Joan,

The irony of 99 Problems is that Jay-Z uses the word "bitch" to refer to ungendered critics, a police dog, and weak men. He never actually uses it to refer to women, unless you account for the implied usage in the hook.

That song is a perfect example of someone trying to change the meaning of a word so that it no longer has its gendered or racialized significance. While there is some argument about whether or not this works, I do not think you fairly represented Jay-Z's intentions with the song, which I believe are clear either way.

dnA

"Emanuel comes off as one of the most colorful, driven and profane Washington characters since Lyndon Johnson. "The Jewish LBJ," political scientist Larry Sabato calls him, not only for his ambition but also for his reputation as an amoral political animal focused only on power. "

Yeah maybe you think of signing the Civil Rights Act as immoral. I don't.

Presenting LBJ simply as an amoral opportunist really doesn't do the man justice. While Kennedy gets the reputation as the idealist, LBJ showed he was more sympathetic to civil rights than Kennedy was. Not exactly fair in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but no one likes their partner to be "obese". Being thick, having meat on your bones, and being "obese" are quite different. There are no "obese" women being exoticized in rap videos.

Also, Dickerson's article completely ignores the link between obesity and poverty to make her argument that black standards of beauty are responsible for obesity.

It seems to me that lack of access to cheap, healthy food is a far more likely cause of obesity than standards of beauty that don't expect a woman to be pencil thin.

The real point of the values answer is not that middle-class blacks are turning against "blackness," whatever that is: It's that they are insisting that they have the right to create their own signifiers of blackness. And it's that middle-class blacks -- who suffer from white discrimination that is in part a response to black underclass behavior, and who are far more likely to be the victims of black criminals than whites are -- are no longer willing to simply give every knucklehead in the 'hood a free pass because of "structural racism."

That's right! If you suffer discrimination at your law firm it's because your cousin Pookie smokes crack. It's not because people are racist. Black people in the hood are responsible for their actions, but racists in the workplace? they're just responding (in part) to black underclass behavior! I'm glad we've moved beyond giving "every knucklehead in the hood" a free pass, so we can give them to those who are truly deserving: white people.