Mark Steyn's Keepin It Real

“Keepin’ it real”, an essential standard in the distinguishing racial identity as an African American, or so it was until Mark Steyn drags it through an abrasive bath of satire and exposes it for what he truly thinks it is, a detriment to the black community, and society as whole. Steyn exposes the hypocrisy and flaws in mindset African American cultural leadership that has allowed this new "outlook" to flourish through a scathing assault comprised of exemplification, irony, definition. An instrumental tool in his tirade against the cultural leaders whom he believes are dragging down the black community is exemplification. Using this technique he is able to deconstruct the issue and attack its individual facets. He introduces

The device which Steyn uses to gleefully flay African American cultural leadership is irony. Black leaders, he maintains, "... have a far greater interest in maintaining racism than any humdrum Ku Klux Klan kleagle", as it gives them the edge they need to maintain their power. He demonstrates how laughable it is that their incompetence goes unpunished simply because they are of that racial group, despite their failures to protect their community like "Mayor Culpa whose Emergency Management Plan consisted of finding the nearest TV camera and pointing fingers at everybody else. He mocks how the same people who claim to be fighting against racism, while anyone who dares to have " the impertinence to wander off the Democrat victim-culture plantation, he 's been damned as merely this season 's "black conservative"; a black man who 's no longer authentically black". The effect of this is that the moral high ground, built on a faulty principle of victimization, from under their feet. The cultural leadership 's coveted position, a place where they could point down at all who criticized them as racists. With the opposing argument held down by its own hypocrisy, Steyn has justified his position to the reader, and now he is able to define what effect this failed leadership has had on the

Definition is without a doubt the most damning and effective tool used by Stein in his condemnation of what destructive leadership has allowed the community to become. The culture is being protected now, a culture fostered from failed leadership, is the culture of "Keepin it real." Steyn defines this as a culture where "men are violent and nihilistic, women are "sluts, bobbing chicken heads, and of course bitches." It 's a society where an admired figure Nelly , a musician and in part a cultural leader as well, can make "a video in which he swipes a credit card through his ho 's butt." Steyn 's tone is harsh, ironic, and humorous as he condemns the culture of today. He aims to shock the audience , to make them feel disgust for what the leadership in the black community is protecting. Then he calls to mind the beauty, and creativity that the culture of previous generations of African Americans, and defines this new culture as something which is wiping " a half 's tradition of beauty and grace from [their] identity." He defines "keepin ' it real" as the true destructive entity, not perceived racism. Steyn maintains through this definition that the leaders who defend this culture of self-destruction are the ones who are " keepin ' millions of young men and women unreal in ways the most malevolent bull-necked racist could never