Shauk

This might be a controversial topic and I'm probably risking tainting myself as a closet racist or something, but to be up front, I'm not, I really just hate the negative aspect of hip hop culture, the violence, ignorance, slang, willful deviation from the norm for the sake of being a rebel, including the choice of ignorance over education.

Racism seems to be a pretty broad term to describe prejudiced behavior towards a person based on a common attribute.


But I was thinking about it and lets take racism of the 50's vs modern racism. I can't even begin to think of how they compare. I just don't think they can.

It seemed like black individuals in the 50's were simply viewed upon as "the help" simply because they were viewed as inferior, impure, not the true race, etc...

Racism today seems to focus on some real TRUTHFUL negatives of the black culture that makes it in to the mainstream today, hip hop, gang banging, rampant drug use, the willful embrace of a violent dead end culture that revolves around hate and purposeful bastardization of acceptable norms.

I think a person in the 50's looked at blacks as simple mules, or housepets, we white folk of that era "feared" that which we did not understand.

today, i think it's different, I think a lot of people "understand" the negative aspects of black culture.


My question is, is racism today as prejudiced as it was in the 50's now that, given the free leash of american citizenship and exposure in the media, we've seen the result of the popular culture of black America? The picture they've drawn for us to observe. I don't even dare say Black youth, and I know they don't represent all black americans, but some of the forefront hiphop artists are 40+ y/o adults and still embrace this culture as if it's some sacred representation that they must continue to perpetuate, with no drive to improve the image they've created.

roachboy

first off, i don't think you know much of anything about hip hop, so it's hard to imagine having an actual conversation about it.

what hip hop was as it was put into motion by the zulu nation continues more or less in the underground. mainstream hip hop diverged from the underground across the middle 1990s for a lot of reasons (not least of which was legal decisions that conflated what turntablists do with sampling and which legitimated a system of licensing fees one effect of which was to strip the sound of much of its complexity). to talk about more underground spaces, you'd have to know something about the music, what it was about, where it comes out of, the politics of it. if you knew anything about that, you'd not have posted the thread at all, so i think we're at an impasse.

as for how you understand, say, rapping as a skill---i doubt seriously that you've done it, and if you have i doubt seriously that you're serious. same kinda thing with turntables: it's easy to make noise, but quite difficult to get to a level of skill. if you don't even recognize the skills behind the music--which stands on it's head much of what you say---and focus only on superficial nonsense, then, well...

ok so we're definitely at an impasse.

maybe try to explain what you're talking about using something you know about to do it?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Shauk

...

how about that topic at hand instead of attacking my supposed lack of knowledge about how to define musical genres, the history, or what one perceives as skill required?

jewels

Interesting words you've chosen.

The face of racism has changed and there are so many aspects to that evolution I couldn't even pretend have to ability to convey even half of them.

But your somewhat vague question seems to be focused on what you perceive to be a negative picture of the "black community" based on your personal feelings about hip-hop. Although this in itself indicates how far we've still got to go, I'll nibble.

When you say the "hip-hop culture", what are you referring to? Those that follow it or those that create it? Those that follow it are from all walks and range in color, so I don't see any relevance there. But those that create it are mixed as well. Should one assume you're speaking more along the lines of what used to be known as gangsta rap? Are you speaking gang behaviors depicted in some rap songs?

Although many don't care for rap, it's poetry painting pictures of the lives that many lead. The fact that someone understands or finds beauty in the stories doesn't mean it's a representation of the listener or promoter's life. Most of these artists have found their way off the street and help other kids get away from the environment that they've rapped about. The beginnings of any art form are sacred.

What you may see as perpetuating something negative and not improving of a culture confirms for me that racism will be around for a lot longer than I'd hoped.

Black America didn't draw a picture for "us" to observe. Some of "us" choose to accept some of the lines (truthful negatives???!) we see as a true and full representation of Black America. For me, that's wherein the issue lies. You can't pick and choose pieces of the whole and call it the truth.

And the fact that you feel this way when you're probably 30 years younger than I am really freaks me out.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

roachboy

maybe because if you try to make the arguments you want to make and use hip hop as your starting point and obviously know nothing about it, whatever of interest there might be in your thinking gets sucked into a hole generated by what you don't know.

but hey, there are other threads. not a problem. do what you want.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

mixedmedia

jewels, thank you so much.

Right on. You have no idea how many freaking times I have said this to myself.

Shauk,
Don't believe the hype - it's a sequel.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Shauk

as far as hip hop, I simply pick that as a reference point as it's somewhat of an exclusive vehicle they use to represent their culture and express point of views.

