← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Avalanche
Thread ID: 7075 | Posts: 29 | Started: 2003-06-02
2003-06-02 13:47 | User Profile
[url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110003560]http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110003560[/url]
Street Theater Gunfire kills another rapper. What an awful image for black America.
BY JOHN MCWHORTER Friday, May 30, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
There goes another one. Last week 21-year-old Savannah-based rapper Camoflauge was shot to death in front of his toddler son. Only two months before, New York rapper Freaky Tah was killed, at age 27, shot while leaving a party. Last fall pioneer rapper Jam Master Jay was murdered in his Queens, N.Y., studio at 37, leaving behind a wife and children.
Such carnage puts in a certain perspective the mantra that black America is so often taught: "Why can't whites see blacks as equals?" Many claim that a big problem is the depiction of blacks in the media, and there is a point here--but no longer the "whitey did it" point that many suppose. Today the biggest image problem for blacks comes from neither the movies nor television but from the rap industry. The most popular music in black America presents a grim, violent, misogynist, sybaritic black male archetype as an urgent symbol of authenticity.
Fans object that there is plenty of hip-hop with constructive messages. True, but it's the "thug" brand that sells best. How many hip-hop magazines would there be if the music delivered only positive messages? Camoflauge, despite his searingly profane, violent lyrics, was regularly invited to speak at Savannah high schools. In the hip-hop world, "keeping it real" is everything, and the gutter is considered the "realest."
And most hip-hop, whatever its "message," is delivered in a cocky, confrontational cadence. The "in your face" element is as essential to the genre as vibrato to opera, reinforced as rappers press their faces close to the camera lens in videos, throwing their arms about in poses suggesting imminent battle. The smug tone expresses a sense that hip-hop is sounding a wake-up call, from below, to a white America too benighted to listen. I can count on hearing about a "hip-hop revolution" from at least one questioner at every talk I give these days.
But unfocused cynicism is not a promising platform for a revolution. The Hip Hop Summit Action Network, for instance--founded by rap impresario Russell Simmons--has attempted to "bridge hip-hop and politics" and does deserve credit for its proposed voter registration drive. But then what does the organization want "the hip-hop generation" to vote for? Mostly the bromides that have disempowered blacks for decades.
Stuck in the idea that urban schools fail because of inadequate funding, the group corralled marchers to support the teachers' union opposed to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education budget. It also stuck it to President Bush for invading Iraq and has protested advisory labels on rap CDs.
One has to wonder whether the Action Network will ever sponsor "summits" supporting the welfare reform now improving countless black women's lives or urging the Bush administration to give more money to faith-based initiatives. By focusing on the issues that lend themselves to street theater, the organization proposes a "revolution" committed more to the thrills of acting up than to the mundane work of helping people in need.
Of course "hip-hop intellectuals" would disagree, celebrating hip-hop as an expression of inner-city frustration. But frustration does not require music so willfully alienated and nihilistic: None existed during the centuries when all blacks endured injustice much more concrete. In any case, hip-hop elicits identification across classes, having become a kind of "musica franca" for black identity. One often sees well-heeled young black executives get into their new cars and turn on the same spiky rap that the inner-city black man listens to.
Hip-hop, in short, is not a message from the streets but a histrionic pose. Producers coach aspiring artists to glower for photos. "I'm valid when I'm disrespected," an aspiring black rapper told a reporter for the New York Times in 2000, in an article from its "How Race Is Lived in America" series. The piece ended with his recording a CD whose strident vulgarity and sexism chilled the article's writer. The rapper knew the truth--he was indulging in an act that sells, pure and simple.
In the grand view, hip-hop may be seen as a typical American phenomenon--one part the cowboys-and-Indians tradition of heroic conflict and one part the recent "Bobos in Paradise" syndrome of celebrating countercultural gestures as "real." "The Sopranos," in its violence and vulgarity, shares this mixed cultural parentage. But that TV show is not intended as a guide to living for all Italians. Hip-hop, by contrast, is linked to a particular racial identity. Yes, numerically it has more white listeners. But hip-hop's fans would be up in arms against anyone who claimed that the music was rooted in white culture rather than an African-American consciousness.
And what a dismaying symbol of identity for a race just past misery. Rappers slip acrid slams at their rivals into recordings, nurturing "battles" to sell CDs. It was such provocations that likely led to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and "Biggie" Smalls. And that brings us back to "rap and rap sheet," in the artful phrase of the music critic Kelefa Sanneh. Rapper 50 Cent was recently arrested for harboring assault weapons in his car. DJ Funkmaster Flex physically assaulted a female rival DJ in New York last fall. In 2000, a brawl at the Source Hiphop Awards shut the ceremony down--right after a video tribute to slain rappers!
"But white people act up too." Yes, but Garth Brooks does not bring a "piece" to the Grammys, and Martin Scorsese does not get into ugly scuffles on the street. There is a fine line between playing the bad boy and becoming one, and in the "hip-hop community" too often violence jumps out of the quotation marks and becomes a tragic reality.
