In the song, “Where is The Love?”,
by the Black Eyed Peas, ignorant people with low moral values are criticized.
The song doesn’t necessarily talks about drunk drivers, but it does mentions:
the effects of making bad decisions, racism and discrimination. These three
themes are also presented in the novel by Will Allison, Long Drive Home, and in
the exhibition in the Lazaro Library by Fiesta II.
Sadly, racism and discrimination
have gotten to a point where it’s almost normal to kill someone for being
black. For example, when Rizzo indirectly accused Glen of being a racist. He
insinuated that, since Glen was from Kentucky, he probably killed Juwan on
purpose because he was racist. This demonstrated the reader, that people can
expect the worst from others and can judge your beliefs based simply by the
region where you were raised.
The song writer, also criticizes
the media and makes them responsible for contaminating people’s mind and ideas
with negative things. In the novel, when Juwan’s accident happened, reporters
were there in a splint of a second just to broadcast the terrible accident that
had just occurred. Usually, the news always focuses in the negative things and
people seem to be attracted by them. On the other hand, from all the bad
things, people always need to find something to learn from. That is why, the
exhibition in the Lazaro library is an example of a good outcome, from
something bad. Even though media, focuses on the bad things, it’s good to see
that adults are educating others how to prevent a fatality that humans
constantly do, such as drinking and driving. Sadly, it takes someone dying for
people to realize that things do happen and people can prevent it. It only
takes one decision, to change a person’s course in life, and “only one more
drink of alcohol” to cause an accident.
At some point, the speaker seems
disappointed at what society has become because most people have been caught in
a vicious circle that harm, themselves, others and the world. The Black Eyed
Peas, released the song for the first time in 2003 and 13 years later, the main
themes in the song are still relevant and present in everyone’s daily life. For
example, racism, materialism, ignorance, war, violence, terrorism, among
others. In examples like the novel, one can see, that some people, even though
they make stupid decisions, then learn from them, and live the rest of their
lives being careful not to commit the same mistake again. In the exhibition,
lives were touched. For what matters, the group of INGL 3151 of the University
of Puerto Rico learned the importance of making good choices at this stage in
their lives, thanks to the song, our professor (Cynthia Pittmann), the novel and the exhibition mentioned
previously.