Pick any form of popular media or hobby, music, movies, tv shows, gaming, stand up entertainment, graffiti, car culture, fashion, literature.

I don't claim to have my head around it all, I simply am questioning the resources one had in the 50's to make a racial judgement vs what one has in this current day and age.

THAT is what this thread is designed to question and comment on.

Media shapes our perceptions on many issues, i'm just wondering how the future looks, given the current path it's taking.

Jetée

Shauk, I have spent the last hour typing a topical reply to what you have laid ground to in the thread, but I'm offering this one first:

Perhaps you could provide a more solid basis on "racist ideals in whichever decade" by not citing music as one of them. Music is inherently a mutable opus, from which many inspirations stem. In America, well, the progression morphed from Bebop to Jazz to Rock n' Roll, to Hip-Hop, with various genres splitting and giving birth to new ones along the way.

I don't know if a majority of people in the Fifties thought the way you are offering, but I don't doubt it was a single person, or a single community, town, state, etc. It was ingrained from our parents and those before us in the times in we absorbed the prevailing thoughts of those around us. But is the example you provided for continued racism today solely derived from music lyrics and videos, or is the entire culture of Hip-Hop in media, films, and sports?

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

roachboy

here's what really bugs me about the hip hop choice: the movement--diffuse as it is/was--was primarily about empowerment both at the levels of cultural production and economics. the cultural production part was about getting the particular forms of expression associated with the music--turntablism, rhyming, dance--and others on the order of graffiti and clothing design etc.---taken seriously enough to enable folk to adopt and change them as means of artistic expression. the lyrics are really only part of it, and why different people make the choices they do as to which subject matter to treat and which language to use to do it is not a particular indicator of wider attitudes. that some aspects of hip hop have become entirely integrated into the mainstream cultural machine really doesn't say a whole lot about what the ideas behind hip hop were or are.

it came out of the south bronx initially--a quite poor, quite rough largely african-american area. it came out of dance parties, rent parties...one of the reasons to emphasize empowerment was in opposition to a context that was largely conditioned by the history of institutionalized racism in the states.

so it's a bizarre choice.

you want to talk about the way the music has been made into commodity form, so made into something repeated and repetitive--that's different---then there are questions as to who's making the choices, how much control different artists have over what they put out--it's a different topic though. feeding back imagery that you decide you don't like carried out by marketing people and/or producers and/or labels is not the same problem that you try to raise.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Jetée

I don't think it is wise to want to typify or portray an example of the "Hip-Hop music" community as even a viable part of the demographic that is the Black cultural identity in the West, whether it be North America, the Caribbean, Brasil, and other segments of the population in which we associate its influence. Building upon your initial example of Black culture and music icons, I do understand the unfair recognition in which Hip-Hop music can shape a skewed perception of what the "exact values" are of African-American youths. But I've seen many former "gangster-rappers" reform their ties and values to shape a new future for their children, so I'm not sure how to contend the argument. As I've seen in documentaries and real-life commentary, it is the younger generation that tries to uphold and/or surpass outdated values in which they were raised. The furtherance of tolerance and lessening of sterotypes all begins with education, tempered by real-world experience.

Hip-Hop is an echelon of a lifestyle that is played upon and largely aggrandized to represent something that is not entirely truth. Whether it is the struggle of becoming a represented and signed music artist, or the ridiculous lavish appeal of "rims, chains, hoes and shoes" that always seem to receive inordinate play in popular music videos, that is not the defining measure of what being Black is, nor is the all-encompassing poster for what the hip-hop culture is meant to represent.

I do agree that it is a sad state where the most popular and "heralded" rap artists are in fact building up the racial/hate barriers we long sought and toiled to break down, but I believe them to be not more 10% of the populus that inhabits and "claims" to be true hip-hop. There are many different subsect & schisms in all forms of art, music, and film, but I don't believe the right basis on defining modern racism is to submit Hip-Hop as a new vehicle in which rasist beliefs are held. It was once our parents, neighbors and churches who promted racial intolerance and segregation, but relating to you Shauk, I am inclined to side with you that the "mass-media machine" today is trying its damn hardest to portray the most typical examples of what is atypical in the Black culture. I mean, nobody need ten flat-lid hats, twenty pairs of kicks, or even one pimp cup, so the television has failed us in that regard of "fair education of all, for all".

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

squeeeb

why is this in philosophy?



