itself

Americans are increasingly worried about the rising tide of economic inequality, as fewer control more wealth. For the origins of these concerns, commentators usually point to the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, when a few men gained immense wealth and power in the U.S. and workers suffered extreme poverty. But fears of great wealth and the need for economic equality go back to the country’s origins. In a 1775 cartoon, a British cartoonist mocks how wealthy elites were compelled by ordinary Americans to respect trade and price regulations. Philip Dawe/Wikimedia Commons Wealth as a danger to the nation By the 1700s, Anglo-Americans generally believed that the best government was a republic that would ensure the public good by avoiding concentrated wealth. The British political t...

Even more than the misappropriation of the word “nigga” as a term of endearment, the cultural phenomenon of sagging pants speaks exclusively to the institutionalized brainwashing of black America. If hip-hop is the voice of a generation, ass-sagging pants is the uniform. And both are rooted in a rebellion so entrenched that many black men proudly regurgitate, through words and attire, the tell-tale sign of psychological ownership. If we could delve beneath the often exploitative lyrics of poverty, violence, drug consumption and slangin’, we might recognize that the price tags on our youth’s sagging jeans are nothing more than potential inmate numbers in disguise. “In prison you aren't allowed to wear belts to prevent self-hanging or the hanging of others,” Judge Greg Mathis said in a 200...

Tag: itself

Fight For Economic Equality Is As Old As America Itself

Sagging Pants: The Symbol Of A Generation Hanging Itself-Prison Uniform Represents Wreckage of Black Communities?