Autism - No Prejudice

Original rap poem in the background (since the font I used is a little difficult to read in places):
Yo, here's the word
from an autistic fur;
Freedom of speech
but you should know better!
Ignorance is dumb
so don't spread the hate,
I'm not stupid,
I'm gifted, first rate!


The drawing is a follow up to the journal entry I wrote about the topic, which is:

Autism is a condition that shouldn't be taken lightly. In a time where we feel we're making steps forward to raise awareness and sensitivity for autism, pop culture has taken the effort a couple steps back. Hip hop artists Drake and J.Cole have taken aim at the autism community in a newly released song, "Jodeci Freestyle," that perpetuates harmful misconceptions about the condition.

The song has been playing on multiple Clear Channel radio stations across the nation and contains the following lyrics by J. Cole:

"I'm artistic, you niggas is autistic, retarded."


There's also a petition (where I heard/copied this information from) which had circulated to tell the radio stations to remove this offensive song from the air!

That one line is offensive to at least three different groups of people; though my focus is on the autism part since that's the one that directly applies to me.

There's enough discrimination and misinformation running around, without these so-called "music artists" making it worse. Seriously, the media screams about mental disorders whenever there's a violent crime (and is 99.9% WRONG in most cases); now there's hate, ignorance, and insults in a song that's on the air?

Myself, I have no intention of ever supporting the artist (listening to any of their songs, buying any of their albums, etc). Even if I was into rap music, I'd stay away from them.

There was even a petition which circulated to help people take a stand against bullying and prejudice!


Edit/News: Even before the petition reached its goal, Drake has removed the lyrics, and both he and J.Cole apologized for it.
They say they learned their lesson...that's yet to be seen, as an apology is just something that's after the fact. Time will tell if they truly learned from their ignorance, or if it's just another case of a celeb "saving face" by issuing a public apology for something they said/did.
I took down the links to the petition since this is old news by the time you're reading this, and moot point.



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