Shauk, since you are trying to have a discussion and talk abuot something you had on your mind, i will attempt to awkardly wield Occam's Razor, slice away the extraneious, and focus on this question, which i think is an interesting question. but i'm a dumb guy, so shiny objects facinate me. anyway....

waaay back when, (i wasn't around, i'm kinda going off what i've read and seen) the black man was inferior because he was black, therefore he wasn't human (niether were women or children. just like the ancient jews, women and children weren't "people.") so you had a bunch of ignorant white folk not recognizing a black man as a viable human, just a work horse. mud people.

today, racists hate black people for various reasons. some i think becuase they still believe a black human is somehow not a human, and inferior. others generalize and say "all black people smoke dope, are crimnals, shoot each other, etc etc" and refuse to see anything but the negetives.

i think today's racism is almost worse. i can almost forgive the "innocent" ignorance of the past, there was lots people didn't know, no internet, no google, it was still a pretty ignorant world. look how we laugh today at people for thinking the world is flat, women can't have orgasms, and i love lucy was funny. but they did. "innocent" ignorance.

today there is no excuse. lots of black people set bad examples and live up to the negetive sterotype. rappers are in the news for shooting and other various nefarious deeds (tupac, biggie, shug knight, et al), varoius pro sports guys in the news, lots of black guys on "lockdown", cause lots of black guys are in prison. lots of black people set good examples and dont even closely resemble the negetive sterotype; wayne brady (hilariously intellectual comedian), that general powell fella, darth vader's voice, neil degrasse tyson (coolest astrophysisict EVER) et al. i think racism today is different, its prejudice lies in holding a group of people responsible for the actions of a few. it would be equal to hate anyone who is german because of the nazis, or hate anyone who is canadian because of loverboy.

so yeah, in a way, it's more prejudice today, because you almost have to go out of your way to be racist.

__________________
onward to mayhem!

Zeraph

I'm not really seeing it. There are plenty of dumbass white people too, if not more.

jewels

Television may have failed to some extent, if that's become the measurement standard. I have this same television, but how is is that I'm aware of so many amazingly talented non hip-hop artists, actors, writers, architects and judges? From where I sit, I see hip-hop/rap as such a small percentage of the collective Black artistry. Maybe it's the voice of the same educators who have yet to include the influential blacks in the USA's early history in our children's history books?

We have so much real information around us, yet we choose to feed on the propaganda. There are some great blogs about racism and tolerance, there are the ONE and BET channels, both of which showcase great human beings and artists of color, and so much more. We have so many options to hear music and see films and TV from other cultures and countries. Why is it that we have to dig to find the truth about another "culture" in our own country?

If the media is feeding the fire that perpetuates racism, maybe we ought to focus our energies on seeking what we're looking for, rather than allowing the media to control the progress of evolution.

I dunno if there's an easy answer, Shauk. It would take a huge uprising.

I'm ready.

__________________
We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

squeeeb

i want a pimp cup, but i'd look extra stupid carrying one around. sadly, only flavor flav could get away with wearing the huge clock around his neck, otherwise, i wouldn't need a watch.

__________________
onward to mayhem!

mixedmedia

If you want a topical comparison to a racist view narrowed down to the topic of music, look up Henry Ford's diatribes on the subject of jazz. Of course, he had so little cognizance of the creative ability of independent black Americans that he blames the scourge on the manipulative mechanisms of the Jews, but nevertheless, there it is - a view that suggests that black culture is foul, deviant and destructive. It's not a tradition that I would be proud to perpetuate.

And I have to say, for someone who is apparently so enamored of electronic music forms, I am shocked at little you appreciate the debt those forms owe to rap and hip-hop. I mean, jesus, didn't you just start a thread recently saying how much you like early Prodigy? I tend to think that if most of the musicians you appreciate as artists were to come here and see this thread of yours, you'd be the subject of some pretty scathing public humiliation. Learn your history.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

dd3953

roachboy was making a good point. a lot of people in the world only understand what they see on TV, 'mainstream hip hop'. 'Hip hop' and 'mainstream hip hop' are two different things. Hip hop, true hip hop, has goals, one of which is bringing the minds of black people to a higher level, out of the 'slavery mentality' which can (on some levels) lead to selling drugs and going gangs.

True Hip hop has little to do with drugs, or kills, or hoes and bitches. real hip hop is trying to pull people away from everything you see in black music thanks to TV. so true hip hop IS something sacred and if it is continued to spread and grow, what you understand as 'hip hop' would began to see a decline.

As far as rappers and mainstream hip hp artists, they continue to do what makes them money. because in american without money you are nothing. if you get a chance, listen to some stuff off Kanye West's first album 'college dropout' (like 'it all falls down' and 'we don't care what people say'). He and Common are the closest you're get to true hip hop on a mainstream circuit - and even Kanye begins to come away from it.

