcome of hte batte. I chose to put this in my media portfolio because we learned about stereotypes in class, and more specifically recently we learned about racism towards Asian Americans. In this media post Serius Jones uses stereotypes of Asians in his freestyles to help his punch lines and get the crowed on his side. He starts by saying that he will talk about jins heritage and says how he sleeps in a cellar with a lot of relatives. This portrayes that Asians cram together for housing. He then talks about China's population. He brings this up when he says there is a lot of people there and he still can't even sell records cver there. By saying this he is assuming that they should like him in China since he is Chinese. Serius compares Jin to a Korean car and he is chinese. This is showing how he thinks all Asians are alike. He says he should try and join Wu tang Clan (an all black rap group). This is said because they have an Asian name and he is Asian. Serius says later in the battle "when the guns drawn, its too late to get your kung fu on". This shows the stereotype that because he is chinese, that he should know kung fu. Finally Serius mentions a line about Jin cooking dogs, which means that he eats dogs because he is Asian.

This item relates to The Frank Wu artilce "Yellow" , which we recently read in class. This article talked about how Wu is viewed a certain way becuase he is chinese. Everyone assumes that he talks a certain way becauase of his race and everyone also assumes he knows karate becuase he is Asian. The free style battle is similar becuase it too shows how Jin is viewed a similar way becuase he is Asian. The crowed laughed at all of Serius's Asian jokes, becuase they knew about the sterotypes.

In my opinion, I do think Serius's coments were racist. I think he only said them to be funny and to be honest I did laugh when I heard this freestyle. That said it was funny, but it was wrong. He should not have been aloud to say that and he did use stereotypes of Asians in his battles.

McNabb

Ricky Woodie
Ethics
Media portfolio
6 October 6, 2007

Donavan McNabb


An issue lately in sports has been the talk about Donovan McNabb. He was on HBO last month talking about how he is criticized more then regular players (mostly Quarterbacks) because he is black. He says that black quarterbacks have to work twice as hard as white quarterbacks and are under more pressure to succeed then white quarterbacks. His critic’s clamed that his stats have dropped off and he hurt his knee and that is why his stats dropped off
The author states that he is aware that there is racism in the world today and in sports, but uses facts to back up that this is not the case form McNabb. He says he is just using this as an excuse to cover up the fact that his knee is the real reason why he has not been as good. He also has stats showing that his yards have gone down over the past two years.
In my opinion I think that it has to do with racism a little bit, but it most is his knee that is causing him to play worse. I think that critics view quarterbacks as more athletic and think that they are know more for there running abilities and not their passing abilities. They do think that if a quarterback is black then he would chose using his legs over his arm. This has to deal with what we discussed in class when we talked about how races are viewed in society. Here is a case that they are viewed as better athletes and are faster then white athletes. This was mentioned in chapter two of Johnson we he talked about how races are viewed in society. This is the case in sports, here with black quarterbacks, because blacks are viewed as better athletes. They are not viewed as pocket passers, but as scrambling ones.


http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/394451/is_donovan_mcnabb_criticized_more_because.html

i have an original article on this where i first saw when visting my teacher but it wouldnt come up so i posted an artilce online where i got futher information on the subject but i have the article my teacher gave me and will bring it to class

