"I HAVE TO DEAL WITH ALOT OF THEM"

What the hell does that mean? I really have a great deal to say about your opinion....then I think...WHY??? I am just offended and disappointed, again. People like you do not know how to recognize what a multicultural society we are living in today and whether we are black, white, or purple we have to appreciate each other and yes, sometimes even be rewarded for our contributions to the whole society no matter who initiates the "reward" ...P is many cultures and from MY perspective he presents that way...I could tell you some of my expereinces (which are similar to some noted above) of being "seen" as black and "acting" white....etc....becasue I am all of those cultures. As a person of color (POC) I must tell you ...you make my heart ache!

BTW ...did someone from the NAACP steal your candy? This is sad!

Oh, by the way! CONGRATULATIONS PRINCE!!!!!

SammiJ said:

Sorry I won't jump on that bandwagon,I am of minority and still don't agree with the NAACP. Close minded? That's the first time anyone has called me that. No introduction how've you been. Just up yours,smile that's right you're a star.

djvict88 said:

it still ain't an excuse to not do your homework on things.

you get presented how you present yourself. those song lyrics you recited don't really help in the matter, cuz you're the one who's turned this thread on its ear.

piscesglenn said:

It means it doesn't matter if I'm having a bad day or not I have to listen to their concerns and complaints. I have to show respect and diginity in what I do. I do believe Prince can influence many cultures but the NAACP represents in my opinion, blacks. Billy,don't worry about it. Yeah congrats Prince where was the NAACP years ago.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Really I'd like to hear what you know about them. Please educate me. Naw just point the finger, I'm a big boy I can handle it.

djvict88 said:

if you're such a big boy you would know to go and find all this stuff out by yourself. don't wait on others to tell you.

alright folks, enough of this happiness...let's try and get back on topic instead of dwelling over this.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Man alot of hate for a fan of Prince. Are you sure you hear him?
[Edited 1/21/05 11:56am]

djvict88 said:

Upon further inspection of the ponts you are trying to make through your bad grammar (my English-teaching mother would cringe...), I had to bring in the reinforcements of what the NAACP accomplishes in the way of helping others:

From the NAACP:

In purpose and design, the Fair Share Program seeks to achieve the following specific objectives:

* Establishment of minority vendor programs for purchases of goods and services, including utilization of African American contractors, professionals, and financial and insurance institutes.
* Establishment of aggressive affirmative action programs and opportunities for advancement of African Americans into senior management positions, including representation on corporate boards.
* Creation of investment and ownership opportunities for African American businesses, i.e. franchises.
* Promotion of philanthropic contributions to worthy African American organizations and causes.


-----

The Prison Project:

The NAACP Prison Project is designed to promote alliances, legislation and initiatives that positively impact inmate recidivism, ex-felon re-enfranchisement and racial disparities within the criminal justice system; as well as provide the incarcerated with a vehicle of empowerment through the formation of Prison Branches. High priorities for the Project are as follows:

Assist in national, state, and local efforts to re-enfranchise former felons
Re-activate former prison branches and organize new prison branches
Assist in providing voter registration and voter education
Address disparate treatment of inmates
Address disparities in the criminal justice system
Develop collaborative partnerships to assist in providing services to inmates (skill set training, tutoring, pre-release counseling etc)
Identify and assess appropriate offender re-entry programs (lend support when necessary)

-----

The NAACP Reginald F. Lewis Youth Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI) caters specifically to high school students ages 14-18 who live in low-income communities (students who do not live in low-income communities are also encouraged to apply) and have a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 2.0. The program provides an opportunity for youth to learn how to develop a business idea, turn that idea into a business plan, and finally into a successful business venture.

YEI focuses on empowering youth through an entrepreneurial curriculum that fosters pride, self-esteem, leadership, and a sense of achievement. Participants learn real world business skills such as team building, financial and money management, networking, interpersonal communication skills, and business etiquette.

