After a media saturated week of outrage the fervor around Don Imus’ comments that the Rutgers women’s basketball team were “nappy-headed hos” has begun to die down. The shock jock said a terrible but completely predictable thing, he was fired, people have chosen sides, end of story. Having exhausted every possible Imus related angle the media has moved on to its new favorite pastime, blaming hip-hop for the societal and cultural ills of America.
This week CNN, Fox, and even NPR ran segments and commentaries essentially saying that Imus’ comments were terrible, but they were the same things rappers say all the time. I’m no hip-hop apologist, I fully believe that hip-hop owes women a collective apology for decades of objectivism and often outright violence, but this is a completely false parallel. Who’s really responsible for Imus’s comments? Oh yeah, black men, that makes perfect sense.
The link between Imus and hip-hop is tenuous at best, unless he’s been taking secret meetings with Ice-T, which I somehow doubt. These news segments bring on as their “expert’ people who clearly don’t know very much about hip-hop, a.k.a. anything at all (and may none of them have been black women, the group in the best position to offer relevant commentary). On NPR’s Weekend Edition host Scott Simon named Snoop Dogg and Slim Thug as the most misogynistic rappers. I will seriously pay Scott Simon a thousand dollars if he can pick Slim Thug out of a line-up. Here’s a hint Scott, he’s black, see if you can narrow it down from there. There are plenty of people qualified to intelligently speak about hip-hop, yet news organizations are determined to avoid them at all costs. Wolf Blitzer leading a roundtable discussion on hip-hop is like inviting me to lecture on international monetary policy.
Furthermore, this is clearly the reactionary commentary of people who don’t listen to hip-hop. First hip-hop and rap is not a monolithic entity. There are certainly rappers who call women bitches with an alarming frequency (Too Short), and there are also those that call for radical feminism (Dead Prez). Saying hip-hop is sexist is like saying movies are sexist; some of them are, maybe even many of them are, but clearly not all of them. Even among mainstream rap the “bitch/ho” epidemic just doesn’t exist on the level most seemingly believe. Take a look at the current hip-hop singles chart, there’s not a song on there that uses either of one those words.
http://charts.mediaguide.com/format/R_B_Hip_Hop_single.html
The #1 song is R. Kelly’s, and as we’ve previously discussed at length he’s completely ridiculous. The song is Kelly’s warning to other men that their girlfriends will find him more attractive, “She be callin’ you Kelly, when you’re name is Tommy.” Hardly inflammatory, actually kinda hilarious. Even a glancing view of hip-hop videos will reveal no shortage of objectification and booty shaking, but the editorial staff of NPR seemingly listened to an Easy E track from 1989 and decided it represented all of hip-hop. The truth is the majority of hip-hop played on the radio is no more sexist than your average Fox drama, which admittedly isn’t exactly something to brag about, but it doesn’t make rap the leading cause of sexism in the U.S. Can your young son easily find misogynistic hip-hop on the internet, absolutely. But he’ll probably be bombarded by some many free-porn offers he’ll never even get around to listening to it. Hmmm, maybe the problem’s a little bigger than one musical genre. Just maybe.
The drive to point the finger at hip-hop also smacks of the of the argument offered by people over the use of the word nigger: “hey, black people call each other that all the time, so why can’t I? What, just because I’m white I can’t call someone a nigger?” Yes, that’s exactly what it means. There’s nothing good about black rappers calling black women hos, but it’s fundamentally different than when Imus says it: one’s sexist, the other’s sexist and racist. White men enslaved and raped black women for centuries, so the historical implications are extraordinary. And for those who think such power dynamics are thing of the past may I offer exhibit A, Don Imus. Instead of confronting this ugly history some part of the nation wants to pass the blame right back onto black culture, “hey, it’s ok for me to call black women hos, Nelly does it all the time.” Well, if Nelly jumped off a bridge…you get the idea.
Instead of an almost hysterical reaction to the supposed moral corruption of hip-hop, intelligent and thorough exploration reveals an art form that dynamicly reflects the sexism of society as much as it is a catalyst. That type of critical thinking would of course be too much to ask from CNN. But blaming the other is nothing new, and it makes for some great ratings. “Next on Fox News, hip-hop is coming to rape your daughter, but first here’s Todd with the weather.” Pretty exciting stuff, almost like something a shock jock would say.
