This is my type of story. The part I will blog about today will be the parts that stood out the most to me. When reading stories and passages the beginning always sticks out the most because it is the focus and main part of story.
Getting played? What does that mean? When I hear the phrase “getting played” I think of the meaning of being blindsided. To be blindsided is to attack someone when they are most vulnerable. It is commonly used as a football term, but it is a word that can easily be transferred to our daily lives. I think it means that the girls in the African American community are not being shown the right way. Even though they do not know the right way they are still being criticized by their actions. That is not right and therefore they are getting played.
The author made some very clear points about young African American girls and how they act. She talked created a vivid as well as a very familiar picture of how these young ladies present themselves. Just like in her story she talks some about how they take their pictures. They face backwards toward the camera to show their backsides and turn their head so their face is shown in the picture. On the other hand the boys try to mugg (look mean) and hold up gang sides they rep. She also talks about sexual intent and the different examples of it. One example she states is simply to be friendly to a young man. She talks about gang rape and how the guys get respected for that. My personal opinion on that is that I think that is disgusting and horrible. Young men need to more respective to the young ladies and the young ladies need to carry themselves a certain way. But the question is what if they do not know how to carry themselves. This thought brings me to one of the sentences she states in this chapter. The sentence states: “We’ve perpetuated the structural conditions that lead to the cultural adaptations and situational contexts that shape urban African American young women’s risks”. I broke this sentence down into my own words and I got this; We (society) are preserving the bad things in the African American community that shape the young African American girls that put them in these predicaments and situations. It is society that blindsides them and therefore we are the ones to blame for the ways that these girls act.
-Buttercup/Breanna Cousin
Breanna, that is a very thoughtful and insightful blog post. I think the sentence you offer from this chapter is a really important one. The author is asking how it is that violence and risks among young, urban girls of color is produced by their shared social environment. The cultural adaptation is the way people change to reflect their environment (just like we saw in the Boys of Baraka movie). Nice job and I like your metaphor of blindsided.
ReplyDeleteMr. Ostertag