As YEI prepares and encourages young people to become entrepreneurs, the Institute also prepares them for traditional career opportunities. The young people that successfully complete the process of starting a business become superior candidates for employment.


Need I go on?

Anyway....enough of the previous babble by djvict88.


Congrats, Prince!!! Good luck on it as well!

Why don't they got something like this for white people? I almost didn't get into college because of the color of my skin -- seriously! That's another story. But all in all, no biggy to me. Congrats to Prince!

Snap said:

You're kidding me right?



I'm sorry to hear this part, really. That's an injustice to ANY group that comes across that.

Can you only vote online if you're an NAACP member? Any info on who will be performing?

Don't wish to continue to roam off topic, but Prince is only half-black? Ms. Mattie sure looked black to me.

Snap said:

Why do white people need to advance in their own society? COme on man I hope you are seriously kidding. THis is almost as stupid as asking why there isnt a White history month.

djvict88 said:

Prince is not part black he is black I swear I don't know where you people get your information. Oh and by the way if he felt the NAACP awards were stupid he would not attend or support them anymore. To you they may be stupid but who really gives a shit what you think is stupid as it pertains to African Americans.

http://www.surveygroup.com/naacp2005/

What's the access code so I can vote? Prince is gonna take 'em out this time!

djvict88 said:

Fair enough about the NAACP being a company. I can see that as a fair critique. But they are a powerful company that does not deal with small incidents but the bigger picture (I mean they can't do everything) Also we live in corporation/ country so it would stand to reason that a civil rights organization would have to come at it in a business type of way. However that is a fair critique.

I also agree that Prince does bring people together but if he only brings them together by ignoring who and what he is then I have to say that ain't bringing folks together. I expect every race and culture to be proud and celebrate itself and at the same time be open to learing and loving other cultures and I believe "Pro Black Prince" does that very well. There is no reason to be threatend by that. You should celebrate it actually.

Sorry I came so hard on your last post but it just sounded like someone else around here who likes to push racial buttons from time to time.


Peace

Soulchild82 said:

uhh..im pretty sure it was a joke hun LOL
wow thank GOD we got thru that mess..i almost thought this thread was gunna go on lock down.

djvict88 said:

Prince is part BLACK and part BLACK. What is the other race in him that he needs to talk about? And why would he even need to?

I won't address the rest of what I consider to be your ignorance. Echo SammiJ, HandsClaps, xpsiter, piscesglenn, et al!

In closing, any 1 who has any traceable black in their blood is considered black. As sad as it might sound ,that is the truth.

P.S. think P did get an NAACP award previously.

Races, countries and religions suck, they have divided people. Just my opinion...

chiltonmusic said:

^^
exactly, people see Purple Rain and automatically think it is an exact biography. His Mom was white in the movie to appeal to a wider audience and to remove the characters from his real mother and father. His real father and mother are black, he is black. By the way, in case you didn't know, he ain't gay either

WOW!!! The man is getting nominated for 2 awards and this is what the thread turns out to become....a racial issue? That's wild. I just wanna say Congrats to Prince and his nominations,also he is nominated for 5 Grammy's as well....So chew on that.....

twin663 said:

not true buddy. what of hispanics? many of them (dominicans, brazillians, and some puerto ricans) you could not tell from an american black person unless they told you their last name. they are not considered black. so your claim is not all true.

Soulchild82 said:

ahem..for your reading pleasure
To be considered black in the United States not even half of one's ancestry must be African black. But will one-fourth do, or one-eighth, or less? The nation's answer to the question 'Who is black?" has long been that a black is any person with any known African black ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with slavery and later with Jim Crow segregation. In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,'' meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "one black ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule," and anthropologists call it the "hypo-descent rule," meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation's definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice. As we shall see, this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen.

Let us not he confused by terminology. At present the usual statement of the one-drop rule is in terms of "black blood" or black ancestry, while not so long ago it referred to "Negro blood" or ancestry. The term "black" rapidly replaced "Negro" in general usage in the United States as the black power movement peaked at the end of the 1960s, but the black and Negro populations are the same. The term "black" is used in this book for persons with any black African lineage, not just for unmixed members of populations from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "Negro," which is used in certain historical contexts, means the same thing. Terms such as "African black," "unmixed Negro," and "all black" are used here to refer to unmixed blacks descended from African populations.

