Colored Hair, Weaves, and Tattoos: How Black Girls Replaced Coretta King with Nicki Minaj

Back in the day, there were standards of decorum that men and women set and adhered to. The women in my family and neighborhood behaved maturely and responsibly and always looked after all the kids and provided guidance. Very rarely would they act or behave in a manner that would be detrimental to our development. Those times are long gone.

Today, the trend is completely opposite. Young women often mimic behaviors, not of their elders, but those that are presented in the media. This habit has seemed to worsen over the years. Young women adopt behaviors of people who should not be idolized or looked up too as role models at all. One such person is the self-proclaimed black Barbie, Nicki Minaj.

I have yet to understand how much one has to hate who they are to the extent that they would identify with a white toy doll. Now if it is a metaphor to indicate that one is fake, plastic, artificial, superficial and lacks substance -- then the term fits. Otherwise, it is one of the dumbest assertions I have ever heard. Unfortunately, I guess I am the only one who thinks like this, for it appears young women copy everything and like what she does. From colored wigs, to having so many tattoo's on their bodies they could pass as being a Maori, a New Zealand native, young women have been influenced so much that they do not even carry themselves like ladies.

The message of being responsible and being your own person with personal standards and morals is lost in the picture. We have a culture of young African American girls who are so fixated on entertainers and materialism, that they concern themselves more with their hair and clothes, than education and basic family values.

Attempting to be like trifling folk like Nicki Minaj is just a way of saying a person doesn't like themselves and would rather accept and live by European standards of what is considered beautiful. The fact is that a younger audience is listening to her music, an audience that already lacks self-respect and is often disrespectful in general. These are just more ignorant practices that degrade women as just a form of meat.

he has a Coretta.

I was watching CSPAN when I suspect most folk were looking at the Democratic debates on CNN. I on the other hand was listening to a woman tout how “character counts.” Of a woman who acknowledged that things have occurred under the watch of both democratic and republican presidential administrations. She spoke of her mother in law. Of how she had to be naive and had to be a dreamer, for trying to raise a black male in the 60’s. She admitted her biases, since she confirmed her proud ness to be his wife, his woman. She acknowledged that she would be there for him, that she loved him even if he had nothing, for which she started out with, with him.

She spoke of his beauty and his sacrifice and new that they were blessed, for she saw a person who was willing to give up something for her and others. She said that in her household, “your word is your bond, that you treat people with decency and respect, that nothing was more important than ones commitment to their family and their community.

She said that was why she married him. She said that he was the first African American of the Harvard University Law Review. She said that it was not us, but rather those that keep raising the bar. She said that the only folks that are sacrificing in America now were in Iraq. She said that the rest of us had to shop and that we cant even se our blessings. Yea, folk. She was in Wilmington, Delaware, today and he got him a Coretta. And before I finished this essay, she said. They ask if he is tough enough to deal with the republicans.....she concluded, "look folk, we live in Chicago. 'Cause as she said, "most of us dont know the truth when we see it and most folks aint ready for the truth."