Want black people to be free, to be free, to be free . . .

I, along with nine other young black people, was named as a new leader in civil rights by AOL. I feel extremely honored to be included on the list among my sheroes Jessica Care Moore, Alisha Thomas Morgan, and Toni Blackman. Yet, (you knew that was coming) I feel like I'm being used as a tool in a conservative moral agenda.

I know it's not that serious, but the way the press has handled this has made it appear as though we are like those who have gone up against music moguls before, and are interested in censoring and waging war on the rap industry. It isn't that simple.

I am the eternal conspiracy theorist and I know controversy sells, so a part of me wonders if there has been some intentional stoking of the fire in terms of the "nelly protest."

I am also concerned because there seems to be some effort on the part of the right wing media to align themselves with this issue. It seems to be so easy for people to paint this conversation reactionary red as opposed to seeing it as a step in progressing a humanist/feminist agenda in the black community.

On an unrelated note, I've noticed a trend in the media concerning the representation of black men. In several recent commercials I have seen black men portrayed as ignorant and incompetent. T Mobile has two commercials featuring Big Boi and Snoop, both calling on celebrity friends to aid them in their predicaments. In snoops case, the little person of Jackass fame laments snoop's ignorance regarding when to use fabric softener. In the commercial featuring Big Boi, he doesn't know how much a pat of butter is and is chastised for not knowing. A digital cable commercial features a black man that believes he was at the game b/c of the superior AV quality much to the bemusement of his white friends who try to explain that they watched the game on TV. A black man is driving in his car through various weather conditions looking astonished because as we learn from text, the weatherman has reported different weather than what the driver is experience. At the end of the ad we learn that the black man is the weatherman and an angry white citizen throws a snowball at him for his obviously inaccurate prediction of a record high. The inept black man is in again.

I just wish that there was some way to interrupt the hegemonic power structure, however briefly, so people could get some perspective on all that's going on in the world. The struggle continues . . .