We must also pay attention to the terms "mulatto" and "colored." The term "mulatto" was originally used to mean the offspring of a "pure African Negro" and a "pure white." Although the root meaning of mulatto, in Spanish, is "hybrid," "mulatto" came to include the children of unions between whites and so-called "mixed Negroes." For example, Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, with slave mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. To whatever extent their mothers were part white, these men were more than half white. Douglass was evidently part Indian as well, and he looked it. Washington had reddish hair and gray eyes. At the time of the American Revolution, many of the founding fathers had some very light slaves, including some who appeared to be white. The term "colored" seemed for a time to refer only to mulattoes, especially lighter ones, but later it became a euphemism for darker Negroes, even including unmixed blacks. With widespread racial mixture, "Negro" came to mean any slave or descendant of a slave, no matter how much mixed. Eventually in the United States, the terms mulatto, colored, Negro, black, and African American all came to mean people with any known black African ancestry. Mulattoes are racially mixed, to whatever degree, while the terms black, Negro, African American, and colored include both mulattoes and unmixed blacks. As we shall see, these terms have quite different meanings in other countries.

Whites in the United States need some help envisioning the American black experience with ancestral fractions. At the beginning of miscegenation between two populations presumed to be racially pure, quadroons appear in the second generation of continuing mixing with whites, and octoroons in the third. A quadroon is one-fourth African black and thus easily classed as black in the United States, yet three of this person's four grandparents are white. An octoroon has seven white great-grandparents out of eight and usually looks white or almost so. Most parents of black American children in recent decades have themselves been racially mixed, but often the fractions get complicated because the earlier details of the mixing were obscured generations ago. Like so many white Americans, black people are forced to speculate about some of the fractions-- one-eighth this, three-sixteenths that, and so on....



Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world. In fact, definitions of who is black vary quite sharply from country to country, and for this reason people in other countries often express consternation about our definition. James Baldwin relates a revealing incident that occurred in 1956 at the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists held in Paris. The head of the delegation of writers and artists from the United States was John Davis. The French chairperson introduced Davis and then asked him why he considered himself Negro, since he certainly did not look like one. Baldwin wrote, "He is a Negro, of course, from the remarkable legal point of view which obtains in the United States, but more importantly, as he tried to make clear to his interlocutor, he was a Negro by choice and by depth of involvement--by experience, in fact."

The phenomenon known as "passing as white" is difficult to explain in other countries or to foreign students. Typical questions are: "Shouldn't Americans say that a person who is passing as white is white, or nearly all white, and has previously been passing as black?" or "To be consistent, shouldn't you say that someone who is one-eighth white is passing as black?" or "Why is there so much concern, since the so-called blacks who pass take so little negroid ancestry with them?" Those who ask such questions need to realize that "passing" is much more a social phenomenon than a biological one, reflecting the nation's unique definition of what makes a person black. The concept of "passing" rests on the one-drop rule and on folk beliefs about race and miscegenation, not on biological or historical fact.

The black experience with passing as white in the United States contrasts with the experience of other ethnic minorities that have features that are clearly non-caucasoid. The concept of passing applies only to blacks--consistent with the nation's unique definition of the group. A person who is one-fourth or less American Indian or Korean or Filipino is not regarded as passing if he or she intermarries and joins fully the life of the dominant community, so the minority ancestry need not be hidden. It is often suggested that the key reason for this is that the physical differences between these other groups and whites are less pronounced than the physical differences between African blacks and whites, and therefore are less threatening to whites. However, keep in mind that the one-drop rule and anxiety about passing originated during slavery and later received powerful reinforcement under the Jim Crow system.

