Diamonds are whose best friend?

I can’t watch a days worth of ESPN without hearing the latest Lupe Fiasco single. He was the official crooner of the Winter X games and has appeared on the “Ultimate Hi-lite” at least one time that then was aired numerous times over and over and over again.

 

Interestingly, Lupe has found mainstream success mixing intelligent lyrics covering broad issues of concern in today’s society with supremely produced beats form some of the hip hop industry’s heaviest hitters like Jay-Z and Kanye West. One of my favorite songs of his is called “Conflict Diamonds” where he lays out his own inner monologue on the role of diamonds as both fashion and status symbol in America and the violent realities of the dimaond trade.

 

Some people protest Nike for their exploitation of third world labor, others Wal-Mart for their blatantly unfair and, at times, cruel business labor practices. Yet, from Thanksgiving until Valentines Day, us Americans are barraged with a flood of jewelry commercial.. “Diamonds are a womans best friend!” they tell us. Which matters not, except that, in that time frame diamond pendants, necklaces, earrings, tennis bracelets, rings, and blah, blah, blah and all of it directly contributes to both the rape of natural resources, the thievery by large western corporations and corrupt third world governments. Nations such as Angola and Sierra Leone have been torn apart by civil wars that are funded by the sale of “blood diamonds” or “conflict diamonds.” In the worst cases that are all too common, children are forced to shoot their parents or civilians are dismembered as a warning to others.

 

Takes the sparkle out of that ring now doesn’t it?

 

Or as Lupe says “there’s another side of this thing called bling.”