Just as many young white men listen to rap as black man do. however, in white neighborhoods there is wealth, making it harder for them to do the things that some black man have to in order to eat. Or the things that some black man have said they did, in order to make a quick buck.

I agree with everything Jewels said in the first post. And must of the second one ... BET is an interesting thing, it makes me think of house slave. Or the black man put charge of the others so he would feel big and important and keep the 'niggers in place' while the master was away. But TV ONE, that, from my watching, is better, if only because it is not shoving music videos (or should i say 'half of the videos) in you face, over and over, all day everyday.

And unlike the in the 50s, the media has decided to show us all types of people on TV, including blacks and gays (my mind is coming up short on other examples, most likely because I am both black and gay). And in both of these cases, what we are shown makes up a 10% of who we are. (I'm still waiting to meet a "L word' type lady - smile). The media shows us, and the rest of the world, what it believes we need to know. I watched a thing on PBS about these Black students who went to Africa and couldn't believe their eyes, it was nothing like what they saw on TV. And the Africans were surprised, as well, their TV experience did not prepare them for educated Black people.

And i believe racism had grown and changed, as does everything else, with time, with a lot of help from people 'educated' by the media. But it is also helped by the people who run into the 10% during their life, (people are usually louder about negative things.)

squeeeb, only people who have meet, talked with, and befriended, a black person (who did not fit into any of their negative stereotypes), would have to go out of their way to be racist. but there are, like Zeraph said, a lot of white people who are clueless. Either because they already racist and have no reason to 'befriend' a black people, or because they live in one of the many places that have no black people. And in the cases where there are no black people, they are stuck with nothing but the media and tales told to them by people who are there.

About six years ago, i worked at an convenience store (a CoGo's, or Hess, or 7-11 - depending on where you live) and a white woman, around the age of 50, asked me, while I was bagging her stuff, if it was true that black people bleed green. My first was, didn't you fuckers rip enough skin off our backs to know what color it is? But before I could get my lips moving, my manager, a white woman in her late 40s, began talking to the woman, my ears and brain were not connected, i was too angry, so i don't know what she said, but the customer asked me to forgive her, and my boss almost cried, she wanted me to know that not all white people were so .... clueless. But we are all clueless, just in different ways.

For now, we hate because we don't know any better. Once we know, we will hate because we don't like it. Or because it's evil, or because it's below us, or because it's "just not right."

So while the type of racism that lived in the 50s may be dead, there is still racism and the people who are teaching it to their children, in some way or another. (There are still white people out there who believe if a black person touches them, they will become black - i've met one, and where there is one, there is two...)

__________________
[Technically, I'm not possible, I'm made of exceptions. ]

levite

Racism is racism.

You find hip hop culture aesthetically displeasing, and see it as antisocial. Therefore, you impute negativity to black society, and imply that it negatively affects non-black society. I don't personally see much difference in those conclusions that in someone deciding that black people's physical features are aesthetically displeasing, and those that person has encountered have been lacking in formal, Western, modern education; and therefore deciding that all black people are inferior, unintelligent, and unlovely.

I think the "covers" for "polite" racism have changed since the 1950s, but the creature itself, beneath its sugar coating, remains the same. Intolerance, fear of the other, judgment of the other without regard to context or situation, and a willingness to pass the buck when it comes to responsibility for the troubles of the other.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Shauk

I'm done with this thread.


Maybe it's just me, but I'm tired of feeling like the subject of personal attacks against my intelligence, insinuations of ignorance to the history of the subject matter I present, among other posts.

Crossed the line in my opinion.

Everyone is quick to jump the gun because I used the words "hip hop" in my question apparently.

The Hip-Hop Generation's Own Black History | | AlterNet an article on the divergence of black culture in to the hip hop culture

Hip hop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia a wiki entry that, wow, I didn't write, that says - ah pardon me, maybe that's where our disconnect occurs, I use the broad overreaching term "hip hop" instead of the focused subgenre "Gangsta Rap"

Don't be so dense.

Again though, i'm just going to bow out of this thread and leave it to the dogs to shred apart like some bad meat because the fact that I even acknowledged this tangent, and the fact that the only "on topic" response thus far was by Squeeb, i'm pretty sure this conversation is doomed to completely ignore the original question at hand for people to leap to the defense of hip hop, for whatever reason. This thread wasn't some cleverly veiled attempt to launch a crusade against hip hop in the defense of protecting the black American image, hell, they already have groups doing that, I listen to some of it here and there. I don't get why people are so hung up on it. Just because I said i'm not a fan of the negatives doesn't mean I can't recognize positives. You must really take me for a troglodyte if that's the case.

ugh, nevermind, done.

