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News of the World Guest Book Carlos  Menezes: writer PHOTOS W.E.B. Du Bois by the letters of a History student and a Sociologist Racism in UERJ Translation of Carter. G. Woodson "The Mis-Education of The Negro" (chapter XI) CHAPTER ONE OF THE MIS-EDUCATION... Snoop Doggy Dog in Brasil; Ja Rule and english accent National Day of Black Conciousness Articles and jurisprudence

Two articles about how academy and the media manipulates the national imaginary in Brasil.

The brasilian effective way to racism uses the video Beautifull - The Dog and the discovering of lust in Brasil.

The video begins with a woman in minor pieces on a bed, sucking the forefinger. Is she the "college girl" the author sings in the song? She has a cake in one hand and the only blackboard seen in the clip, for a few seconds, was out of context for a couple appears embraced erotically in front of it; pornographically is better. This is the image of pornography paradise that the Brazilian white intellectually insists in calling miscigenação , and that some of us, including some african americans, try to correspond. Miscigenação, put in a way where there is na implicit consent between the parts , to hide the cruelty of black women being used as sexual toys by the landlords, or working as prostitutes in a land where the majority where men. Mulatta is the view of the colonizer, naming the Other with the superiority view, classifying the same way they classified the animals. This is a way to disaggregate african americans, creating scales of colored to determine how far one is from the ideal model, white. The moment you step into this shades of tonality, supposedly the color bar disappears together with the problem. But it doesn’t happen that way for if the nomenclature disappears, the effects of our colonial social relations keeps on. It’s a very effective job of controlling people’s mind, working at the social and psychology genesis. The most important weapon in the oppressor hands are the mind of the oppressed, teaches Steve Biko.

Seriously speaking, I think United States are running into the very effective racist tools used by Brasilian state: the race mixing. According to the circumnstance, one may claim himself black or white, as long as white people stay on power. My fear is that African American in USA do not noticed that, for I have seen many movies made in Hollywood presenting this subtle argument. All right, this video clip is not a real movie made in Hollywood, but how come the producers did not noticed the evident Sex paradise this video clip represents?


The Dogg acts like thrilled by the natural beauty of Brazil (only Rio de Janeiro is depicted). In the enumeration of richness, women are put in the same level as the forest, beaches and music. In fact, all the countries who had had enough slavery system in its territory has also a huge musical content; not because we liked to be slaves but because we brought the music together with us . It may sound strange to mention that we didn’t like to be slaves, but there was a time where whites created the myth that our slaves where happier than the English workers, the senzalas’ chants was used to corroborate that.

But he can’t escape from being a black , carrying the color, language, manners, cultural baggage, religion, food, i.e., all the elements that post you to your community. If you don’t feel like belonging to it, is because you have been mutilated.

Come on baby boo, you gotsta get into it.

Baby boo can be a tender pleonasm standing for bootie, but more than likely it refers to bottom or buttocks because that’s what appears on the screen when he says the word: Long hair, wit’cha big fat booty. A particular interesting puritan way out was to cover with the Brazilian flag buttocks in small and furrowed biquinis.

All the lyric is impregnated with a particular way of speaking which makes English a different language from what we hear in BBC, or in Frank Sinatras’ songs, and it’s not because the skin is black or white. It is because a social environment conditioned him to speak like that but did not determined since we can find a person living in the ghettos speaking the standard language; of course one has to work on that to sound "correct". The moment one achieves the, let’s say, correct pronunciation, the community border will shine the most.

Sometimes Snoop sounds like the old ancestors speaking: But everybody knows the girl that you is . I know this switch with the third person verb used in first person is characteristic of our slave ancestors, but I don’t know exactly whom or in which region our people used to do. He relates to the slavery system, specially when he treats his own pairs like the master use to treat us: Don’t fool with the playa with the cool whip (the master holding the lash); ... Smash a nigga that tries to pursue it . I read the word nigger in Du Bois, but not today anymore. Why Snoop use it, when we know that’s the oppressor’s view? Actually the edition of the record snatch the word pronounced, probably because the corporation behind the production thought that it was too much.

Rudeness is the tone , specially when he speaks the word rude:

I smack up the world if they rude to you, which sounds like if they (are) rúu do you,

 twisting the mouth the same way he twists his fingers; twisted life? He twists the pronunciation of simple words like choose (chew), ask (ék- listening with attention you hear the s, but it’s more the ék),

that’s what we doin’ (that’s wá we –are- doin),

 do it how you do it ( do it- ha yeu do it),

had to tell your mom (had do till your mom),

 hootin’ , hollerin’ (hú-in – he swallows the t),

hurry up and finish so we can watch "Clueless" (hérri up, like the name Herry),

And we gon’ be together until your moms move in (and we gon be dogether – all the words in a roll),

 Snoop Dogg Clothing, that’s what I’m groomed in (groomed – a very particular way of pronunciation, indescribable; very intense is the r).

And finally, I think The Dogg doesn’t have age to have seen "Clueless" in his adolescence, he probably is fantasizing, playing with values wich more than likely he did not have had the opportunity to share , flirting with mass culture , to say the least, I can’t imagine him breathless for Alicia Silverstone. He is more the "The Soul Train" like.

