Donnaven Clark

Comp english

4/17/22

The Bronx Killer

The city of New York is almost at its best time of the year; summer; finally the weather is getting clearer and that means more and more people will be outside having the time of their lives. The parks will be busy, parties will be active, and non-stop teenagers like myself just won’t be going home. Sounds like fun and everybody is going to be talking about it. Unfortunately however when there is a positive to something there is always a negative as well, and in the case of high amounts of people being outside crime rates are guaranteed to increase as well. To those that aren’t unfamiliar with the streets of New york; gang violence and other harsh events happen really often in the five boroughs making it a very scary place to be at any time of year especially during summer. Out of the five boroughs the two that are most popular right now are the Bronx and Brooklyn. These two boroughs gained their popularity through music which is great the bronx and brooklyn gave birth huge rap names, like 6ix9ine tekashi, cardi B, Jay Z, Pop Smoke, and even pop artist alicia keys, these are just small examples of some of the mainstream artist that we hear and they are an example of the good that could come out of the New york music scene; drill rappers, or underground rappers are artist that usually come from gangs and focus on mostly killing, shootouts, robbing, and killing their “opposition”, opposition being other drill rappers that are apart of other gangs in their lyrics. Constantly dissing the dead members of enemy gangs drill rap is known more for its hard beats and the disrespectful lyrics; Most rappers that are in the drill scene as well are kids around my age, some being even younger and in their early teens, and with the sudden rise in audience mostly from around the ages of teenagers to adults, tons of kids are being influenced in the wrong direction;  they are the real problem with New York right now, these are the new up and coming rappers that are blowing up, some popular examples is: Kay Flock, Sha Ek, Dougie B, and Dthang. These artists all live in the Bronx and they are around my age, out of the four names I gave two of them are cousins, and the other two are just affiliates with other gangs, but blood does not matter they still make songs about how they would kill each other and their friends, and actually go through with the killings. Out of the four names I listed as well two of them stay in close neighborhoods making it extremely easy for violence to reach the streets. 

Kay flock and Dthang are the two upcoming drill rappers that have probably started to gain the most attraction out of all the drill rappers. These two are the cousins mentioned earlier and have potentially started an era of wrongdoing in the Bronx. Currently right now both of the cousins are being held at Rikers island. Kay Flock or Kevin Perez is in rikers island for alleged First degree murder, where he shot and killed a 24 year old man out in the street and ran away; Kevin Perez was also facing two charges of “criminal weapon in the second degree”. The other cousin Dthang is the originator of Bronx drill music, and is a bit more disclosed with information regarding his name and age, but he was charged for unauthorized gun possession 

There have been a lot of young victims that have already been taken sadly due to bad guidance; a perfect example is Ramon gil medrano also known as Rah Rah gzz; I grew up going to the same school as Ramon; he was about a year younger than me and was apart of the gang/music violence scene passing away from fatal gun wounds while he was in the back of a uber car. He was one of the victims during a very intense killing spree last year of May passing way before he could turn 17; his murderers: this murder spree of last year “invovled 13 people and which 5 of them were just 16 years of age.”(Darcel D) Tyquan Howard and Alec Mcfarlane two 16 year old kids were charged with “second degree murder” and  “manslaughter for the case of Ramon”(Darcel D). “Jahlil Califf, 16, and Justin Baez, 18, were charged with second-degree Murder and Manslaughter in the death of 13-year-old Jaryan Elliott;”(Darcel D) this was another case of young people taking the lifes of other young kids, all because of the gang affiliation that they represent has problems with each other.

These were just some of the more known cases of murder and crime that is going on right now in the bronx; these young rappers have brought such an influence into the bronx that it was getting hard for even the mayor Eric Adams was concerned about the dangers of drill rap and for a small while he tried removing drill rap from the scene completely. Eric adams even called out social media platforms because they were allowing promotion of the guns, drugs, and murder. This shows just how dangerous drill rap really is and it is essential that we start taking repercussions and bring more awareness to the dangers of drill rap. I am only 19 years old, and there is kids younger than me suffering from the gang violence and influence of drill rap and it is killing off my generation.

