Blog#5 by Scott (part1)

Last week we started off class by getting some useful tips from Julian about proper APA style format. This will be useful for me in completing my schooling here at CSUCI. I spoke with Julian today, at the DIG meeting, and he plans to send these APA guidelines to us all via e-mail.  We next finished up our discussions on the African-American readings. My group discussed the inclusion of this group through hip hop culture. I think we all can all agree that African-Americans can use this music as away to speak their mind and also to become rich and famous and at the very least it gives the youth hope and allows them to dream and believe they can be successful like so many of their idols who have had similar backgrounds. And as far as my question about whether this positive outweighs the negative that this music is often offensive and sends a bad message, I think that was unfair. African-Americans have created great music for along time, such as blues, soul, r&b and disco to name a few. The lyrics in these genre’s have been positive and uplifting. The fact that some of the rap and hip hop are degrading can be easily reasoned that it is this generation of audience who supports these lyrics and because of this the African -American artist keeps churning them out. And I’d also like to add, this type of music is not the only music that is sometimes degrading. A lot of pop music, written by many different ethnic groups, are degrading as well in their lyrics. It was also nice to hear from the students in our class on their thoughst on being latino/latina in our educational system and how their family and upbringing played a role in them making it to a university.