 Good where the times we heard more than love in the songs, the essence of a contestant kind of cultural expression like hip hop is being corrupted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Brasilian academic racism states that one can tell an African American from a caucasian speaking on the phone. Do you believe yes?

There is a myth widely spread in academic degrees in Brasil that I refuse to accept: African Americans (from USA)  has an accent of their own which is imanent to race rather than the geographic area where they are from.  It may sound such a naive issue, but I hear this every time a white professor goes to TV to speak about us.  In Programa do Jô, which is the similar of Late Night Show, the english Sociologist Peter Fry stated this with all the letters -  in US you can tell a black man from a white when they speak on the phone.  In other words, he is saying that African Americans and Caucasians are naturally different, keeping open the door to the "equal, but separate" doctrine which took place in the XIXth century and still goes on today in the colective Caucasian psyché - unspoken predujices transmitted from one generation to another. 

I analysed the pronounciation of Snoopy Doggy Dog before and noticed that he sounds  street language more related to gangsters world rather than just ebonics, which in my view are two different things.
This time I want lay over Ja Rule pronounciation to notice first that this one is based on the east side of the country  whereas The Dog is from California.  Funny how I never knew Ja Rule were born in Queens before I started to write this issue.
Ja Rule pronounces every sylab of the words, he exhausts it as if worrying about the understanding of the ones  listening, he is a very good speaker whom makes all the words understandable. Yet, he is an authentic ebonics speaker with a tremendous capacity to bring perfect understanding of what he sings without veering away from the gangster image that he likes to be portraited.
 As an example I searched through the song Always on Time where he mastered an interpretation, more than just rapping.  He starts the song with the well known thematic thugs, women and sex script:

C'mon and get a piece of this late night lover
You know, the one that swing dick like no other
I know, I got a lot of thangs I need to explain

Until now, if it where not for the way he speaks trying to sound like a thug he doesn't sound two different than any of us black people who grew up in a poor family, in a poor area.

But baby you know the name and love is abelt (about) pain
So, stop the (com) plaints and drop the order restraints

Here Ja Rule pronounces abelt (about) and elipses the first sylab of complaint, but this is like any other ordinary New York citizen.  In many other situations he does the same, but this is NYC style, not African Americans only.  For example,

Hold'al (hold down) on the bed while I'm yankin your braids
Thug stell (style), you never thought I'd make you smile
While I'm smackin your ass and fucking you all wild
But we share some' (something) so rare, but who cares, you care

 

In a large parcel of the lyrics he is perfect understandble,


Our sex life is a game so stop the order restraints
Cause I can't wait no more
This is about a quarter past three
And shorty's eyes in me
I got the Bentley valeted
And I'm just outside of Jersey, past the Palisades
And I love to see that ass in hoops and shades


and that represents a huge difference from The Dog, who uses a street accent as a plus along with the substantives we only know (cribs, dough, pimp, boo, dude, player, weed, hoes, homies, shorty, skeezo, drive, and many others) let alone expressions like "fuck with someone" meaning acquaintance but sometimes means screw things up, and sometimes means just intercourse.


Bitch, you know better, we live MOB
Money Over Bitches, Murder, INC
I got two or three hoes for every V

 Ja Rule makes a game of words with the hoes for every V, trying to hit Jay  Z whose name is Jehova; and of course makes the propaganda of his empire , the INC - like all the rappers who created their own empire (recently I found out  INC doesn't belong to him alone).

An I keep'em drugged up off that ecstasy
I'm a playground legend like Kirk the Pee-wee
Name a nigga in the league got more game 'en (than) me
I play hard, there's so many women I fathered
Meet'em with scars and sint'em home (send them home) hot and bothered
Shoot'em dead (=#@!!!!  What!  I think he says : and shoot the dead, metaphoric expression meaning "humiliating  who is already downturned" )
This life ain't apparently fair
And a love with no glare is a crystal stare
But we share some' so rare (something so rare), but who cares, you care

This time was the only time I definetly did not get the meaning of what he speaks, I have to look it up somewhere, but I suppose it is  shoot the dead.  Here, his accent is at his highest level, he will only be perfectly understandble to a native speaker, maybe only a NYC citizen.  But this reinforce my point that the reason is a geographical origin , not race.

Now I found an  authentic ebonics expression in the song, it's just delicious:

Baby don't really want me to get up and leave off that easã (easy)
She'll be wakin up  wet for sheezy (for sure!)

 Then he finishes the song with the perfect pronounciation of every sylab.  I think  he is perfect in the east  side patterns.  His style, the gangster image that he created to himself might be the explosive attatchment to his accent, but if one stop to listen to him, without prejudice will see through the forest:  he is only a New York citizen like any other with a deliberate deep voice, using oversized  trousers and trying to look togh:

Remind these bitches to mind they business
Believe me, this pimp game is very religious
And I'm built like the Don Bishop
Gon' keep this money-green Benz and my hoes is my witness
The life we share is a thug affair, but who cares, you care.

  But , who cares about all this:  do you care bro?