This week CNN, Fox, and even NPR ran segments and commentaries essentially saying that Imus’ comments were terrible, but they were the same things rappers say all the time. I’m no hip-hop apologist, I fully believe that hip-hop owes women a collective apology for decades of objectivism and often outright violence, but this is a completely false parallel. Who’s really responsible for Imus’s comments? Oh yeah, black men, that makes perfect sense.
The link between Imus and hip-hop is tenuous at best, unless he’s been taking secret meetings with Ice-T, which I somehow doubt. These news segments bring on as their “expert’ people who clearly don’t know very much about hip-hop, a.k.a. anything at all (and may none of them have been black women, the group in the best position to offer relevant commentary). On NPR’s Weekend Edition host Scott Simon named Snoop Dogg and Slim Thug as the most misogynistic rappers. I will seriously pay Scott Simon a thousand dollars if he can pick Slim Thug out of a line-up. Here’s a hint Scott, he’s black, see if you can narrow it down from there. There are plenty of people qualified to intelligently speak about hip-hop, yet news organizations are determined to avoid them at all costs. Wolf Blitzer leading a roundtable discussion on hip-hop is like inviting me to lecture on international monetary policy.
Furthermore, this is clearly the reactionary commentary of people who don’t listen to hip-hop. First hip-hop and rap is not a monolithic entity. There are certainly rappers who call women bitches with an alarming frequency (Too Short), and there are also those that call for radical feminism (Dead Prez). Saying hip-hop is sexist is like saying movies are sexist; some of them are, maybe even many of them are, but clearly not all of them. Even among mainstream rap the “bitch/ho” epidemic just doesn’t exist on the level most seemingly believe. Take a look at the current hip-hop singles chart, there’s not a song on there that uses either of one those words.
http://charts.mediaguide.com/format/R_B_Hip_Hop_single.html
The #1 song is R. Kelly’s, and as we’ve previously discussed at length he’s completely ridiculous. The song is Kelly’s warning to other men that their girlfriends will find him more attractive, “She be callin’ you Kelly, when you’re name is Tommy.” Hardly inflammatory, actually kinda hilarious. Even a glancing view of hip-hop videos will reveal no shortage of objectification and booty shaking, but the editorial staff of NPR seemingly listened to an Easy E track from 1989 and decided it represented all of hip-hop. The truth is the majority of hip-hop played on the radio is no more sexist than your average Fox drama, which admittedly isn’t exactly something to brag about, but it doesn’t make rap the leading cause of sexism in the U.S. Can your young son easily find misogynistic hip-hop on the internet, absolutely. But he’ll probably be bombarded by some many free-porn offers he’ll never even get around to listening to it. Hmmm, maybe the problem’s a little bigger than one musical genre. Just maybe.
The drive to point the finger at hip-hop also smacks of the of the argument offered by people over the use of the word nigger: “hey, black people call each other that all the time, so why can’t I? What, just because I’m white I can’t call someone a nigger?” Yes, that’s exactly what it means. There’s nothing good about black rappers calling black women hos, but it’s fundamentally different than when Imus says it: one’s sexist, the other’s sexist and racist. White men enslaved and raped black women for centuries, so the historical implications are extraordinary. And for those who think such power dynamics are thing of the past may I offer exhibit A, Don Imus. Instead of confronting this ugly history some part of the nation wants to pass the blame right back onto black culture, “hey, it’s ok for me to call black women hos, Nelly does it all the time.” Well, if Nelly jumped off a bridge…you get the idea.
Instead of an almost hysterical reaction to the supposed moral corruption of hip-hop, intelligent and thorough exploration reveals an art form that dynamicly reflects the sexism of society as much as it is a catalyst. That type of critical thinking would of course be too much to ask from CNN. But blaming the other is nothing new, and it makes for some great ratings. “Next on Fox News, hip-hop is coming to rape your daughter, but first here’s Todd with the weather.” Pretty exciting stuff, almost like something a shock jock would say.