But calls to combat hip-hop are useless for the moment. As Judith Rich Harris showed us in "The Nurture Assumption," children identify with their peers more than with their parents. Blacks under a certain age feel this music as their poetry, rattling off extended selections as readily as Russians recite Pushkin. It's not going away.
But this is a lowdown, dirty shame. I am just old enough to remember when whites were making the sourest, nastiest pop music while blacks were making the sweetest and truest. White kids listened to hideous screaming while funk and soul were black America's soundtrack. As a kid in the 1970s I was conscious of that contrast and proud of it. The civil-rights protesters a decade before, who made the lives of "the hip-hop generation" possible, would have been appalled to hear the likes of Jay-Z, and we would be hard-pressed to claim that they would have been somehow missing something in that judgment. They accomplished a lot more, too, than any rapper's sideline donations to community efforts ever will.
The staged alienation of the hip-hop scene shows black Americans celebrating attitude over action at best and violence over civility at worst. For 350 years white America told blacks they were beasts. Now a black-generated pop music presents us to whites and ourselves as beasts, while a cadre of black intellectuals celebrate this as "deep" and black impresarios glide by in their limos calling it a "revolution." Revulsion is more like it.
Mr. McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
2003-06-03 02:07 | User Profile
Whitey gave Ol' Man River his "civil rights". We gave him "affirmative action". We bussed his children into our neighborhoods. We built him low-income housing in our neighborhoods. We gave him "The Cosby Show". We encouraged him to move into White upper-middle class neighborhoods. We gave him the attractive White woman as a "trophy". We ignored his low test scores and let him go through without a whisper.
And still he managed to f**k himself up.
:afro:
2003-06-03 03:28 | User Profile
What's even worse that mainstream leftist American (if you can call it American) media promotes this kind of rabid lifestyle for our youth, no matter what race or cultural background.
2003-06-03 10:53 | User Profile
For 350 years white America told blacks they were beasts. Now a black-generated pop music presents us to whites and ourselves as beasts, while a cadre of black intellectuals celebrate this as "deep" and black impresarios glide by in their limos calling it a "revolution."
Nigras, given the freedom to be their real selves, have furnished the world with overwhelming proof that the assessment of White Americans of the past was 100% correct.
2003-06-03 16:55 | User Profile
Robbie wrote:
**Whitey gave Ol' Man River his "civil rights". We gave him "affirmative action". We bussed his children into our neighborhoods. We built him low-income housing in our neighborhoods. We gave him "The Cosby Show". We encouraged him to move into White upper-middle class neighborhoods. We gave him the attractive White woman as a "trophy". We ignored his low test scores and let him go through without a whisper.
And still he managed to fk himself up.
"Despite all white America has done, black complaining has worsened. We asked for welfare-they gave us that. We asked for jobs-they gave us that. We asked for their schools-they gave us that. We asked for their communities-they gave us that. We asked for affirmative action-they gave us that. We asked for their women-they gave us that. Now we want reparations? This giving has only increased our anger, perpetuated our rage, and held us back. The only ones who seem to be succeeding among us are our 'leaders' like multi-millionaire Jesse Jackson. This is how it will continue if we are given 'reparations.'"
--Jesse Lee Peterson, "Instead of Reparations, How About a Ticket Back to Africa?"
2003-06-03 17:06 | User Profile
**What's even worse that mainstream leftist American (if you can call it American) media promotes this kind of rabid lifestyle for our youth, no matter what race or cultural background. **
Alas, probably the largest consumers of gangsta rap are middle-class suburban white youths seeking danger, excitement--and most of all, rebellion--among popular culture.
The entire video/computer gaming subculture (of mostly white teenagers) is permeated with kids talking like and wanting to be like digital gangsters. To wit: the popularity of games like Grand Theft Auto and Dope Wars, not to mention the average level of jargon present among "kewl d00dz" in Counter-Strike or EverQuest.
And don't even get me started on this retro-70's black funk fashion craze among young people for the last few years....bell bottoms, platform shoes, bare midriffs, hip-huggers, sideburns and goatees, goofy glasses with yellow lenses, wearing stocking caps in 90-degree weather. Hell, they're doing everything but wearing leisure suits, gaudy medallions, leather caps, and sporting afros....just give 'em a few years. It's like they all raided their parents' attics or the thrift shops.
"Culture-distorters" -- an apt choice of words indeed. Thanks Hollywood!
2003-06-03 17:12 | User Profile
Where can I contribute to the Guns for Gangsters association?
2003-06-03 20:11 | User Profile
**I am just old enough to remember when whites were making the sourest, nastiest pop music while blacks were making the sweetest and truest. White kids listened to hideous screaming while funk and soul were black America's soundtrack. As a kid in the 1970s I was conscious of that contrast and proud of it. **
We all remember that, don't we? The body counts directly related to the hideous shrieking of Seals and Crofts and King Crimson and Charlie Rich? While, across the tracks in the peaceful black ghetto, the prehuman slobber-grunting of James Brown and the interminable check-me-out caterwaul of Patti Labelle were helping us all unwittingly rehearse for Hands Across America? Man, it's like it was just yesterday.....and let's not forget all those drawing-room Restoration comedies that Fred Williamson and Pam Grier were making at the time, too!