squeeeb

i see your point and i agree with most of what you posted. i still believe, in this day and age, you have to go out of your way to be racist. you gotta want it.

if you live in a place with lots of black people (any color, we'll just use black) you cannot tell me every one of them are walking around thug killa'd out, terrorizing the streets with their fancy boom boxes and huge gold grillz. there are plenty of everyday examples of regular good people. when i'm standing in line at the grocery store with one item, and the stereotypical fat black lady with the hair and fuzzy leopard print sandals standing in front of me with a cart full of stuff turns around and says "oh baby, you go ahead of me, i got all this stuff," i don't need to befriend her to know she is a cool person with a good heart.

if you live in a place with hardly any black people, there is still condoleeza rice, charles barkley, and neil degrasse tyson (twice i've mentioned him. i love that guy, he is so fucking cool), and a whole slew of others who are not doing anything to make you say "those damn black people are ruining our country with their gangster ways!"

many years ago my house was broken into by my neighbor, a young black man selling drugs, charged with rape about three times, had a drive by shooting at his house (he lived with his mom, dad, and younger brother). his dad wasn't all that trustworthy either. i hated him. yet, somehow, i'm still not racist. i don't blame every black person for that one motherfucker's actions.

tv may show negative stereotypes, but i think it shows an equal amount of positive stereotypes. cosby show. that show with erkle, food network has at least three black people cooking on thier own shows (last i watched, i don't' have tv anymore). the host of VH1 i love money is clearly an hilarious intelligent guy, not a negative image of a black person.

so, yeah, i still say you gotta go out of your way to be racist. i know there are people who are, i know some, but there is no reason to be other than you want to hate someone else.

__________________
onward to mayhem!

mixedmedia

I'm not sure what you expected. You are using a form of music to illustrate what is bad about black culture, even saying this:
"willful deviation from the norm for the sake of being a rebel"
what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Willful deviation from the norm and being rebellious is, what, bad? Tell that to the guys who wrote, 'Smack My Bitch Up.' A song that I happen to enjoy because I realize that art, especially in the form of music, is not usually a mandate for living.

And you're using it your OP, ostensibly, to defend racism. Racism of old was 'innocent' because they didn't know the justification for their opinions was to be found 40 years in the future in the form of hip-hop music and gangster culture. I'm sorry if you're feeling attacked, but I doubt anyone here woke up this morning and said 'I'm gonna attack shauk today.'

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

dippin

Holy crap, you say that contemporary racism is based on "truthful" representations of black culture based on hip hop and yet you want to claim to be the victim here?

The reason people are "crossing the line" is because your original post is based on false premises which conveniently underscore contemporary racism, and you post in all caps that those premises are TRUTHFUL. Just to make the problems explicit: there is the assumption that how gangsta hip hop is portrayed by the general media is accurate, that gangsta hip hop is representative of hip hop in general, and that hip hop in general is representative of "black culture." If you can't see the problem here, and how this is used precisely to foster racism, I don't know what else to say.

Jetée

I'm just gonna tackle this part because you've uttered it twice now; I don't believe this statement holds true at all. Although our collected education has grown by leaps and bounds, so, too, has our own ignorance and disregard to obtaining the true sources of information we come across. Too often do some take what they hear or see in passing to be true, and if they see a practice replayed enough times, they eventually classify it to be absolute, and are beyond shocked if it diverts from what they previously knew. I certainly don't think anyone wants to be labeled a "racist", but if their approach on typifying a single group of people is to recall what he/she has come to know from popular media, even though it is a false generalization, that position is still a prejudice, whether one has certain knowledge or not.

This is where sterotypes, both negative and positive, fuel bigoted thoughts and creates dogmatic and oblivious beliefs in the minds of those that subscribe to such assumptions. In the scope of designing a more comfortable living through technology, it also has breed dilatory inaction on trying to advance ourselves through what is readily available to us. It leads to: "Why research a seemingly acceptable answer more thoroughly when google and MSNBC doesn't have to? I rely on others to nurture my discussions and views on the world, don't you?"

---------- Post added at 08:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:03 PM ----------

In addition as it is tangential at best: I wanted to chip in my voice in saying that I love deGrasse Tyson as well; he has such a knack in speaking and ability to relate far-flung contentions about space time and physics to the layman, it is beyond the bounds of unreal excellence.

I especially love that I can now see him near-weekly, as he now host's PBS's supremely-intriguing and entertaining science drama of NOVA.

NOVA | PBS Video

---------- Post added at 08:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:13 PM ----------

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Hektore

Shauk, it seems to me what you're getting at is that the folks of today practice a more 'justified' or 'nuanced' form of racism based on 'factual input' from the TeeVee. This is in opposition to the ignorant racists of yesteryear who simply were racists due to the cultural standard.

