Since the end of the postwar economic boom, certain strategies have been intensified to stimulate consumption, especially strategies aimed at American youth that project sexual activity as instant fulfillment and violence as the locus of machismo identity. This market activity has contributed greatly to the disorientation and confusion of American youth, and those with less education and fewer opportunities bear the brunt of this cultural chaos.

The black conservatives claim that the decline of values such as patience, deferred gratification, and self-reliance have resulted in the high crime rates, the increasing number of unwed mothers, and the relatively uncompetitive academic performances of black youth. And certainly these sad realities must be candidly confronted. But nowhere in their writings do the new black conservatives examine the pervasiveness of sexual and military images used by the mass media and deployed by the advertising industry in order to entice and titillate consumers. Black conservatives thus overlook the degree to which market forces of advanced capitalist processes thrive on sexual and military images.

Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.

A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.

So I guess I wonder, where is the line separating me into this culture or that culture, saying I have less or more? I'm just me, and like most people, I've had my heart broken a few times, but for the most part I have been Happy.

There are so man other labels people like to assign. Where am I an insider, and where am I an outsider? It all depends on where I'm standing and who is trying to put me into which box.