http://aclu-ky.org/content/view/158/55/

Ricky Woodie
Ethics
Media portfolio
4 October 4, 2007

Integrated
Schools

This article is about how In Kentucky and Seattle, the Supreme
Court ruled that integration plans in these school districts
violated constitutional laws. The plans were to keep schools
from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods. Parents
sued after their children were denied admission to the schools
they preferred because of their race. This started because
people wanted to give children equal opportunity rights as
other children. One side, mostly the black community argues
that they are in poorer neighborhoods, and are not getting the
same education opportunities as the white kids in the better
schools. The other side says that they moved to the
neighborhoods they are in to send their children to the better
schools. This relates to what we talked in class, when we read
about Johnson chapter 3, when he talks about race and economies
issues.
The argument here is that it is a race issue that the courts
are not allowing these districts to de-segregate the schools.
We learned in class that racism shaped the economy that we live
in today and that is why neighborhoods are segregated. The
article is saying that it is a race issue saying kids can’t get
equal education opportunities unless they pass this ruling.
In my opinion I do not believe this law should be passed. It’s
a race issue if they do allow this to pass. For example some
one in the article said they could not send their kid to a
school because of their race. That is because they wanted an
equal amount of black and white children. Also it is not fair
to parents in the better school districts to have to pay higher
taxes for those schools when their children might have to go to
a school in a different school or have other children in other
neighborhoods that pay less, to get to go to their school. I
agree that all people deserve the same education and races
should not be segregated, but I think there should be a
different way to do this. I think that if this passed that
families would end up moving to other neighborhoods where this
law was not in affect and they would be right back to square
one. This is a issue that must be addressed so races are not
oppressed

clance thomas youtube site
http://youtube.com/watch?v=67Wb481eXhY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5K1Ywa3eYTE
there are three segments on this i used the first two. Under search these can also be found by typing in Clarence Thomas - 60 mins

clarence thomas

Ricky Woodie
Ehtics
Media portfolio
2 October 2007

Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas is a judge under the Supreme Court and was elected under the first president Bush. He has served on the bench ever since elected, and over the years has been under a lot of scrutiny for being accused of being a traitor to the black people. Thomas has been know for being against any privileges that help better blacks, such as affirmative action and believes they should be shut down. It is believed once he used these laws to climb the later for himself so to speak; he pulled it up from other African Americans. In the 80s he switched parties and became a republican and that is when he preached that civil rights were wrong and that blacks required special treatment to succeed. This relates a great deal to Johnson chapter three when he talks about privileges and capitalism. Here Clarence says that affirmative action and civil rights made it hard for him to find a job because it was believed that being black got him his degree.
In the interview on 60 minutes Thomas talks about his history and shows that the color of his skin did not affect the work he put in to get his degree. He explains that he grew up very poor in the segregated south and as a kid served as a slave for his grandfather by performing labor work in the fields. Thomas says how he was always at the segregated library was an honor student at holy cross, and was at the top of his class. He went to college at Yale where he did very well, but was told his benefits were tarnished because he was black. After he said it was very hard to find a job because his degree was “discounted”. People thought he only got that degree because he was black.
In my opinion I agree with him to an extent. I do feel that civil rights such as affirmative action took away from the fact that he earned his degree on his own, but there still are white privileges out there and there needs to be some way to help minorities out of oppression.

Youtube site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFUUul5g5Ng

if this doesnt work go to you tube and type in Chapelle show - Niggar Family

chapelle skit

Ricky Woodie
Ethics.
Media post
October 1, 2007

Chapelle

The Chapelle show is a show on comedy central that is know for doing many skits about racism. The skit that I chose to use is one about a white family called the “Niggar Family”. This skit is about a white family who is used to portray how blacks are viewed in society. In this skit the family has characteristics of black Americans according to society. This ties into Johnson chapter two, when he talks about who we are. In this chapter on pages 15 and 16 Johnson talks about how people are characterized. He talks about how we can characterize people by simply just looking at them. Here Chapelle is saying how other races view African Americans in society.
In this skit Chapelle has the characters describe black people, by having them describe the “Niggar Family”. In one scene Chapelle has a family talk about how one of the “Niggar’s” is dating their daughter. At first they are not happy, (showing how the family doesn’t want their daughter dating a black kid) but then they explain how its one of the “Niggars”. They go on to talk about how he is an athlete and that it would make them rich. This shows how people view blacks as athletes. He also talks about how blacks are viewed as having big lips, not paying the bills, and that they are lazy. He uses all these characteristics when describing the white family “the Niggars” to show how blacks are viewed.
In my opinion I think Chapelle does a good job of showing how blacks are viewed in society. Many of these characteristics are some that we talked about in class. I think the Chapelle show is a funny show that is able to poke fun at racism and show how dumb it really is.