June 9-15, 2005

mailbag

Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

Out For Africa
In response to Joey Sweeney's pooh-poohing of the Live 8 concert [Slant, "Live (H)8," June 2, 2005], activists and sympathetic people need to get over their love of being outsiders. An antiglobalization event that could gather millions of people and get rid of African debt would affect millions of lives and is nothing to sneer at. I like to sit in my house and listen to the sounds of artistic integrity too, but it's not the part of my life that changes much in the outside world. Any changes I make in this lifetime are going to come as a result of spending a lot of time with people outside my comfort zone finding a common direction to push in.

Live 8 is also a much better project and use of resources than the somewhat condescending charity event that the original Live Aid was, because this year's event is focused on creating real fundamental changes in policy. It's like [Bob] Geldof found Chumbawamba's Live Aid response album Pictures of Starving Children Sell Record Albums and finally listened to it 20 years later.
Chris White
Southwest Philadelphia

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Blunt Talk
When I read [News, "Sex, Drugs and Hip-Hop," Dan Keashen, May 26, 2005], one thing struck me: Though faculty members of Dobbins Vocational High School protested that the talk was racist, demeaning, sex- and drug-laden and entirely inappropriate for kids, their protests were largely dismissed by Drexel University as the rantings of a few teachers.

The problem was, I suppose, that the teachers complaining of racist overtones were white. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I know what the response would have been: terrified apologies and a firing. But, in this case, the one giving the talk, a self-described disciple of the murdered gansta-rapper Tupac Shakur, is being verbally defended and shielded from the press.

Drexel, instead, has launched into a long diatribe of all they have done for the school district and all the advertising that they give your paper (hint, hint?). Worse, in their defense, the university claims that the Drexel representative was " … speaking in the students' language to make his point clear." In other words, a large university is saying that when you speak to black kids, you have to say motherfucker, fuck, lick my dick, whites are keeping you down. Drexel is actually the ones "keeping them down" by claiming the only way to speak to these kids is with profanity and slang. Or, maybe the teachers at Dobbins should pay attention to the university so that, from now on, they can reach their students by liberal uses of fuck, dick, blunt and motherfuck in their lessons. Yeah, right.

And maybe I should mention that I am black.
Elwood "Woody" Corbin
Marlton, N.J.

I am a teacher at Dobbins. I was not at the assembly in question, but I heard negative comments from both my Caucasian and African-American colleagues. I was a bit put off that your article seems to whitewash the situation. In addition, I strongly suggest that you listen carefully to the CD in question, which contains anti-Semitic statements. I am a Jewish teacher and have many Jewish colleagues in the school. We take great pride in the achievements of our students.
Name Withheld
Philadelphia