SweetP

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:57:33 -0800

Of course the AP is a shallow media source. But to 'Matthew' the above poster: PUH-LEAZE. Social responsibility and civic involvement begins on the individual level. Pointing fingers only creates a false power paradigm. Face it. Much of today's "Urban" youth culture in America absolutely celebrates being ILLITERATE and UNEDUCATED (read: "street") as well as MATERIALISTIC and VIOLENT. Throw in a hardcore machismo-complex ("thugged out"), and then you've got yourself the so-called 'quiet riot' fear. Until a culture arises which promotes the simple ideal that only with education can you free your mind and achieve your dreams -- and not by blaming The Man -- its very hard to feel any empathy at all. And it makes it even harder to vote for Obama, who's slide into irrelevancy is becoming more assured with every pandering, flaccid speech.

AP

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:09:16 -0800

What? He's expanding in an informative way on an interesting point you brought up in your post.

tony

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:07:47 -0800

what is the point of your comment?

Matthew

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:02:27 -0800

Regarding the Quiet Riot, not that you would be able to tell from the AP piece, but what Obama said bears little relation to what the AP reported. Here is how the AP framed what was said... Obama warns of 'quiet riot' among blacks HAMPTON, Va. (AP) -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago. The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots. And here is the relevant text from the speech, minus framing... Many of the folks in this room know just where they were when the riot in Los Angeles started and tragedy struck the corner of Florence and Normandy. And most of the ministers here know that those riots didn't erupt over night; there had been a "quiet riot" building up in Los Angeles and across this country for years. If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or Hampton -- you would have found the same young men and women without hope, without miracles, and without a sense of destiny other than life on the edge -- the edge of the law, the edge of the economy, the edge of family structures and communities. Those "quiet riots" that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always be second rate. You tell yourself, there will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. You tell yourself, I will never be able to afford a place that I can be proud of and call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, "Not guilty" -- or a hurricane hits New Orleans -- and that despair is revealed for the world to see. Greg Sargent deconstructs the amateur journalism of the AP quite nicely at TPM which I apparently cannot link to, because I am not signed in...

LAist: Extra, Extra - Who's Afraid of the Quiet Riot?

SweetP

AP

tony

Matthew