African American Studies Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

African American Studies - Research Paper Example From the political standpoint, it is interesting to note how the criminal justice system across most societies is deliberately organized against African Americans. African Americans in the USA have faced racial discrimination in the courthouses and by the laws that have been passed by the state; also, since the Jim Crow Laws had been passed since the 1900s, the African Americans were segregated from the rest of the population, and denied equality in many areas of social life such as voting (Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System ,page 66). Also, even though African Americans make up 13% of the population in the USA, in 2004 African Americans were accused of "47.2% of murders, 53.3% of robberies, 31.9% of rapes, and 32.7% of assaults," (Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System, page 67); as we can see, this seems to be a skewed and disproportionate report, one that demonstrates racial discrimination against the African Americans. Following the "Rodney King" c ase, it was found that there does seem to be racial prejudice and bias being practiced against the African Americans, seen from the use of excessive violence, verbal harassment and invasive actions against them by police officers, (Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System, page 67). Moving onto historic examples of discrimination against African Americans, it would be worthwhile to mention the incident of the Red Summer of 1919, in which African Americans and the white population of Chicago launched into racially charged riots that lasted for 5 days; many African Americans were lynched, shot, wounded. The most significant reason for these racial riots was due to the feeling of intolerance and xenophobia towards the African Americans (Norvell & Tuttle , page 210). There was also a general feeling amongst the white population to push the African Americans back to the "bottom rung of the

Tainted Love Composed by Ed Cobb Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Tainted Love Composed by Ed Cobb - Essay Example Tainted Love was composed by Ed Cobb, a songwriter and originally recorded by Gloria Jones, a soul singer, in 1965. However, the song emerged a mainstream hit in 1981 performed by Soft Cell duo, Marc Almond and David Ball as a cover song. Almond and David Ball, the core of the Soft Cell band, left their mark on the generation that lives today. Both Almond and Ball came from Leeds, U.K and had a mundane music career. They had redundant failures, which made their recording company to give them one last chance to make a hit. They utilize this last chance to make the song Tainted Love not feeling sanguine when recording it. Every radio station in the United Kingdom was awash with the song. Soft Cell’s version hit the top of the U.K’s single charts and maneuvered its way to Top 40 in the United States a year later, peaking at position 8. Tainted Love by Soft Cell was synth-driven and danceable. Enriched with Marc Almond’s vocals alternating torched and sleazy, it is agreeable that this was one of the epic songs of its time. They went ahead to set a Guinness World Record for the longest consecutive stay on the U.S Billboard Hot 100 chart. Compared with the original version done by Gloria, Soft Cell’s version portrayed a darker edge. In spite of the fact that the band had it as a cover song for their album, their synth-pop approach made the song sound more original. Soft Cell virtually owned the song. Soft Cell’s Tainted Love is my favorite ballad especially because of the jocular manner in which the singer says he wants to run away because he has endured a lot. The song is indeed heart-rending and makes one feel like true love never exist. Different people can have a varying interpretation of a song. According to me, the song Tainted Love is about unconsummated love.