Bloom, Madison, and Matthew Strauss. “Kay Flock Arrested on First-Degree Murder Charge, Lawyer Investigating Allegations.” Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 5 Jan. 2022, https://pitchfork.com/news/kay-flock-arrested-on-first-degree-murder-charge-lawyer-investigating-allegations/.

“NYPD Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for March 2021.” The Official Website of the City of New York, 6 Apr. 2021, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0406d/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-march-2021.

“Drill Rap – If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | the Daily Show.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Feb. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0l7eJXOfsc.

Donnaven Clark

Comp English 

May 17th

Personal growth

Writing as a kid has always been a struggle of mine; inserting my thoughts on the paper has never really been the issue for me, but sounding like myself is where things would get tough. Generally I would have about a page and a half done in a relatively fast time which is great but, as I read over my work I would find myself constantly getting rid of the majority of my work, feeling that my way of speaking just wasn’t good enough, or that things were just too “informal”. This way of thinking was taught to me from such a young age in writing and I feel that the lack of individuality I had and always trying to meet a certain expectation in how to sound when I was writing really held me back. I constantly just loathed the idea of even taking an English course and for my first semester of college in 2021 I completely avoided an English class, not wanting to deal with anytype of writing assignments where it just honestly felt like I couldn’t have my own voice.

When first coming into class semester we had an assignment the first day of class, it was to simply explain your favorite food. A task to do but a lot of of people were very generic and bland with their description, and the professor would constantly pester them with bombaring request of specificity; after that  and the constant free write prompts we discussed in the following few classes, I started noticing just how important it was going to be for me to release my own voice.  Around my second week of school I felt like I really started realizing a difference in how often we were talking about being comfortable with having your own voice, but still being able to express the message in a way that was clear for the audience to understand. In class we went over a video about a ted talk of a woman named Jamilla Lysicott; it was called three ways to speak english. Throughout the video Lysicott would switch up her form of speech through three different types of “english” explaining how each form of speech is articulate in its own right because every form of english has its own rules. The first form of english from her was the regular english that we are taught is “proper english”, so no type of slang words or broken english so words like hello, and phrases like how are you doing; the next form of english she introduced was her homeland version that she would usually use when talking to her caribbean parents, and the last form would be how she talks with her friends, some examples would be: what’s good?, yo bro, and nah thats crazy; and what she was trying to explain was that all three forms of english is “proper english” one is not more important than the other, since english itself is made up from a bunch of other languages, so what seems articulate or ignorant to others is only because they are unaware of the someone else’s form of english. This was an eye opener for me because I realized that my way of speaking and thinking was just my own diction and is what helps people recognize me from others.

Later in the semester after learning about my diction and practicing more and seeing how it was an extremely important part of my writing, we then went over a piece about first drafts. First drafts was another huge issue in my writing progress; the reason for this being is because I am somewhat of a perfectionist and so I always want my first time to be as perfect as perfect gets, and that is a great mentality to have but I feel that to amount of pressure I put on myself really made the progress of my essay and other writing pieces extremely minimal. That was until we read the “piece shitty first drafts” by Anne Lamot. Lamot in that piece was extremely relatable to me and probably gave me the biggest form of advice of  normalizing a not so perfect first go. The importance of just getting your thoughts on the paper is really what the main focus should be when trying to write a new piece for two reasons. The first being that if you cannot further continue your thought process in your first draft then you know that, the topic you are writing about may just not be for you; and also because when writing your first draft, you really get to be creative and just get most of the thoughts you have down on the paper; practically making the base for the rest of the essay. “Shitty first drafts” message throughout the story screamed it was okay to not be perfect, and I really needed to understand that. Nobody in this world is perfect. Some may seem closer than others  but nobody is perfect at the end of it all, so it was only normal for me to make mistakes.

Looking back to these past two or three months spent in this English class I feel like I actually learned a really valuable lesson in understanding myself. Knowing that I can tell a story just through my way of speaking and how much more of an impact it can have on somebody understanding. At first coming in i expected this to be a class of just countless essays that had a minimum of 7 pages, and countless evidence needed for each page; however the more we went through the class I felt like each piece we read was just really there to force me to question my way of writing; is this how I would sound? Do I feel comfortable giving out something others find normal? Is the way that I’m speaking too informal? These were all questions that I had to ask myself and currently today I feel like I can confidently say that I am able to answer all of those questions confidently. I am extremely appreciative of this class, and for further writing classes I may take in the future, I am confident that my abilities have improved to an extent where I can show off my diction and syntax in a much more clear manner, and really show people just how articulate I am.  

