ROP Final Essay

Rites of Passage is an important subject for any individual to encounter. Whomever has the chance to experience the lessons given in that class is considered extremely lucky. Rites of Passage teaches young adults the correct procedures needed in passing into another time period in their life according to the traditions of their race and/or religion. In this essay I will explain How I learned about great things achieved in my race. I will also talk about the things my race achieved, and I will conclude with the information about how I benefited from learning this.

In rites of passage, I learned that my people encountered many things that many people would have let diminish their spirits. My ancestors faced so many horrible obstacles that they succeeded in passing. They didn't let anyone stop them from doing what was right. They were the originators of so many things that made us a great race. Rites is trying to teach us how to be great from looking at past accomplishments.

We began Rites by having a ceremony that represented our first step in having a Passage. After our ceremony we were assigned the task of researching our oldest known ancestor and gaining many facts about them. We were then told to expand our family tree and gain more information. Later we had to critically analyse hip-hop songs (research one good song and one bad song). Soon after we researched the Obama stimulus package and his ideas about the nation. After that we researched a colonial leader. We had a series of other assignments that led up to the assignment on what it was to be Afrikan.

I benefited greatly from this information and I learned a lot about my culture's accomplishments. Over the past year I have received many leadership awards and some are due to the information given to me in Rites about being a leader. My most recent award was given to me and I am Going to D.C. for two days to accept it. I also think people in general should have a class about their history, but "Blacks" and Latinos need this more because they seem to be lost.

In conclusion, Rites is an important subject and anyone who is allowed into a rites class is considered a luck person in my opinion. Many individuals who have encountered a class of rites have grew to be successful leaders. The rites of Passage in my school has taught me so many things and I am proud of myself and others for becoming leaders because of Rites.

Marimba Ani-To Be Afrikan

What does it mean to be Afrikan?
Afrikan people today do not seem to understand or even know where they came from. They are falling into the stereotypes made to negatively influence our people. "To Be Afrikan" can help us understand our Afrikan roots. In this essay I will explain what caused the first dehumanizing act. I will also explain what we as a people may believe it means to be "black", and finally I will explain our true roots.

To begin, according to Ani, slavery was the start of our dehumanizing. It was the roots to the plant that was created to destroy our roots. The worst thing that happened was the destruction of the knowledge we held of our true identity. We were no longer allowed to go by our ways.

As a reaction to slavery, we think we should act as we see ourselves acting. Because of that, we grow up with wrong information. We learn that all we can be (or all we are good at) is rapping, being a gangster, or playing basketball. That truly is not all we are meant to be.

The true roots we share are much greater than some can imagine. We were creators of magnificent work of art. We were the originators of so many things done continuously now. Things such as dance, music and hip-hop. We are so much better than we act.

Slavery started this false educating of our race. People get the wrong ideas of what we should be in the future. Our true roots will expose our greatness. "To Be Afrikan"
shows me so much about our race and I believe it can help many others like me. To succeed in the future, you need to know about the past, our roots.

Somalian Citizens

1. The views of the journalist in the article are a lot different from how the media portrays the Somalians. The media tends to display the Somalians as villains. The journalist displays them as heroes for their country.They are not doing these acts just because. The Somalians are trying to raise money to feed their people who were starved.
2. In my opinion, Somalian pirates are not pirates. They do bad things for a good cause. What the reason is that they do what they do, does not justify their actions because they are breaking the law. There are other ways to raise money for their people. I think they should figure out another way to raise money.

