Ben Folds - Rockin the Suburbs [Week 2: Pop & Alternative

This is great. I am not positive what genre Ben Folds is actually aligned with, but I figured the catchy chorus, fast tempo, and political message all fall enough within "pop alternative" to justify using it on week 2 of my blog. (As a side note, I know my "weeks" aren't actually a week long. But it doesn't matter.)

I think "Rockin' the Suburbs" is the music video equivalent of Napoleon Dynamite. Not exactly artistic genus (far from Ben Folds best work) but it also has its place in our culture. I want to use it as an axample of how rap artists aren't the only ones who have to let their anger and frustration out sometimes. Ben Folds does't get outright, in-your-face political until later in the song, but his message comes out clearly:

I pull up to the stop light
I can feel that something's not right
I can feel that someone's blasting me with hate
And bass
Sendin' dirty vibes my way
'Cause my great great great great Grandad
Made someones' great great great great Grandaddies slaves
It wasn't my idea
It wasn't my idea
Never was my idea
...

And if there is anything I would like to point out in the cheezy music video, this is it. Feel free to skip ahead to 2minutes and 56 seconds in, where Ben Folds mocks rappers/thugs and repeats, in his frustration:

Y'all don't know what it's like
Being male, middle-class and white
In class we talked about the advancement of civil rights, and how it kindof worked like an X. Rights for different races were originally far from equal and during the time of Martin Luther King Jr., activists fought for racial equality (where the two lines meet in the middle). But somewhere along the line, likely around the time of the Black Panthers and the other extremist movements of the 70's, it became a struggle for power. Minorities didn't want to be equals, they wanted to rule over the whites of society the same way whites had ruled over them in history. Besides the fact that this is utterly hippocritical, it is also a shockingly corrupt goal. Like Ben says here, the white people of the current generation didn't cause slavery. They didn't choose slavery. And as a general rule, they don't support the idea of slavery any more than modern blacks do. It is 2011 and we all know it's wrong to try to own another human being. But today we often find ourselves at the bottom of the X, where equality is a thing of the past, and now the roles are reversed.
I don't think that life is awful as a white American, and I definately don't think we have it anywhere near as bad as the slaves of previous generations. But in today's society it is the Whites - not the minorities - that share Martin Luther King's dream of equality. When artists like Young Jeezy say,

Tell him I'm doin fine, Obama for mankind
We ready for d*** change so y'all let the man shine
Stuntin on Martin Luther, feelin just like a king
Guess this is what he meant when he said that he had a dream

While in the same breath telling Obama to stay true to who you are and where you came from - ie, stand up for the black community above all others - they clearly misunderstand MLK's vision and use his name in vain. He didn't want blacks to get a leg up on the rest of the world. He wanted a level playing field. I don't think we have that today.  Affirmative action, anyone?