Citations:

Jamila Lyiscott: 3 Ways to Speak English | Ted – YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9fmJ5xQ_mc.

Shitty First Drafts – University of Kentucky. http://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf.

Donnaven Clark

English Comp

They say that reading and writing is a place that can really work wonders for one’s mind, allowing your thoughts to really run free, having the liberty to say anything you could possibly desire, and what do I say to that? What a load of crap! Reading and writing was never a happy subject for me when I was in school. I would never pay attention in class and for the life of me, I could not tell the difference between a thesis and a theme; even now I sometimes forget. That would be shocking to a lot of people, especially since I am taking a college level english class, struggling to differentiate a theme and a thesis at my age is somewhat depressing. Throughout my years of battling my boredom with the English language, there has been a time when I can say I almost turned over my white flag and forfeited my long harsh battle.

 I was in second grade because it was a really weird time for me. If you had a conversation with me around that stage of my life, I would probably try convincing you about how I had the power of time perception based solely off of me dodging a crayon, but that’s besides the point. I remember the day like it was yesterday, it was a class trip that all of the second graders were having that day, and unfortunately I could not bring the permission slip in for some odd reason. Since Ps 214 was such a reliable and responsible school, they told me that even if I could not come to the trip, attendance was still mandatory, and so I had to come anyway. After arriving in school they ended up putting me  in a first grade class for the day. It was annoying, however I didn’t mind and so before my class left my teacher told me to grab a couple books to keep me occupied. Me being me I couldn’t care less so I grabbed one random book, OH BROTHER by Johniece Marshall. After making my selection, I remember being escorted to the class and the environment was so tense, even though I was older the cold stares I got from those little kids felt like lasers burning my skin. I quickly scurried to the back of the class and sat down. Now at first, I was not planning on actually reading the book so I just kept my head down, but the teacher noticed I was not occupying myself and so she told me “ Get to reading you are not going to do nothing in my class.” Being that this was not an environment I was comfortable in, I just went with the flow, and man the book started off slow as heck but I remember getting to about the 80th page and at that point, it felt like the words were a part of me. I could no longer hear the kids or the teacher in the room. It felt like I became one of the brothers in the book, the sounds of the raindrops thumping against the window, the cozy feeling of the somewhat worn out couch. The warmness of the heater coming from the corner of the living room, and the harsh tense environment of my two brothers arguing over their missing bike. It was such a blissful feeling; I felt, for the first time, what it was like to live with siblings and I loved every moment of that. That was until the period bell rang and completely pulled me back into my sad reality of an uncomfortable cold seat and loud, annoying first graders. I was livid! It was the first time I ever enjoyed a book so much in my life. I tried, tried, and tried again to get as emerged as I was a couple seconds ago but I just couldn’t achieve what I wanted. Once the first period ended, Mr. Cintron, the principal, came on the school radio and spoke his morning message. At the end of it all he said the famous school slogan “achieving starts with believing”, and i just thought wow what a load of crap.

Looking back now, I honestly don’t know how I was as entertained as I was, the book itself was just about two brothers living their daily lives with the highest point of conflict being a small argument, which is completely normal for a pair of siblings. But because of its normality, I feel that is why I connected to it so much. I never had a sibling that lived with me so experiencing two brothers living their normal lives I kinda felt a sense of jealousy; I wanted to experience the bickering, the fighting and the loving times of having a sibling under the same household. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it made me outright envious of every friend of mine that had their own sibling living with them, rather it helped me understand the real meaning of another man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I carry this quote with me not just for the fact of my household but everywhere I go. It helps me stay considerate to those around me as now and in New York today i feel that a lot of people don’t take into consideration about others and how they feel towards certain items whether it be a pair of sneakers, or maybe a new phone and so they like to make fun of their friends because of how they cant afford such items; its unfair and sadly the general society has been convinced that making fun of others shortcomings is normal. I feel that I am in a pretty good position for myself, but I never brag about anything I have because what may be simple things to me might mean the world to somebody else.

