This is the question that some of my favorite hip-hop thinkers and writers will discuss during a series of national townhall meetings. Organized by author and hip-hop activist, Bakari Kitwana (co-founder of the first ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention, former editor of The Source, and author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture and Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America), in collaboration with the Community Technology Foundation of California, the national tour will focus on popular culture's stereotypical representations of women and men in the hip-hop generation. "For too long the hip-hop community has failed to set forth a national agenda for women," says Kitwana. "The goal of these gatherings is to jumpstart a national discussion that asks young people, the hip-hop industry and our policy makers to assume responsibility for their complicity in making hip-hop synonymous with misogyny and homophobia."
Beginning March 5, 2007 at Purdue University, Rap Sessions' interactive community dialogues will convene in ten cities across the United States. Panelists include: Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University Black popular culture professor and author of four books including New Blackman); Hip-Hop journalist Joan Morgan (author of the groundbreaking When Chickenheads Come
Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist); filmmaker Byron Hurt (director of Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a film about misogyny and hip-hop); Raquel Rivera (New York Ricans From the Hip-Hop Zone) and professor Tracy Sharpley-Whiting (director of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and author of the forthcoming Pimps Up, Hos Down: Hip Hop and the New Gender Politics).
Reflecting on television programming like The Flava of Love, former Source editor-in-chief Kim Osario's sexual harassment ruling and books like the New York Times bestseller Confessions of a Video Vixen, Kitwana adds: "Throughout the last decade, from Congress to the campus center, hip-hop's troubling representation of women is the question that will not go away. This tour hopes to ensure that solutions to this debate go beyond the ivory tower to intervene in the lives of everyday people."This is going to be a powerful panel. As a woman and a hip-hop baby who loves the culture, I cringe at some of the images presented within it. Even on the journey of writing my book, The Message, which looks at the messages in some of hip-hop's greatest songs, I wrestle with the music's portrayal of women. The issues of misogyny and homophobia aren't hip-hop's issues, they are our issues that we bring to hip-hop. Why do black men think it's okay to disrespect black women? Where does that impulse come from? Why do black women think it's okay to disrespect themselves? I'm interested in getting to the heart of the matter.
If you haven't seen Byron Hurt's documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes, I highly recommend it. It's now available on DVD. I was recently on a panel for the Congressional Black Caucus about how hip-hop can be used for activism, and I cited this documentary as a perfect example. In Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Hurt dissects manhood by examining the violence, misogyny and homophobia in hip-hop. He shows how these three elements are tied to how society (we) define manhood.
If you're interested in the intersection of race, politics and hip hop culture, I recommend all the books by Bakari Kitwana. Both Mark Anthony Neal and Joan Morgan inspired me, a chocolate female who claims hip-hop, to exert my voice. Joan Morgan's When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost is a must-read for women of color. And I look forward to Tracy Sharpley-Whiting's new book, Pimps Up, Ho's Down, which should drop this month.
To see if Rap Sessions is coming to a town near you, check out www.rapsessions.org.
Comments: (50)
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By: renee on 3/05/2007 11:48AM
Do we still need to be asking this question when we already know the answer? Of course these obnoxious coons hate women and everything about them. I find it funny that these buttheads usually are always claiming to love thier mommas but have so much hate for other women how can that be? It's because these retards really hate thier mom and everything about her they feel neglected by thier mommies who were usually all welfare queens but instead of working it out with thier own mammies through some type of therapy there prefer to blame all other women for the behavior of their unfit mammies who probably had them when she was between the ages of 12-19. Maybe if these teenage girls would start keeping thier legs close we wouldn't have no more thuggs.
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By: nunya on 3/05/2007 12:26PM
This is really a topic I could write a book about myself, but basically I believe Hurt is onto something. Hip hop seems to work by reflecting what already existed to a lesser degree in "black culture" (which I put in quotation marks, because I believe our culture is largely made-up) in the music, thereby perpetuating it in "black culture" by making sure the younger generation learns these ideals more explicitly and often at an earlier age than they would have. And now one of the worst parts about it, to me, is we have non-blacks listening to that music, evaluating and getting their ideas about blacks based off that music and even adopting some of those ideas themselves in their lives...even though I, personally, believe most non-blacks enjoy "hip hop culture"--which I think they view as synonomous with "black culture"--as a joke and a form of escapism. It's like a little how I love to watch soaps--it gives me something to look at and say, "Well, at least my life is not *that* bad," and they laugh at black people and move on and continue to treat us like we don't exist or like we're unequal in everyday reality.
I'm sorry, but I view "black culture" as very chauvinistic--more so than any other group--and I often view black women as accepting and encouraging that chauvinism. And this was even before, and without, rap music and rap videos. There are other, more subtle ways, in which black men and black women engage in male chauvinism. If you listen to hip hop artists defend rap music, often you will hear them make comments that indicate they don't really view what they're doing as disrespecting women or that what they're doing is okay because it's either just describing their reality or it's just part of an image. Sometimes, they throw in how some of their biggest fans are women and how these types of songs keep topping charts in all genres.
