Last year, as senior advisor, I chaperoned prom. It was an.....interesting experience. I was sure that there were gonna be some pregnant girls at graduation after watching how the kids were dancing. While that dancing was a bit disturbing, there was another dance the kids were doing that was just repulsive. It was what I like to call a coon dance, and I was just sure that it originated in the south. It was the first time I saw anyone doing the dance, but since then I have seen quite a few of my students doing it...the chicken noodle soup. What does that even mean? Today, when I logged on to AOl there was an article about a new craze in dancing. It is invited its members to watch the dance and judge it. What in the world is going on? This dance is sooooo coon-ish to me, but maybe it's just me. And NOW people all over and looking at it. Will I be the only one who views this as a coon dance, or are others gonna look at this and say "Lord, what are they doing now?"
So disturbing...
Check out the title of this blog and you will be able to see for yourselves. Let me know if I'm just not being open minded...I hope it works (and there is a commercial before it airs).
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
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2 comments:
Girl! I totally agree that this step'n'fetchit dance it out of control. The students think it is so cute, but everytime I see them do it I ask if they have a shotgun pointed at their feet and this is the only thing they could think of doing. I was actually glad the dance didn't come from the south. Backwards behavior is no longer seen as the Southern issue. Right here in Harlem we have some backwards movement back to dancing fo' boss. Perhpas these kids need to revisit (oh who am I fooling; visit for the first time) bamboozled so they can see how they are the prime example of the "real coon". They are volunteering to place themselves back in a role we have been trying to escape for hundreds of years. I'm surprised the song down't say "chicken noodle soup with watermelon on the side"
My, my....how times they aren't a changin'
And in reality it doens't stop with the ignorant dances. I have students who call each other apes and talk about how black and ugly each other is - the blacker being the worst thing possible and prime pickings for a joke. I want them to read the section of Native Son where Bigger is reading the newpaper in which he is described as an ape, less than human...
Someone help the babies learn their history so that they can refrain from further diminishing the image of minorites.
hmmm aleia.. i can see your point, to an extent .. i have chaperoned enuff parties and have had to literally pry these kids off of each other when dancing ... which i swear to all i hold holy that it is merely foreplay ...
but my question is this .. which do we prefer ..
a) to watch our children imitate mens favorite pole acrobat and play out many of their sexual fantasies under the guise of dance interpretation ..
or
b) to watch them return to the ignorance and pure debasement of their (not to mention our) culture?
either way the perception held by the rest of the world (or at least all those within reach of MTV, or BET)is not and can not be a positive one.
I mean the "suburban" family that has little exposure to the "urban" world gains most of their knowledge from what they see on the blinking idiot box(aka TV) so either way what are they seeing of US and what are they thinking of us .. and can either of these be even remotely positive???
like my man Arsenio used to say .. "Things that make you go hmmmmmm..."
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