For the physically visible groups other than blacks, miscegenation promotes assimilation, despite barriers of prejudice and discrimination during two or more generations of racial mixing. As noted above, when ancestry in one of these racial minority groups does not exceed one-fourth, a person is not defined solely as a member of that group. Masses of white European immigrants have climbed the class ladder not only through education but also with the help of close personal relationships in the dominant community, intermarriage, and ultimately full cultural and social assimilation. Young people tend to marry people they meet in the same informal social circles. For visibly non-caucasoid minorities other than blacks in the United States, this entire route to full assimilation is slow but possible.

For all persons of any known black lineage, however, assimilation is blocked and is not promoted by miscegenation. Barriers to full opportunity and participation for blacks are still formidable, and a fractionally black person cannot escape these obstacles without passing as white and cutting off all ties to the black family and community. The pain of this separation, and condemnation by the black family and community, are major reasons why many or most of those who could pass as white choose not to. Loss of security within the minority community, and fear and distrust of the white world are also factors.

It should now be apparent that the definition of a black person as one with any trace at all of black African ancestry is inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs once used to justify slavery and later used to buttress the castelike Jim Crow system of segregation. Developed in the South, the definition of "Negro" (now black) spread and became the nation's social and legal definition. Because blacks are defined according to the one-drop rule, they are a socially constructed category in which there is wide variation in racial traits and therefore not a race group in the scientific sense. However, because that category has a definite status position in the society it has become a self-conscious social group with an ethnic identity.

The one-drop rule has long been taken for granted throughout the United States by whites and blacks alike, and the federal courts have taken "judicial notice" of it as being a matter of common knowledge. State courts have generally upheld the one-drop rule, but some have limited the definition to one thirty-second or one-sixteenth or one-eighth black ancestry, or made other limited exceptions for persons with both Indian and black ancestry. Most Americans seem unaware that this definition of blacks is extremely unusual in other countries, perhaps even unique to the United States, and that Americans define no other minority group in a similar way. . . .

We must first distinguish racial traits from cultural traits, since they are so often confused with each other. As defined in physical anthropology and biology, races are categories of human beings based on average differences in physical traits that are transmitted by the genes not by blood. Culture is a shared pattern of behavior and beliefs that are learned and transmitted through social communication. An ethnic group is a group with a sense of cultural identity, such as Czech or Jewish Americans, but it may also be a racially distinctive group. A group that is racially distinctive in society may be an ethnic group as well, but not necessarily. Although racially mixed, most blacks in the United States are physically distinguishable from whites, but they are also an ethnic group because of the distinctive culture they have developed within the general American framework.

oh well...here we go again

maybe we should lock this mutha up?

SammiJ said:

yep!!

Congrats Prince! I would love to join the debate, but it's one I participate in everyday at work. It seems alot of u have summed it up. The NAACP is paying my college tuition, and my caucasian friends, so... God Bless the organization for its true purpose; EQUALITY! And thank them for recognizing TRUE artists whom touch the souls of African Americans and ALL PEOPLE alike.

When I grew up, I wanna be just like this man...



Spell it Edit
[Edited 1/22/05 9:40am]

Sorry but I don't take the NAACP seriously since they nominated R Kelly last year or year before. I also sincerely doubt Prince cares about these nominations or any other nominations he's gotten.

First, congrats again, Prince.
Second, don't lock the thread. Unless it disintegrates into name calling, discussions about race should not be halted. I believe one of the reasons we haven't come alot further in race relations is because people get uncomfortable talking about it and back away. True, it can bring out the worse in some people, but just because it makes you uncomfortable is no reason to completely ignore the topic.
One of my own personal problems with the NAACP came when they embraced OJ Simpson after he was charged with murder. Since he was aquitted, has OJ even uttered the letters NAACP? Or before he was even charged, for that matter.

dont get me wrong i can see your point about not wantin 2 lock this up but seriously this has nothing to do with Prince being nominated anymore..if we wanna chat about race, lets move to the general discussion board...unless anyone has anything else 2 say about Prince i say we leave it alone


y'kno?