Various Items of Interest: 12/8/06
Posted on December 8th, 2006 by Tariq Nelson
- Zinc is important for brain function
Filed under: Changing World, Children's Issues
- Zinc is important for brain function
Filed under: Changing World, Children's Issues
Interesting about those Lebanese kids. I can tell you that probably the majority of Arabic teens in the USA associate, to one level or another, with the ghetto/rap/street culture of the inner city.
This is odd because the majority of them as well come from rather well off and well to do backgrounds. My step son is like this. He is the grandson of a foreign diplomat here who first came to the USA on a diplomatic visa. He was raised going to provate schools, living in upper middle class areas. Yet he feels more comfortable with 50 Cent than anything in his own community.
I have always threatened him that if he wants to really BE ghetto and not just ACT ghetto, I’ll drop him off in SE DC some Friday night and let him hang out the weekend. We’ll see just how well his butt does in the ghetto.
Kids like this do not respect where they came from, they do everything they can to hide their roots and their religion. What little they do keep from their own culture is the absolute worst of it, and the deen is nothing more than a tribal moniker.
The kids who come from the ghetto would probably give everything they have to have the life and the chances to succede that these kids do. These kids are often ungrateful and think they have it so rough.
They havent seen rough yet, nor will they ever. For as much as they like to immitate ghetto culture, they are about as far away from it as you can get.
It just really blows my mind.
Zinc…Magnesium…..Calcium…Potassium……
man all this stuff help’s a human function on the most basic level like the function of the proteins that your cell produces. BioChemistry and Cell biology, interesting stuff, you learn to appreciate those minerals that you consume in such ‘trivial’ amounts a lot more.
Abu Sinan: I agree almost 100% with your post. As much as I love hip-hop, and have grown up listening to some of the jams from back in the day, I really hate how everyone is on the “gangsta” tip nowadays. Those guys were laughed at by more serious rappers, and mostly still are. If you ask me, it has not got much better since biggie and pac were killed, and even then those guys did some decent tracks - not everything was about money, women, drugs and guns. How different nowadays - we even have mainstream “pop” people trying to get in on the image and look!
But, there are some troublesome areas in Sydney, more than a few which house people of Lebanese and other descent (as well as Aborigines and others). It may not quite be South Central, QB or whatever, but lack of social enterprise still causes problems. Not to mention the government and media stigma Muslims - particularly Lebanese Muslims - get over here in Australia. I know of one talented Lebanese guy who cannot get work when he uses his real name (Muhammad), but when using Mark, it is fine. Most people think he is East European because of how he looks. This all adds up to create a rather depressing atmosphere.
It is a complex issue, and these things have to be tackled on multiple fronts to have any real effect.
Just to add, the immigration statistics here are different to the US. Most Lebanese migrants (especially Muslims) were from rural areas, most had little to no education. I believe these factors, as well as plenty of others all play a part in this situation.