This argument rests on the notion that the imagery we get from the TV is a defensibly accurate portrayal of 'black culture' and/or 'hip hop' as a whole. It isn't, which is what everyone -I think- is all up in arms about.

__________________
The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.

dd3953

Oh. I didn't think I was that off topic... Maybe I was. I think some of the forms are the same ('if a black person touches me, i'll turn black' and 'black people bleed green') because of the media, 'knowledge,' and the end of segregation, there are new forms, thanks to media. However, I was not alive in the 50s, so I don't really know what type of changes there have been. Now a black man can ride the elevator, but some white women will grab her purse.

In my experience if you call someone something long enough they will begin to believe it. The violence found in some music, I think, is representation of that. People see the same thing everyday, on TV, on the radio, and in the newspaper, telling them this is how black people act, talk, and behave. Some people have taken that to heart. This easier to do when you live in the lower class (bad schools, teachers who don't care, etc), and that's where a number of black people live.

This sounds as empty as they people saying that the video games Grand Theft Auto and the like as causing kids to be more dangerous. I grew up listening to gansta rap, hip hop, and r&b. I believe that people who DO what they hear in music weren't 'trained right' by their parents.

__________________
[Technically, I'm not possible, I'm made of exceptions. ]

grumpyolddude

Branding entire populations based on the negative images portrayed by one small niche of their broader culture is intolerant and prejudiced at its core. A few loud, influential blowhards make enough noise to make it seem like they speak for the masses. It happens to many groups: Muslims, Jews, the Irish and Italians and ... African Americans. It is racism. Its focus shifts with every headline and sensationalized "news" story. It ebbs and flows, but racism persists.

Media coverage can put negative aspects of any culture on prominent display. Those who choose to get their cultural education through that narrow filter could see all Muslims as radicals, all Italians as Mafioso or all Blacks as Gangstas. These generalizations foster racism, so, to an extent, the media feeds the intolerance.

It's unfortunate that this discussion got hung up on the merits of hip-hop. I think the OP could have been the catalyst for some worthwhile discourse, had we all seen past a few buzz words.

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Reese

Whether you guys admit it or not, Rap/Hip Hop IS recognized as black culture. It doesn't matter where it originated or that there's white rappers or tons of white fans of the genre.

The problem is that many of the black people that become famous are just a few steps out of the ghetto. They're ignorant kids that hang out with their ignorant ghetto friends and get into trouble instead of seeing ignorant ghetto kid gets in trouble they see "Rich black person gets in trouble" and racist America just says yeah, even rich black people are nothing but trouble.

I think racism is the same as always. In the past there were many misinformed people and it was easy to stay misinformed. I think now we're just left with ignorant people that deny that we're the same and people that just have to focus their hate somewhere. People are ignorant!

I like saying ignorant. With my southern drawl, It sounds like ignert.

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dippin

Whether some people think rap IS black culture is irrelevant, and it is about as representative of actual black culture as incest is of Southern culture. I mean, undeniably people make jokes about incest and Southerners. Would it be fair to treat that as representative of southerners as a whole? Or, to pick a less extreme example, would it be fair to take racist country songs of the 40s and 50s as accurate representations of the entire Southern culture?

Undeniably rap and hip hop is part of black culture, the problem is taking a relatively small part of rap (gangsta rap - which is specially popular with whites) and take it as a representation of the entire black culture, especially with the intent to claim that racism today is somehow "less prejudiced"

Glory's Sun

Perhaps people are looking at racism the wrong way. Instead of thinking that a "negative image" is being processed by subset of black culture, maybe we should think that it's the negatives in white culture that lead us to be racist or think that musical genres create a divide between races.

roachboy

or we could go a little further. racism in the states isn't that distant from older forms of class prejudice (obviously the triggers are a bit different, but not as much as you'd think)...one older form of "thinking" about working-class and/or poor folk which was big in the 19th century england/france anyway is "miserablism" which equates class position and mental capabilities directly, so amounts to the idea that if you're poor or sell your labor power for a wage, you do so as an expression of essence--so it is assumed that you can't do anything unless directed by your "betters"--who are of course motivated by the finest of selfless motives in that white man's burden kinda way. this isn't that far removed from contemporary modes of class reproduction, particularly in the more rigid spaces like schools, which function to open up possibilities by positioning students in a particular set of relations to those possibilities which is co-ordinated with class position. funny how that works.

