Week Five Response

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBa55sDTIiA&feature=related
The above link is to the video for Common's rap song "I have a dream". I chose this particular song because I think it does a really good job of highlighting the ways in which the freedom of African Americans continues to be restricted even in a post civil rights movement era. As embodied by the law, it would seem that Dr. King's vision has been completely realized, but that is clearly not true. Now there is a much more difficult set of restrictions on the freedom of the Black community, including poverty, classism, stereotypes in popular culture, and more subtle discrimination in the school systems. I think Common conveys these ideas very powerfully, saying, "Struggle is my address, where pain and crack lives, Gunshots comin' from sounds of Blackness...Born on the Black list, told I'm below average...Tryna make it from a gangsta to a godlier role". To me, freedom means not only that people have the same civil rights regardless, but also that everyone has an equal opportunity to improve their situation, to rise above poverty. I don't think that this exists for the Black community in America today in the way that it should. Poverty in the Black community is compounded by discrimination in, and underfunding of, public schools, making it extremely difficult to rise out of poverty.