There are reasons for all of this. All that "feminism" stuff...well, there are very few black women who seriously are feminists, if you ask me--it's white women with all that (not to say that it's ALL white women). Black women encourage and support several ideas that I think support male dominance and male chauvinism, ranging from insisting that their man make more money than they do and sometimes sacrificing her upward mobility so that her man can get ahead (which are also things you will find in other cultures, sure), to talking negatively about men who are very decent and intelligent but don't fit societal ideas of masculinity (i.e. he's "weak" or a "wimp" or even "white") and preferring "bad boys" who really dog them out. Black women look for men to "be the man" and have somewhat warped ideas about what being a man means just as much as black men do. And then, of course, there's--yep--that a lot of black women participate in these music videos or love/support/buy the songs and sing the words to the songs.
I also view this "got to have a man" mentality that some of us black women have as a problem, and those long checklists of what makes a black man a good man have some chauvinistic criteria on them (again, how he has to make more money for some black women). And all the backstabbing among black women *over* men...it's just insane. Black men *know* black women are fighting over them, so a lot of black men are sitting back thinking they can get away with just about anything where black women are concerned...that's how you know that some of those reasons black men give for interracial dating are bullsh!t, i.e. black women are too difficult and have too much mouth. Black women might not always let black men treat them like they do in silence, but they essentially will let black men mistreat them or at least get away with a lot, as far as I can see, just because a lot of black women want to catch and hold on to a black man to the point of wrecking marriages and physically fighting other black females. And then you also have the double standards where black boys are not raised, not made to do chores, allowed to run the streets...basically, they can do whatever they want...while black females are taught responsibility and sheltered more so and lectured about getting pregnant as if it just takes one person to get pregnant, etc. I've grown up noticing that boys seem more valued in black families and are given more freedom.
So, basically, I think black males are more valued in our community in everything from relationships to our families, we're taught to value them more and we teach our children to value them more. Black women might run that mouth, but they stick by and support black men even when black men won't stick by them and even go so far as to degrade them on TV and in music. And then we're told we don't do enough for black men and we fall for it. Hell, we're BUYING THE MUSIC and waiting on you rather than moving on to a white male. It's all sad to me.
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By: SouthernNYCgal on 3/05/2007 12:46PM
Yes, hip hop hates anything that's percieved as weak: women, homosexuality, love-not sex, real vulnerability in a relationship, children...lol...hip hop just HATES...at least now it does.
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By: verily on 3/05/2007 7:38PM
I don't think many women buy that misogynistic crap at all! And if black women were so intent on not doing things to improve ourselves, our families, our race, and our community ( comprised of all races), we wouldn't work so hard in school and be so disproportionately represented in colleges. Everyone knows many more women than men attend college. Even white women outnumber white men on college campuses today. To the point where WHITE men are given affirmative action to increase their presence. So you KNOW black women outnumber black men in college. And too many BLACK women in the public eye have expressed displeasure and even outrage over the portrayals of black women in hip-hop for anybody to stupidly get away with pretending black women "like it!" I can't stand Ice T who "rapped" early on that, " A woman ain't nothin' but a "b." Yet he along with other male Hip Hop artists smugly basked in the adoration of Salt n' Peppa when they sang "What a Man" during an awards show!! But after 20 YEARS of black men of every hue and height calling even DECENT black women everything but a child of GOD, let just ONE black female group - which unlike THEM actually has SINGING and DANCING TALENT - say they don't want "Scrubs." Then sit back and watch male "artists" go ballistic over that ONE "dis" of ONE man out of their MILLIONS of disses about scores of black women at ONE TIME! Shaking my head. Btw, even some of the "milder" hip hop artists act like they're insane in real life. Puff Daddy has GOT to be crazy! Was it my imagination or did he announce that he would get married but THEN publicly changed his mind WHILE his daughters were still in their mother's WOMB?! How stupid can he get?!? Doctors have known since before the 1950's that emotional trauma in pregnant women is in some ways WORSE than physical ailments, for with emotional trauma potentially harmful hormones are released that are potentially toxic. Didn't that idiot Puff Daddy read up on pregnancy when he started impregnating black women out of wedlock like he's some kind of flipping antebellum PLANTATION owner?! Can selfish gits like him see ANYTHING but THEMSELVES?! Master P has more money than Puff Daddy because Master P had SENSE enough to MARRY the mother of his children!! Puff Daddy has NO excuse - with his stupid videos about another man holding his children. He'd BETTER hope no other man abuses them!! He should marry Kim IF she'll even HAVE an ignoramus like him. It was an insult allowing HIM to run that idiotic "VOTE or DIE" campaign when with all his money he doesn't even have the sense to keep his children from being bastards! And idiots like Eddie Murphy and Damon Wayons should have been fighting tooth and nail to keep their families intact, instead of running around insulting other women after being with them ( at least in Eddie's case not Damon's). Did Eddie really think that kind of viciousness and insensitivity would "endear" him to Tracey Edmonds? As a woman I've got news for him. That kind of thing makes other women despise him. He's fortunate Tracey didn't upchuck all over him the first time she saw him after finding all that out! Thank God there are still NORMAL black men. My husband is wonderful. But some black men have unfortunately not grown up with their fathers in the home. And they sometimes had little with which to imprint proper male behavior. But if more of their mothers had done what their FATHERS had done they most likely WOULD have been in REAL trouble! As it is their mothers, perhaps overworked, tired, and stressed in trying to go it alone, may have "overdisciplined" or seemed aloof - thus much of the hip-hop "artist's" animus towards his mother and thus all females. Shaking my head. As for their "music," what's almost WORSE is their taking songs that REAL black musicians wrote which CELEBRATE ONE GOOD black woman and TURNING it into an homage to a "gold digger." Ray Charles was probably turning over in his GRAVE!! Shaking my head.