anyway, say you're in a poor urban school district and along the way the possibilities of, say, university are presented to you, but at the same time it's presented as something you will not access, can not access because ambient conditions--which are a strict class function--prevent it. these conditions could be anything from the notion that school represents the System organized by the Man and that resisting that System can be coherently carried out by refusing to play the School game--which of course results in rebellion-as-self-neutralization in many cases (see paul willis' really interesting book on uk punk in the 70s: learning to labor, how working class kids get working class jobs).

following this line out because it's kinda coherent, if you're in that position (a student at such a hypothetical school) and you reject the System for whatever reason, that cuts you off from an entire sequence of possible moves/personae/options. within the logic of the existing order, then, you've made one of your only two possible moves: you either move through the legitimate order, or you position yourself outside of it, excluded. "doing something with your life" is typically defined as moving through the legitimate system---outside, you're "nothing" or "aren't doing anything"---so the legitimate order comes wrapped in the norms that define not only success but even legitimate doing.

if this is clear, then a distinction can be made: institutionalized racism operates much in the way that class reproduction does in that it circumscribes a space of "legitimate achievement" based on "legitimate competences" and in the process also defines what it outside of that space as Other--but in a negative sense, so nothing, nowhere.

you could also say that the furthest expression of the power of institutionalized racism is that folk who pass through this system internalize these same norms. *that* is an expression of racism--the power to exclude wholesale as a function of race/class intertwined position.

hip hop is like a host of other forms of art expression (dippin mentioned some of them already) that you have to look at in at least two ways---for what it does and for what it says---and this even before you start breaking up the various subcultures that are lumped together by the term in pop-cult.

one thing hip hop does is to empower modes of expression and/or creative action that are *outside* the dominant order, the legitmate skills that are *not* validated by the dominant order, but which are nonetheless skills with enormous creative potential. so one thing hip hop does is enable a rejection of institutionalized racism and it's class correlates in the sense outlined (too fast, i know) above. this is what dd was referring to, i think, when he mentioned that "real" hip hop is about breaking a "slave mentality"--which is imprinted on folk as a function of the normal operation of class stratification--social reproduction.

so from this, more structural viewpoint, the claim that what hip hop *does* is of a piece with the existing systems of social reproduction, in which racism and class stratification are tightly intertwined, is absurd.

but you can ask a series of other questions about what hip hop artists *say*---and these are different questions, more to do with staging an imaginary african-american community---but you can't isolate what is *said* from the processes of *doing* that enable them--so you can't just flatten what is said into some documentary relation to an Outside.

i think you can talk about contemporary forms of racism through hip hop, in other words, but the discussion would have nothing to do with the way the op proceeds. maybe we can have this other conversation. hard to say.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Glory's Sun

that's kind of what I was saying RB.. white people in majority have had easier access to schooling and other institutions throughout history, these people have then made themselves "better" because of the mindset that it is doing something with their lives.. they don't understand that an artform for the sake of expression is doing something with their lives. Imagine what Bambatta or other Zulu founders would have been doing if they had not, in fact, created the expressions of hip-hop. They chose to do something other than the more socially acceptable "institution" and brought forth a ton of creativity and expression the world has never seen. That my friends is doing something with your life. I can't count how many people have gone to college to "do something with their lives" and still snort coke all day and can't keep a job.

This is clearly not a pure black or white issue, as white people are inherently fucked up.. but it seems to be the crux of the post and that is why I am using the black and white argument.

White people today seem to place this huge burden on themselves that involves going out of their way to appear PC and not appear racist, when in fact, this route only leads to subtle racism IMO. Just because a rapper calls someone a cracker doesn't make him a racist, nor does a white person saying "nigger" make someone a racist.

maybe I'm rambling on a bit here..and going in circles or the entirely wrong direction.. I'm not much of a philosophical thinker, but this seems pretty cut and dry to me.

and for anyone who is interested in what real hip-hop is, go to youtube and search for "Scratch Documentary". I've mentioned it before, and it is a must watch for anyone who is curious.

/end circle

Plan9

Well, god damn... a thread killed through nomenclature disagreement.

Wow. Heh... heh... I can't wait 'til another gun thread crops up.

Yeeaah, I'll hafta crack my knuckles and become a self-righteous prick.

...

Subject matter expert'd!

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Glory's Sun

yeah that post certainly put it back on track didn't it?

Plan9

...like I have anything to add anyway.

I'm both an idiot and don't believe in the OP's thesis, so why would I even try to contribute to this thread?

C'mon, Guccipoo. You know me.

...

I just don't like unnecessary dick stomping.

It's nasty business regardless of location.

