*Serious Opinion* African Americans (youth) are losing our tradition/culture

[HarlemHottie]

Black new yorkers are like the people in the movies, who time travel back into the past to warn people about an impending doom. The danger is already upon us. This shyt is real

Real shyt.

 

[Wild self]

This is the result of integration.

Not really. Black music and black culture were intact decades after integration. Its technology.

 

[Musty]

social media got everybody trying to be like us while we trying to be like everybody else

Get this on a fortune cookie....

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

This premise isn't true - do you think your parents parents approved of their generations music/culture ?

Yes, my mother talks all the time about how they used to play Parliament & Stevie Wonder at familiy functions back in the '70s and their parents loved that shyt

White kids know the Beatles & Elvis & The Rolling Stones.

Latin kids know Celia Cruz & Hector Lavoe.

Black kids don't know shyt anymore

The answer is church.

This.

The church was the center of Black culture up until Hip-Hop

Sam Cooke, Aretha, Whitney, and even up til R. Kelly & Mary J. came from the church.

Plus, it was a place where Black people of all ages interacted.

Now, Black kids only interact with their parents and teachers before retreating into their rooms to get on Facebook

Nah I have seen way better stuff, those you listed range from very average to mediocre, SORRY. When last have you seen the term 'critically acclaimed' for a TV series.

Dude, "Atlanta" just won a TON of Golden Globes

 

[Deuterion]

I can post a million links, but you get the gist.

Please just respectfully hear me out first

For the older brehs here, this may seem a bit ridiculous since you and your peers live in our traditional culture daily, but for my generation (those born lets say 1995 and onwards) i honestly feel like we're losing our distinctive "African Americaness" each passing month.

it seems from my perspective as an early 20s breh in 2019, "black culture" for our youngest generations has been reduced to:
- Funny Black slang, and memes on instagram, which get leaked out into mainstream use anyway.

- Trap music

- Modern RNB: "I aint sh-t/my babydaddy aint sh-t/ i can pull up to the club and steal your b-tch/shawty mess with a real n-gga/im over all these f--kbois and n-ggas" type of Music that i hear on the radio daily.

- NBA

- NFL

-The latest dance, that will soon be copied by mainstream america and reduced to a trend that corny newscasters do on Good Morning America.


So, with all that being said. this is merely my perception of being out and about in the NYC Tristate area. I'd love to hear different perspectives and opinions from everyone's own walks of life. do you truly see an EFFORT made in your area to give African American children a strong foundation in our culture? It seems like our culture is being WATERED down so much, which I also believe contributes to the 6ix9ine, Lil Pump etc trend we see.

And don't say "times change" because i promise you, Dominican and Puerto Ricans my age and younger ALL are well versed in traditional Bachata or salsa music and dance, from the 80s and 90s. While many of our African American youth have the "that's dusty" perspective on our traditional arts.

Why is Bruno Mars doing traditional black music WAY better, while guys like Chris Brown make trap songs about TYB'ing. I can't be the only one who notices all this?

I think the problem is that African American children are learning about our culture through White media sources as opposed to organic community engagement.

You see, African-American culture has always been caricatured by the White mass media but technology has made it so that our kids are inundated with the cariacature.

African-American kids are talking to each other through FB, IG, SC...and those algorithms are controlling what they see. So the White mass media is projecting the caricature to them on the phone, on the radio, on the tv, on their tablet, on their computer and they are internalizing as if it is WHO we are.

So basically with the breakdown of the African American family and technology removing a lot of communal interaction, African American children are learning about African American cultue from White media sources. Since the White media has always shown us in a negative light, our kids are being ensconced with negative pictures of ourselves from day one.

 

[Sankofa Alwayz]

Things change, you act like we been around 3,000 years.

Culture is not meant to stay the same. Traditions aren't meant to stay the same. Humans aren't stagnant.

Let's stick on music.You know, the old old old heads used to just sing field songs gospel songs. Then the old old heads had jazz and blues and the old heads had Soul, RnB and Funk. And then the new old heads got New Jack Swing and 90s Hip Hop.

All of them were some haters and hated everything that each new generation was doing because it wasn't like the old days. Blues was called the Devil's Music. Jazz was considered just a bunch of noise. Hip Hop was responsible for everything that was wrong with the Black Gen Xers.

Do y'all wanna bump some field songs and some rag-time? You gonna call your homie a jive sucker? White people always been around and absorbing Afram popular culture. It's the only way our artists get paid.

The key component of popular Afram culture is reinvention. That's what we do. We don't stay the same and we have no desire to keep doing the old ways of the generation before us. We reinvent ourselves and our perception of ourselves and how others perceive us by creating new cultural products. By adapting to new ecosystems that the mainstream creates. By adapting to new surroundings. I don't see the problem with this. I would be more bothered that a group of people created 400 years ago kept doing the same thing.

We are less than a thousand years old and our country is less than a thousand years old, we are trailblazers - out with the old and in with the new.

This. Even here at my school (UMES), the youth be playing old school music during certain campus events, at block parties, special events in the cafe, etc. along with the usual Trap music, Trap&B, GoGo, Bmore Club, Jersey Club, and Modern Dancehall. I’m talking the kind of old school music you’ll hear at cookouts and family reunions. I can see OP’s point tho, but again, your mileage may vary I suppose

 

[Wild self]

Yes, my mother talks all the time about how they used to play Parliament & Stevie Wonder at familiy functions back in the '70s and their parents loved that shyt

White kids know the Beatles & Elvis & The Rolling Stones.

Latin kids know Celia Cruz & Hector Lavoe.

Black kids don't know shyt anymore



This.

The church was the center of Black culture up until Hip-Hop

Sam Cooke, Aretha, Whitney, and even up til R. Kelly & Mary J. came from the church.

Plus, it was a place where Black people of all ages interacted.

Now, Black kids only interact with their parents and teachers before retreating into their rooms to get on Facebook



Dude, "Atlanta" just won a TON of Golden Globes

Nowadays, its a bunch of trap music and excessive cursing.

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

I think the problem is that African American children are learning about our culture through White media sources as opposed to organic community engagement.

You see, African-American culture has always been caricatured by the White mass media but technology has made it so that our kids are inundated with the cariacature.

African-American kids are talking to each other through FB, IG, SC...and those algorithms are controlling what they see. So the White mass media is projecting the caricature to them on the phone, on the radio, on the tv, on their tablet, on their computer and they are internalizing as if it is WHO we are.

So basically with the breakdown of the African American family and technology removing a lot of communal interaction, African American children are learning about African American cultue from White media sources. Since the White media has always shown us in a negative light, our kids are being ensconced with negative pictures of ourselves from day one.

Church was the organic community engagement.

Even once folks grew up and stopped going, they remained cool with the people they went to church with (started bands/singing groups).