I was saying that there is a cultural movement encouraging violence, and a lot of that is rap. Don't get me wrong, I like rap. My friend doesn't do anything violent, but he's still influenced by the same culture by wearing what they're wearing and speaking the same way and things like that. Whether or not that part of american culture actually provokes people to acting that way is a matter entirely different, but it is going to provoke slightly prejudiced people into becoming completely prejudiced people, because people all across the nation are supporting it.
If the majority of rappers are black, and prejudice people only see rappers as singing about thug, gangsta life and violence and then black people that prejudice people are walking past dress in similar ways to the rappers and talk in a similar way to the rappers, these prejudice people are going to have an association of violence and thugs with black people.
To look at how these people view rap music, you also need to remember that they don't actually listen to rap music. They listen to, say, Fox News. They listen to the reporters saying that music is a bad influence on children and, muted, flashes on the screen a nearly naked Brittney Spears, Christina A... something, and more than a few rappers.
It's not a blame and definately not an excuse but a possible explination of how a problem got worse.
"Excuse me, Daynah, but I missed how wearing a hat and baggy pants implies a life of crime. "
You missed a lot, darling. Especially the part where I'm not racist and where my post was stating that the "culture is supporting the stereotype" to "prejudice folk like this."
They only get notified of the bad lyrics by black artists and see images of what those people are wearing and acting like. Then they see other people (the majority of which is back) mimicing these artists, and assume that these people follow whole heartedly the philosophy of the bad lyrics that they've heard and must be criminals. With damning statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report like "black men are the likely perpetrators in more than 40 percent of the homicides in which a suspect has been identified", these prejudice people ignore the last few words "in which a suspect has been identified" and also ignore some lingering, certainly outdated statistics in my head that I can't remember the sources of. I seem to remember reading somewhere that though there's a larger percentage of identified black perpetrators of homicides, there's also a larger percentage of identified white perpetrators of rapes.
This is what goes through those people's heads. They intentionally stifle their flow of information (everyone does to some degree, though) and then they make certain assumptions with the information they have. Assuming is something the brain just naturally does. Dressing and acting like others and clumping yourself together is just something humans do, and in this case it has the backwards effect of worsening the assumptions. I really think this is what goes through the heads of those that were only moderately racist, then became more so.
All and all, I think the solution is just to play more R&B. |
