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Right - sorry about the delay, Illmatic and Alas.
(Illmatic)
More succinctly: what relevance has a 40 year old rock record got to a thread about Hip Hop? It adds to the perception that you don't ever listen to the music that you're complaining about.
Agreed; sorry. The relevance was meant to be in the identity of the artists; the MC5 were strong sympathisers with the Black Panther movement. I wasn't intending any particularly deep meaning. The other lyric was from a song about racist perceptions by a multiracial band; I wasn't trying to illustrate my musical knowledge so much as to demonstrate I was reasonably aware of those issues.
Okay, Kay I’ll bite:
1) Sony were obviously, blatantly wrong.
2) It's a drop in the ocean compared to the corpus of music and imagery which portrays black* people in a negative light.
3) Much of this music is, ironically enough, produced by black artists.
Okay, Kay - what I find discomforting about your statements here is:
a) that your willing to jump analogies so quickly – to move between two completely different sorts of media. Even if your points about hip hop were completely correct that still struck me as a very odd thing to do, and this links to
b) Your willingness to transfer the blame for racism back to black artists. I say this is part of the reason for a).. If every time, racism is mentioned you say “but really, it’s their fault”* – which is what you’re saying, that in itself is a racist act. See Id’s posts above on awareness of our complicity in racism etc.
I intended absolutely no transfer of blame back to black artists, but to black artists. I wasn't even particularly attempting to attribute blame; I'm guilty of both listening to and singing songs which promote and/or feature nastiness.
(I'm not sure if there has been any discussion on B. of the parallels / identity between hip-hop and folk; I'm tempted to start one if there hasn't.)
All in all, my belief was that the negative message which I believe a considerable amount of gangsta rap conveys - and I must refute the suggestion several people have made that only the state of rap now (which is hardly ideal; 50 cent, f'r'instance) matters; people do not listen to only the newest music! - does nobody any favours.
c) I think a lot of the argument you’ve employed is a lot more about defending yourself than impartially describing. For instance you didn’t include 2) above in your original statement, you pretty much went straight into blaming black artists.
Again, my intention was never to imply blame in that fashion. I realise and regret that my wording was ill-suited to my audience, and that I assumed that I would be taken as a matter of course not to be making racist comment. It was an error on my part to assume so - I'm not trying to be weaselly here, I mean, I should not have made that assumption.
I don’t know where this argument is going but I think people would simply like you to acknowledge that your original post and some parts of the argument were/are unwisely employed and a bit fucked up.
I agree that they were unwisely employed, but I am unhappy that they have been read as racist, as, flippant as I was, I believed I had been quite careful not to imply any kind of causal link whatsoever between race and the unpleasantness I believe exists in a lot of hip-hop - which is what I was attempting to clear up with the thread. I felt I was being read as saying "those naughty black people bring it on themselves", and wanted to try to clear that up.
BTW having just read Lurid’s post – I don’t think simply citing some "negative" Hip Hop lyrics would make all the points about your argument hunky dory. You could find plenty of examples of violence and sexism within Hip Hop in 5 minutes on Google. However, focusing on these misses the point that:
a) they are a product of the wider culture, and if you really want to critique these things you’ve got to get to the root of them. TBH, I’d love to hear less critique of Hip Hop and violence and more about economic inequality and wealth divisions along racial lines but these take us into areas where it’s a lot less easy to “shoot the messenger”.
b) It would take the focus away from the way in which you’ve employed your arguments here.
I'm not sure I understand quite what you mean, but in general terms, yes, it would, I agree.
(Alas)
I'm also interested in this bit, Kay, which I'd really like to see you address:
Race, sex, and sexuality carry very little weight with me. I had assumed that this was recognised as a sine qua non here.
Maybe we can find some common ground. Is it fair to say that you, and I, both believe that one's perceived or claimed race, gender, mode of self-presentation, etc., should carry no weight in terms of whether one is recognized as a complex, potentially vulnerable, human being who deserves to be treated with dignity?
Yes, I believe so. I would like to treat everyone purely on the basis of their actions, which I'm afraid leads me to believe that the right of religious expression should not be a universal one - but that's another story, and my failings - or otherwise - there need not concern us here, I hope.
But, I sense, where we differ, is that, while many intelligent people, including, it seems, you (?), seem to want to drive us away from categories as inherently limiting to people, I am not sure this is the answer. I think I get this desire to avoid giving social categories any "weight"; I think it is understandable--race categories in particular have a very ugly history. I don't think any of us want to mindlessly replicate that history.
But there is another way of seeing this issue, which I think Judith Halberstam begins to explain pretty well (in this interview about her book Female Masculinities), although she's primarily thinking in relation to human sexuality (and I try to be fairly careful about not conflating these differing aspects of personal/social identity too much):
For me, the term female masculinity also records what can only be called a "taxonomical impulse." My book argues for greater taxonomical complexity in our queer histories. Unlike a theorist like Butler who sees categories as perpetually suspect, I embrace categorization as a way of creating places for acts, identities and modes of being which otherwise remain unnamable. I also think that the proliferation of categories offers an alternative to the
mundane humanist claim that categories inhibit the unique self and creates boxes for an otherwise indomitable spirit. People who don't think they inhabit categories usually benefit from not naming their location.
As I see it, we're all in a position where, culturally, we haven't decided what to do with all this messy history of oppression and cruelty and denial of subjectivity based on class, race, gender, and etc. We are in a state of confusion.
Striving for "color blindness," as a response, doesn't seem to work, because it often just translates, first, into an ability not to see the on-going oppression and problems, and, second, for me, to allowing me to believe I'm perfectly race neutral in my approach to others and not to ask any hard questions of myself when I'm reacting negatively, for instance, to one of my black students. It lets me off the hook pretty easily, and, being human, I'm prone to wanting to let myself off the hook.
And, third, it typically leads to an unexamined expectation that there is some kind of "race neutral" behavior--which is usually, in fact, a behavior pattern that is more typical of the dominant so-called "white" culture--to which we can all simply be expected to conform or "cover" non-conforming behavior. ("Covering" is Kenji Yoshino's term for hiding stigmatized behavior--e.g., avoiding wearing ethnic clothing to work, or behaving in ways that are marked as "gay").
There are differences in British vs. American cultures here, and I realize I may be misinterpreting your claim, so I'd like to hear more from you.
I certainly believe that aspects of this are at the heart of many problems: that we both want (and/or need) and reject group identity; that we can both define ourselves as part of a group - on grounds subjective or objective or both - and yet refuse to have generalisations made of us as a group. In essence, that we are happy to embrace a group identity when it is painted in 'good' terms / on our own terms, but resist any group identification in 'bad' terms / on someone else's terms. I'm not sure how I feel about this, and I'm sorry I can't give you a better response.
I feel that being able to describe groups in terms of broad properties is an essential tool, an essential part of both science and culture; the trouble, I believe, lies when that description is interpreted as an implied correlation between the property and the thing described. I'd like to try to talk about this in more depth, if you would; particularly to try to understand how we can try to use group terms without risking stereotype. I'll post more when I've thought through it better! |
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