http://www.newpaltz.edu/blackstudies/wadelewis.html (EDITORS NOTE:) This has been an awful week for deaths locally for the "old school bunch" who have spent over 20 years in the Hudson Valley Area, specifically those whom have gone to college at SUNY NEW PALTZ and taken a diverse curriculum.
I'm really heartbroken and upset.
Back in the 90's, I considered my self a kid, I kinda still am, with hell of alot more life experience and maturity. I took a combination of black studies classes and Journalism classes back in the early 90's and despite what happened during those days in my self discovery, I got soo much out of those classes and also a sense of cultural history that I NEEDED to KNOW.
Back in the early 90's there was so much going on in music, culture and arts, and new generation (generation X) of youngins whom needed to have a sense of their own history, because if you don't know where you were, you don't know where you're going.
Back in the early 90's there was surge in black cultural understanding, any thing from SPIKE LEE's movies, to the X hats, to the RODNEY KING riots, to a more liberal alternative perspective on the word we live in.
The irony of this, with technology at my disposal compared to the late eighties and early 90's, I was surfing and researching YOU TUBE a couple of days ago for material about the last decade (ITP WORLD APOCALYPSE perhaps a 1999-2009 EDITION, specific to the issue of hurricane Katrina) and through the network of YOU TUBE, a stumbled upon the SPIKE LEE documentary "When the Levee Breaks", a must see, and then I found some of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. speeches and then some cool stuff that puts things in perspective about MALCOLM X.
I came to some closure about MALCOLM X's death. A weird synergy of timing, and with the cultural curiosity that I've always had.
And then, maybe two days later, I hear the awful news about JACK GOLDBERG (Jack's Rhythms owner) and now Dr. MARGARET WADE LEWIS SUNY NEW PALTZ BLACK STUDIES PROFESSOR.
According to the obituaries of the NEW PALTZ TIMES, SUNY NEW PALTZ BLACK STUDIES college professor DR. MARGARET WADE LEWIS has passed and succumbed to cancer. .
I did take a few classes with DR. MARGARET WADE LEWIS back in the early 90's, one class was BLACK ENGLISH LANGUAGE and culture as I was really creative with my papers back then, using rap to explain black ebonics and dialects as the semantics that we use as black folk is rooted back to slavery, the African diaspora (we call Africa the first world) and black culture dating back to Africa. In fact, through all I've been through, I still have my notebook from that class.
A funny story about college curriculum diversity, is that I ran into retired SUNY NEW PALTZ Women's Studies Professor on GAY PRIDE last June, we struck up a conversation because she recognized me from my old college days, although I was little embarrassed, she explained that the Womens Studies department has expanded their department to classes such as QUEER STUDIES. :Slaps Head: I only could wish SUNY NEW PALTZ offered that class when I was in college, as I should have taken some psychology and sociology classes too.
While it might seem that certain majors in college are vague in reference (art, black studies, womens studies, music) if those majors are integrated within education, sociology, psychology, political science, anthropology majors, you will be surprised how valuable of an asset YOU will be to the career market with a cultural perspective on society, culture, history and life.
ITP is big proponent of diversity in school curriculum. Black Studies, Womens Studies and even courses in blue collar vocations are offered in colleges NOW. In fact, it is now MANDATORY to take a few black studies and womens studies classes as part of the General Education Requirements at SUNY NEW PALTZ (liberal arts education). This is how far Dr. Margaret Wade Lewis took the Black Studies department at SUNY NEW PALTZ: First black studies were optional courses, then a major, NOW a few black studies classes (a few credits) are considered General Education mandatory requirements. If you do go to college try to get the most out of your experience, take a WIDE RANGE of classes, along with life experience..
Funny thing, I've had friends whom have gone to UCC (Ulster Community College) and their
entry level (101) classes are almost too easy, as I cracked open their ( 6 page chapter in boldface) text books and compared it to some of black studies and journalism classes and asked my friends, please apply your self to your classes, this is nothing compared to the classes I took at SUNY NEW PALTZ.
My perspective of music and art is how it relates to culture, a time, place and history, as anything from the rise of the Scandinavian black metal scene, rooted strongly in Scandinavian culture, middle eastern culture integrated within metal as to how culture effects music and how it is integrated into such. Of course I try to write (ITP's author being a quarter Cherokee Indian, half African American, and (I think) part Persian , and also part European) about how society and music relates to my own cultural diversity and others as well..
If you venture outside American cultural metal, you will find millions of people of color whom just happened to be metal heads, check Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Australian outback, Brazil, Central, South America and the middle east.
DR. MARGARET WADE LEWIS was an excellent college professor at SUNY NEW PALTZ, active in cultural awareness, her church, and black history lectures, and a very kind person as well.
RIP to DR. MARGARET WADE LEWIS, she is much missed in our community as condolences go out to friends, family, colleagues, students of Dr. MARGARET WADE LEWIS.
KNOW YOUR HISTORY!
Posts
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.blogger.com/valid-rss-rogers.png "Validate my RSS feed")
