The Social Virtuoso

It is 2012, and if you haven’t noticed yet I would like to be the first to tell you: 1) you are not a different person; 2) change is a process, not an event. That being said, I would like to encourage and empower you to begin the process to become a better you. peace. love. blessings.

Before lyricists became rappers

Before subject matter became trivial

Before meter was dismembered

Before rhyme became malleable

Before metaphor became reality

Before syllables were counted

There were only grunts.

Congratulations to all of my beautiful queens who have embraced their natural beauty and are living in sobriety from the infamous creamy crack! I had my BC anniversary on June 30 of this year, and would like to leave a few tips as you approach your first winter with curls/kinks. 

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  • KNOW YOUR CURL PATTERN: I personally have 4A hair with 3C on the ends. It is imperative that you know your hair type because different curl patterns have different needs. 4A tends to be drier and tangles easily. 
  • TRIM, TRIM, TRIM!: For those who have just BC’d, I know it is difficult to cut what little hair you have, but trimming every 2 months is beneficial to your hair’s growth.
  • QUENCH THE THIRST: This cool weather is wonderful to 4A hair when living in humid areas, like New Orleans! However, these harsh, cool winds can also do damage to the hair. Be sure to moisturize your locks and try protective styles. Every once in awhile, I will leave a hair smoothie in overnight (so that it can penetrate to the scalp) and rock a 2 strand twist for a few days after rinsing it out. 

Enjoy!

We as Americans contend that all people are entitled to freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. These liberal beliefs stem from the idea that the individual is entitled to autonomy and is the sole proprietor of their person. American society, based on the ideals on which the nation was founded, is an aggregate of individuals who have equal access to the means to achieve their cultural goals. However, we as a nation are in no way a unified body and to ignore the level of stratification serves only to create a disjointed and incomplete picture. Social classifications provide individuals with the rights, duties, norms, and sanctions that guide one’s perceptions of self and the manner in which one behaves. That is, the groups we belong to provide distinct values and belief systems, appropriate goals, and the appropriate means to achieve those goals. We are assigned to these strata, in many cases, solely based upon the traits we possess inherently. Traits maintained by individuals verify social significance and create a hierarchy in which a structure of domination exists. Because the basis for stratification is objective characteristics, this aforementioned hierarchy is often unnoticed. Howard Becker states, “social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by other of rules and sanction to an ‘offender.’”

Certain individuals, whites, are inherently included, while others, such as blacks, are not. This message is subtly and repeatedly reinforced through systematic structural barriers and the employment of the media. The media maintains the power to define normalcy within the social and political realms of society. According to Katz’s and Lazarsfeld , these definitions are derived from “opinion leaders” and delivered to audiences by way of the media. There are documented cases in which the media and public officials create political deviants and subversives through arrests, imprisonment, etc. Theorists even acknowledge the deviant status of blacks in America by arguing being labeled deviant based on some characteristic besides race is less detrimental to blacks, for it is redundant and congruent with a label that was not previously based on any behavior of the individual. 

Berbrier explains, “‘minority’ refers to a ‘group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out…for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination’”. It is assumed that deviance is voluntary and subjective; however, the ethnicity of blacks is not voluntary nor is it costless. Belonging has both material and symbolic consequences which include but are not limited to access to institutional means and increased positive perceptions of self.  People of color are segregated from the general collection of individuals, hence the term minorities, and suffer from systematic oppression and exclusion from the aforementioned benefits of belonging.  In addition, individuals experience stigma when type-cast into deviant roles. Think about it.