The person I interviewed for this proposal was my Uncle Kofi Bempah. Kofi was born on 1969 and he is 45 years old. I interviewed my uncle via email, as by phone could not be reached because he was out of the country in Germany. The interview year was in 1991 and he was 22 years old at the time that these life-changing events took place. While talking to my uncle through via email, I asked what three popular movies he liked in the 90’s were and his responses were “Boyz In Da Hood,” “New Jack City” and “Straight Out of Brooklyn.
The three urban issues my uncle noticed in the 1990’s were gang violence, racism and crime specifically the crack epidemic. Kofi thinks that these urban issues had the greatest impact out of all the things he witnessed during his time. Racism was a huge thing back in his day, but he does not think racisms are as huge of issue in today’s world because many people are growing from it and there will more interracial people later in life.
While speaking to my uncle he noticed another issue with racism especially in media for example, many African Americans were pressured into playing roles of thugs while Caucasians played many prominent roles like doctors. Another thing that was an issue in his day was gang violence. He mentioned to me that in 1991 police officers beat Rodney King severely. Kofi thinks gangs played a role in his generation, because he told me many of his friends joined a gang because of the unity and the connections.
In 1991 there were many gangs terrorizing innocent people, which led to a bad influence on the youth as they viewed gangs were the only legitimate way of making money and establishing power. Lastly, in his generation there was a crack epidemic, which was a major factor in crime in many cities. A great example is how DC was at one point the murder capital with the introduction of crack. Watching New Jack in City, it portrays how drugs ruined many people lives because people became addicted to drugs, which caused gangs to fight for street corners causing many murders.
Kofi’s viewpoint of New Jack City shows how accurate the crack epidemic was, and how one person can manage to control thousands of people through drugs. While interviewing my uncle about the list class was made up he agreed with me with these are the same issues were dealing with today’s, but he thinks Gang is not much an issue the his day because he thinks that being gang Interviewing my uncle, I asked him a question that caught his attention “Do you still think these movies have today’s impact it does now in then in 1991? Kofi thinks today’s movie have a huge impact of urban issues because of the media how it portrays us. Uncle Kofi liked all three movies that he picked because in the movies he saw fellowship that all of the movies had.
The reason why he said liked fellowship because in my generation you do not see how much someone will care for you His favorite least movies that he did not like was he did not like how the characters in the movie died. After the whole interview from my uncle, I was not surprised the answers he gave me because he thinks today is urban issues were dealing with them prior in his days.
What I learned about this whole assignment was that Urban Issues still is an impact in today’s world. We have to understand urban issues will not go away completely, but it is definitely less of a problem now then today. Another thing I learned from my uncle while interviewing him was that was today’s movies does not show films of gang violence then the movies in his days. This was surprising because I had to look at today’s films and I did not see that much gang related.
I think the reason why there is not gang related because my generation had moved on from it and people are just worrying about their education then trying to look cool. Also, I learned from this interview was today’s movie does not talk about racism in society, also the use of crack has died dramatically, back then I felt there were more issues in majors cities, but new laws such as destroying projects that were not productive helped in revitalizing many cities. An urban issue is a big part of life and it affects everybody not just those living in the area.
