The Thug Culture
City Journal's John C. McWhorter says hip-hop holds blacks back:
Many writers and thinkers see a kind of informed political engagement, even a revolutionary potential, in rap and hip-hop. They couldnít be more wrong. By reinforcing the stereotypes that long hindered blacks, and by teaching young blacks that a thuggish adversarial stance is the properly ìauthenticî response to a presumptively racist society, rap retards black success.
Wow. Many things wrong with that piece, notably the common misperception that "Cop Killer" was a rap song, when in fact it was speed-metal, performed by Ice-T's hard rock band Body Count. Grouping Eminem as gangsta rap is also a mistake.
But as regards his opening anecdote about unruly loud black teens and their rap music -- I went to high school in a predominantly white area in the South, and one could easily substitute rednecks and country music into that story. Or skinheads and heavy metal music. Or young Latinos and narcocorridos. In fact, place it in an all-white, all-affluent community, let's say Greenwich Connecticut, and I bet there are obnoxious preppies who listen to some kind of music that they feel encourages a "them against us" worldview. The rapists in Deliverance listened to banjo bluegrass.
Young males are aggressive, period. Don't matter what race, or favorite kind of music. Gangsta rap is violent, but so is outlaw country. Rap and country can be informative and political too.
That said, a lot of gangsta rap is utterly moronic and tedious. But when you get down to it, so are the lyrics in lots of songs. The best-selling "white" pop albums are by the likes of Justin Timberlake -- does that say good things about the race?
LYT at August 19, 2003 5:50 PM
Ooooh, Amy. Thorny, thorny issue you brought up here! This is the kind of thing that you respond to VERY CAREFULLY. One wrong word will be back to haunt you thirty years from now.
And knowing this, I, like an idiot, will respond to it anyway. I remember a time that I was watching a talk show (who can remember which one) in which a black person, highly successful and decidedly sans a "thuggish adversarial attitude" described in your opening blurb. It also featured a woman who basically felt he was a sell-out for doing well. He apparently sold out to the white man's corporate America. The chip on her shoulder could have been launched into space and gained status as earth's second moon. She would not let him even speak. Every time he tried to say anything, she would insistently -- if rather mindlessly -- drone "sell-out, sell-out, sell-out," and nothing anyone could have said or done would have had the remotest chance of allowing her to even SEE another view, let alone actually embracing it.
I wonder how prevalent this attitude is. I would hope it's not prevalent at all. Why disown someone for doing well?
Patrick at August 19, 2003 7:49 PM
Isn't McWhorter a linguist professor at UC Berkely, or am I confused?
cecile at August 19, 2003 11:34 PM
LYT's comments are right on the mark. Drug use has also gotten a lot of airtime, along with violence, in popular music for decades. Somehow most of us don't grow up to become heroin addicts. Speaking of heroin addicts, I once heard an interview with Patti Smith after the "War is Over" concert in Central Park in 1975, and she said "There's a lot of violence in my work, but you won't find me beating up anybody."
Lena Cuisina at August 20, 2003 3:52 AM