Essay 341

Reading The Sunday News With A MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A new poll showed most Americans believe significant racial progress has been made. But as always, the results are divided along racial lines. 75% of the people surveyed felt things have changed for the better — but only 66% of Blacks agreed with the notion. An analyst of Black issues for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies said, “For a big portion of the African-Americans, there’s not better education … There have been some gains made, but it’s uneven. A lot of Whites basically say: ‘The civil rights movement has been done. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.’” Wonder how the Black results skew in New Orleans.

• Another prominent tagger has been nabbed, this time in Orange County. Cesar Moncada — a.k.a. 22 Tagger — received a six-month jail sentence and a $30,000 fine. “We’re very serious about taggers … If people tag in this county and get caught, they’re going to go to jail,” said a spokeswoman for the county district attorney. Tell Sony to stay away with its Playstation Portables campaign.

• Eminem and his ex-wife have remarried. News helicopters and paparazzi swarmed over the event. No word of any stabbings or shootings involving rapper guests.

• A Harvard report revealed that schools in New York are the most segregated in the country. Leave it to officials at Harvard to present information that even a New York dropout could have easily uncovered.

• In Venezuela , people are growing obsessed with beauty. The Yellow Pages list more beauty salons than drugstores. Teen girls receive breast enhancements as gifts for their 15th birthdays. Beauty pageants are all the rage for nearly every age group. Even men are becoming more metrosexual. Wonder how the Dove Real Beauty Campaign would go over in Venezuela.

• The Washington Post reported that most students read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech, but many will not hear it. Why? Because the speech is copyrighted, and the King family charges for complete audio copies. “It is doubly sad for people today who do not hear the speech,” said the president of Howard University. “It certainly was one of the great moments of American oratory. But young people today don’t often hear the message of possibility, and the second half of the speech was all about possibility.” The possibility of hearing the entire speech will cost about $10. Although it should be noted that the King family is hardly unique in maintaining the rights of the civil rights icon’s work. Richard M. Nixon peddled his papers to the U.S. government for $18 million — and that didn’t include the audiotapes he probably had destroyed.