Verily
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By: verily on 3/05/2007 7:45PM
I'd like to add that my spouse is a wonderful husband and father. Would there were more like him in our communities.
Verily
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By: verily on 3/05/2007 8:00PM
Renee, perhaps you'd be enlightened by the most recent research. Most out-of-wedlock black babies are not born to teenaged mothers but to OLDER black women. Black teenaged pregnancy is down, thank God. But too many black and white, and Hispanic teenagers are left alone to fend for themselves against older male predators in their communities when mother is the only parent and she has to work. Sociologists studying pregnant teenagers have found that quite a few of them had actually been the victims of rape by those evil old perps! Sad.
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By: HealingTonic on 3/06/2007 8:18AM
I cant say all hip hop hates women but ganster rap not only hates women, but it hates black people. It encourages us to se each other as rivals, encourages us to kill each other, denegrate each other. The "bling" culture teaches us to put prestige above the lives of our brothers and sisters in Africa. And yes, it teaches its listeners to hate and mistrust all women and treat us as mere sexual objects.
I used to love most hip hop incl some gangster rap, but I can see clearly the damage it is reaking (sp) on black communities WORLDWIDE. And as a black woman, I can't line the pockets of these "artists" who see me as no more than a "golddigger" and a vessel for their sexual desires.
To hell with violent, offensive gangster rap. Lets have some real music with real positive messages.
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By: Kim Shimer on 3/06/2007 9:12AM
Imagine being a professor and a preacher and trying to embrace the hip hop generation with its vulgar and misogynist lyrics! Tough to reach out to this group when they make the African American community look so bad. Now imagine deciding to not only reach out to this generation, but to actually "become hip hop." That's what Ralph Watkins did. A professor of society, religion, and Africana studies at Fuller Seminary by day, and a successful D.J. at L.A. hip hop clubs by night, Watkins is so determined to evangelize this generation that he has immersed himself in the culture. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, he said "To me, being among these young people at clubs gives me new insight, new revelation. These are places where God reveals God's self, and even in the most vulgar songs there is a message." Watkins wrote about his personal journey into the world of the hip hop generation with his new book The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation. I'd recommend checking it out.
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By: Salene on 3/06/2007 10:44AM
Nope.
But gangster rap has serious issues with women. And since gangster rap is hip-hops offspring...this needs to be addressed by rap in general.
Also there're the so called "fence straddlers". Theses rappers want the prestige that comes with hip-hop but they also want the "street cred" that follows gangster rap. We all have seen theses rappers...they're the ones who appear to be hip-hop rappers but spew forth filth like gangster rappers. It remines me of the illusion of a BLACK person...living inside of a white person's body. Did he really bring sexy back?
However, it's still a disgrace that the hip-hop culture hasn't had a national womens agenda...as of yet. These national town hall meetings are way overdue.
Including young folks are wise. Since rap music crosses the racial devine...make sure the melting pot is in attendance. Because over 70% of rap music is purchased by non-blacks.
I was raised the old fashioned way. IF you don't take a stand for something...you will fall for everything. The way black women view themselves should change first. Record company's only care about the ka-ching affect.
The rap lyrics is usually a mirrored image of the rappers life. Is it a mirrored image of society as a whole? Heck no. But it's THEIR reality. A lot of these rappers didn't get access to the sexy/pretty women...until they got some dough. Therefore, their reality is...women are golddigging hoochie mamas(don't shoot the messenger).
Can we change the way these rappers view women in their lyrics? Yes. Regardless if it's their reality or not. These aren't children...so chasticing won't work(finger wagging). BUT taking away their ka-ching will shock them into a new reality cause no ka-ching means no bling or sexy pretty women. Or sexy/pretty men because you know the latent tendacies are rampant in the rap culture(don't shoot the messenger...cause it is what it is).
Conducting national townhall meetings with all of the mentioned attendies will springboard change...but true change will ultimately come from women and consumers.
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By: lynn on 3/06/2007 11:28AM
Hatred is abound with this sick hip hop generation, the final nail in the coffin that is destroying a once very proud black race. taken down to it's lowest common denominator by uneducated thugs & chicken heads. weak, criminal young men who have nothing to offer our society but high prison stats. they hate their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts & especially decent black women who have their act together. it's time for decent black women to jump ship & seek love elsewhere. STOP! producing babies by our criminal black men!!
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