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Glory's Sun

so you come in, make fun that a thread was killed, and then ignore the attempts that are trying to put it back in place and then say you didn't have anything to add anyway? c'mon crompsipoo.. you know better than that.

your comment would have been better served in the one squeeb started. so can we get back to the thread now?

Vana

Stereotype and prejudice are eternal categories of the mind, think Kant and the limits of pure reason.

Racism is a particular configuration of oppression, outdated in todays late capitalism. The system and its machanisms have evolved, racism has shifted meanings and use.

It would be fair to make an argument that anti-racism is the racism of modern industrial-technological society; that is to say, a dominant ideology that perpetuates the seemingly timeless game of exploitation.

Better yet, just forget it. Criticism reinforces the authority structure and is the cutting edge of systemic progress. Just get away all together from abductive dualisms. (If possible.)

Xerxys

guy44 - no, it's not a joke. I do believe we live in an equal opportunity America. I think that there exists racism. Racism in that it is a prejudiced hate of an individual/s based on their skin color. Do I believe it affects them so much that it causes them to lose out on job opportunities, scholarships, loans, grants? Do I believe it affects them so much that it causes them to be wrongfully persecuted and incarcerated? etc etc? No. Not any more.

Numbers. There are more black people that live in the projects than there are white people. There are more educated white people than there are blacks. I'm of the stance that a job, scholarship ... etc etc obtained by a white person was simply because the white individual was not only more able than the black individual but got there first.

Dippin, the numbers are true but I feel that it was not done out of racism. Profiling does happen, it's done by software, by plants and we have to employ profiling for the purposes it supplies. If I were to see a dark and hooded figure across the street walking toward me in some ungodly hour of night I care nothing for the figures race but I WILL instantly assume he/she is dangerous, wants my money and to kill me and prepare myself accordingly.

Please, I am not defending the polices' actions. I'm saying that today, now in this day and age, police don't wake up and think I'm gonna get me a nigger!!

Manic, black minorities today are about to set the next stage of history our children's children will be taught to not do. I'm not comparing the racism that was before to what it is today ... but the racism I feel amongst the black populace is in a degree in itself loathsome.

dippin

What exactly do you base your opinions on? I mean, you can't really think that whatever your personal experience has been is the actual reality for the entire American population.

As far as police who "wake up and think Im gonna get me a nigger," did you recently see the scam the police department near Dallas was running in order to extort out of town African Americans? And it is not difficult to find more and more examples.

And I don't want to get into the boring details and particulars of statistical analysis, but when I refer to numbers I don't mean strictly descriptive statistics. I mean stuff that can be determined by techniques that control for several of the things you talk about, like qualifications, experience, and so on (or in the case of drug charges, stuff like quantity, seriousness of charge, etc). On top of that you can add surveys that show that show that whites have the highest preference for living in "dominantly in group" (i.e., whites for whites, blacks for blacks, etc.) neighborhoods, for example.

Of course there has been progress, but to say that racism is over is far from the truth.

Manic_Skafe

First off, black minorities? What?

Racism among the black populace?

Just as I asked in the last thread, what the hell are you talking about?

Also, while you certainly do have a right to your opinions, you should know that very little of what you've posted in either of these threads is based upon fact - just because you feel things are equal doesn't make them so, etc. - this isn't a classroom but you should at the very least have some idea as to what you're talking about before you spout off.

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Xerxys

Anyone can google and find info on how blacks are more oppressed than whites. Is there still racism, as in a bigoted hate of African Americans? Yes there is.

My question is, is it like it was still in the past? Does it still affect people so heavily to the point of restricting opportunities/amenities? I don't think so.

The point I'm trying to get across is convincing you that what is happening today is not the result of racism. Is there corruption? Yes. Like I mentioned earlier, profiling. I'm more hard pressed to rob a household with which I think the owners are less likely to own guns. I'm more likely to frame a scraggly looking individual for a crime than I am a well dressed person.

To me profiling |= racism. It may be opportunistic but not necessarily racism. I think the officers dippin speaks of would very readily extort an unsuspecting white person as much as a black person.

Manic, black minorities, meaning not ALL black people. Not all of them are racist against each other. The few (but significant in number non the less) are the minorities within the black people, now I think your just trying hard to be dense.

dippin

Im sorry, but Im not basing my information on a few random google results. Believe it or not but a significant amount of resources are dedicated each year to the research of social stratification and race. And I don't say this to claim some status as an expert, but to point out that there is quite systematic research on this topic. Now, I dont see anyone denying that there have been advances, but to say that there is no racism, or that the current situation is completely unrelated to history, is nonsense.

As for the particulars of the case I mentioned, we are talking about 150 people who were extorted, all minorities, so I guarantee it was no coincidence.