The Evolution of Black Music

Oftentimes people need to look into the past in order to understand how the present got to be where it is. Music follows the same rules, meaning if it weren't for yesterday we wouldn't be where we are today. Many young people today do not realize the frauds that our people had to face in the past in the music industry.I will discuss the timeline of music, frauds our people faced, and the struggles they encountered. The special artists deserve recognition for their accomplishments and should be honored by people around the world. Music began with Afrikans but during slavery we sang field songs. Gospel came from field songs and the blues came from gospel. During those times, gospel was referred to as race music. Soon enough this music was an interest of Europeans and they then called it "Rock and Roll". It was from these songs made by black people that we got R&B, and Rap music. Their were many great black artists of the past. Artists such as Big Mama Thorton, Etta James, Ray Charles, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye. These artists faced many frauds from the music industry. For example, Big Mama Thorton had the song "Hound Dog" stolen from her by Elvis Presley, which is one of the many songs he is famous for "making". Also, Elvis plagiarized the song "My Babe" from Little Walter. Our people encountered an uncountable amount of struggles and hardships in order to become a professional artist. Today it seems that anyone who can make a beat can be called an artist. People in the past faced extreme racism and still rose to be great artists. They didn't let other people who tried to pull them down keep them on the ground, they rose. Their were many other hardships besides slavery and racism that we faced and passed. In Conclusion, our ancestors don't get enough recognition for being the great people they were. Elvis's versions of our songs weren't even close to being as good as ours. Our spirit kept us going and we should respect that. Too little people are informed on great black artists of the past. They were great and will forever be.

Stress

Stress is a humans mental state in which someone may have a mixture of feelings ranging from becoming impatient to having a different personality.Stress can be caused from having a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders such as having lots of work at a job, or a bad relationship with your family.People have come up with many ways of handling stress. Some prefer screaming into a pillow, hitting a punching bag, talking your problems out or even doing things you enjoy.

People sometimes hurt others because they are stressed and they even hurt themselves. They might commit suicide if the pressure is too much for them to handle. They might also take drugs to try and escape reality. A child can be stressed because of an upcoming test, they can have a bully problem at school or they could have a bad environment. A female can be stress out about their hair. A male can be stressed out because they have problems with other people whether it be at school or outside the school.

The Congressinal Black Caucus

1. The Black Caucus is an organization made by the Afrikan-Americans in the office of congress. The Afrikan-Americans in the group are not all pure blacks. Some of them are mixed with many other types of ethnicities. The caucus started in 1969 but it was named the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971. There were 13 founders, including Shirley Chisholm, Bill Clay Sr., George W. Collins, and John Conyers.

2. The Black Caucus now holds 42 members. There are many blacks in office, but less in the office of Congress. Only Congress members can become a member of the organization. You can't be part of the senate and join either. The current chair of the group is Barbara Lee. There are no White members in the caucus because it it's rules are that you have to be a certain race.

3. The meeting that Obama had was not a reunion and most likely not friendly. Obama's meeting with the caucus was about the cuts they had in their organization. The group had billions less on certain purposes than their original stimulus bill. They also addressed issues that the caucus would like to see Obama talk about. The meeting was his first and they had it at the White House.

4. The caucus want Obama to hire more minorities to federal jobs and help minority jobs get government contracts. They wanted him to create health care for the minorities. They wanted him to improve the education in communities that get low incomes. Most of the issues effect minorities and their health.

5. I think Obama will have the type of relationship with the caucus in which he has many meetings with them throughout his term. I think he will try to address the issues that come up in their meetings as much as possible. Since he was once part of the caucus, I believe they will agree on more topics than the caucus did with George Bush.

My Thoughts on "Talking Equality"

This article explains the educational differences in accomplishments in school from certain ethnicities. It explains how some children of a certain race are doing better grade-wise than other races. This difference is called the "achievement gap". According to this article, the Latino and Black students are below the Asian and White students. The percentages of Asian and White students are more than doubled when it comes to advanced placement classes and High school population. Many people gave comments in this article and they sounded as if this was a serious problem that they want to change.

There are people in groups that are working on closing the achievement gap. Their main focus is changing the problem at the root, which they define as the parents, students, and communities. They are also working on changing some of the main problems that need solutions. Those problems include not having textbooks to take home, some schools not having a good distribution of well experienced teachers.

This article includes many statistics that vary. In every statistic the White and Asian were doing better. Even when the numbers of Blacks and Latinos were higher, in that case it would be the suspension rate per hundred students. This problem could be linked to the fact that not many people have interest in school and the younger children aren't being properly prevented from doing these things.

There were many attempts in trying to fix these problems but almost all of them fell short and were not as effective as they hoped. The groups are changing their approach to changing the achievement gap because their other approaches have been tried very long but didn't work. They hope that changing how they plan fix it will fix it.