Donnaven Clark 

 

Comp English

 

Intro

James Baldwin is an author with close connections to the history of slavery, he grew up in a predominately white Harlem area, was the oldest of nine siblings, and lived during a time period where racism was still very prominent. He knew at a young age that he was black, and  the already established prejudice from his white oppressors; this awareness caused James Baldwin to constantly be in the library learning and expanding his knowledge. At a young age Baldwin was a preacher at a church, this  was one of the main reasons that he became the type of author that he is, the bible and language of the church left a strong influence on him and his writing style ( Baldwin 2);  turning him into an author that speaks on the lack of attention and respect the black culture receives.

After reading his piece “if black english isn’t a language, then tell me what is’ ‘, you can just see how much he actually cares for our community. In Asking blunt and clear questions  that are hard to avoid with enough notoriety; it is clear that  this piece is focused on the appeals to not only the black audience but the white American audience as well. Not only in this piece but in his others Baldwin was known for his ability to appeal to the audience by using just the power of his words, this piece in particular however speaks on the ironic injustice the language of english has on minority culture specifically black culture; addressing issues such as the  hypocrisy hidden within the english language, the power language holds in controlling groups, and the ignorance that is thought to young black children from the english language. 

 

Body

” A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled”. James Baldwin throughout this piece focuses on the inequalities of not knowing a language and how severe the results could really be. Baldwin appeals to kairos by addressing an issue that has been around for years before him and still happens today; calling language a “political instrument with the means of proof of power”(Nytimes Baldwin 11) Baldwin believed that language was a way of showing one’s identity; further showing the lack of recognition black people get for their language, because of how the “white Americans” took ownership of these phrases. Turning phrases such as Jazz me into a derogatory term “sock it to me”, or “let it all hang out”; with phrases constantly being taken away from black culture;  it leads back to the question of how can a child be taught by anyone who despises him, even in today’s age the things we are taught is from the point of view of ” white American” which have been the oppressor for such a long time; this leads to a lot of young people of color to be fooled, and not knowing the truth. This is is something seen even in today; I have been learning in this english class constantly about formalities and how the general youth is taught what is proper language; when in actuality english is not a standard language, it is made up of multiple different languages and so not one specific way of talking is “proper American english”;  specifically in this James Baldwin piece, I realized just how important our our diction, and syntax is especially in the black community that I am apart of.

“People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate… language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things” ( Nytimes Baldwin 2 ) This was a part of the writing that also stood out a lot; Baldwin in this paragraph  speaks on how languages with much stronger cores and consistency at some point would still need to collaborate for people of different languages and upbringings to somewhat understand each other; however with the english language, a language with an significantly lower core and consistency of words that is actually english words; for some reason doesn’t allow black english, which could also be identified as informal english, or broken english. An example where you can see this would be places like job interviews, or when talking to elders, or even professors. It is seen as a lack of formality; with this way of english language being taught, children of black culture start to believe that this is the only right way to speak, and any other way of speaking comes off as ignorance, when its actually the other way around; it is okay to speak “ informal english” because that’s what the english language is, a bunch of different languages put together.

Baldwin is an artist that constantly focuses on the struggles of the black culture that occurs in America. I was able to find myself relating to Baldwin so much in this piece, growing up I thought constantly that I was speaking incorrectly when talking to my friends or the sometimes occasional talks with my middle school teachers in which I would say small filler words such as like, or maybe even saying things like “yea, cos, and watcha” Those are words that I would of never put in my essays or really say to an elder of mine; however after reading this piece I realized that there is nothing wrong with how i talk, english is a language that was formed from the combinations making it one of the hardest languages to learn if it is not somebody’s first language, and because of that there is no actual wrong when speaking my english. After understanding this piece I feel that writing has become much more enjoyable for me since now i no longer have to worry too much about how I write my pieces, as long as the audience is able to understand my writing and they are able to visualize my way of speaking and can identify that it is me who is speaking in my piece then I am doing no wrong, and with following white America’s ideology of ‘proper english” i feel that my voice will never be heard properly.

 

Citations:

“—.” The New York Times, The New York Times, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html?source=post_page—————————.

“James Baldwin Biography and Quotes ~ James Baldwin Biography.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 4 Aug. 2020, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/james-baldwin-about-the-author/59/.