2003-06-04 00:23 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Jun 3 2003, 14:11 ** > **I am just old enough to remember when whites were making the sourest, nastiest pop music while blacks were making the sweetest and truest. White kids listened to hideous screaming while funk and soul were black America's soundtrack. As a kid in the 1970s I was conscious of that contrast and proud of it. **
We all remember that, don't we? The body counts directly related to the hideous shrieking of Seals and Crofts and King Crimson and Charlie Rich? While, across the tracks in the peaceful black ghetto, the prehuman slobber-grunting of James Brown and the interminable check-me-out caterwaul of Patti Labelle were helping us all unwittingly rehearse for Hands Across America? Man, it's like it was just yesterday.....and let's not forget all those drawing-room Restoration comedies that Fred Williamson and Pam Grier were making at the time, too! **
negroes are scared of heavy metal. So are jews.
2003-06-04 01:34 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Jun 3 2003, 20:11 ** > **I am just old enough to remember when whites were making the sourest, nastiest pop music while blacks were making the sweetest and truest. White kids listened to hideous screaming while funk and soul were black America's soundtrack. As a kid in the 1970s I was conscious of that contrast and proud of it. **
**
That could very well be true. Actually, I like a lot of music from the 1970's in both its pop and R&B forms. I disagree to the reference of Seals and Crofts as being "shrieking"; I loved a lot of their songs, especially "Diamond Girl" and "Get Closer". Charlie Rich had some good songs, like "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl". I think what's really amazing is how R&B music has gone the way of pop music since the latter part of the 1980's/early 1990's.
2003-06-04 02:27 | User Profile
** negroes are scared of heavy metal. So are jews.**
So are most (adult) white women!! Who ISN'T scared of it? WHY can't our children be exposed to classical music?! (You know, that lovely stuff written by educated white guys?!)
2003-06-04 03:01 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Jun 3 2003, 14:11 ** We all remember that, don't we? The body counts directly related to the hideous shrieking of Seals and Crofts and King Crimson and Charlie Rich? While, across the tracks in the peaceful black ghetto, the prehuman slobber-grunting of James Brown and the interminable check-me-out caterwaul of Patti Labelle were helping us all unwittingly rehearse for Hands Across America? **
Well actually... that a youngster of a disturbed predisposition might find some "inspiration" from anything from the Wetton-Cross-Bruford-Fripp era of Crimson is not out the realm of possibility..
2003-06-04 17:24 | User Profile
Originally posted by W.R.I.T.O.S@Jun 3 2003, 19:23 **negroes are scared of heavy metal. **
Not all negroes. A few that I can think of off-hand are Doug Pennick, bassist/lead singer of King's X, the lead singers for Sevendust and Killswitch Engage, and the guys from Living Colour.
:afro: :punk:
2003-06-04 17:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by W.R.I.T.O.S@Jun 3 2003, 19:23 ** negroes are scared of heavy metal. So are jews. **
I agree WRITOS. Very much. Which is why the Heavy Metal music genre and spirit went the way of the Dodo Bird. The jews were very scared of thousands and millions of White youth participating together and bonding with each other over music written and performed by White men. Voodoo to the joodoo. Enter losers Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder to send those same White kids right into pyscho-therapy and Prozac!! Now we have weak synthetic "metal" with terrible vocalists and jungle bunny rap "music" converting White youth into apes. So much for progress.
2003-06-04 18:13 | User Profile
xmetalhead:
If you listen to a college radio station, their play lists are very different from the commercial radio stations or MTV. I don't know whether that indicates the real listening tastes of the college crowd or it's just that the DJs there are not what an average listener is. My statistics sample consists of two universities. Where I am now, I always check college radio station first when commuting. When white DJs are on the air, it's either new heavy metal, older metal/hard rock or techno/trance.
2003-06-04 18:30 | User Profile
MadRussian, the college stations in the NYC area are playing anything but hard rock/metal. I was in Miami recently and there is a great college station on the air, I think Univ of Miami, which was playing some excellent alternative/punk/gothic/folk/techno music. Stuff I've never heard before on any station 'round here.
With the new FCC rulings allowing mammoth media monopolies to grow even larger, the quality of mainstream music will plummet rapidly from it's already low state and therefore, I hope, feed the ever-growing and exciting underground music scene with fresh and daring ideas. Just gotta go out and find it!
2003-06-04 18:51 | User Profile
I forgot to mention Goth, punk and industrial on my list of what's there on college stations.
I didn't know that New York is such a dump that even college students have become total dummies.
There is a lot of good music out there (AntiYuppie will disagree), it's just not being promoted. The music distribution and promotion business has become totally corrupted and subverted. I just can't believe if not for the crap that the joos push, there'd be so many wiggers and otherwise white teenagers thinking that aping the apes is cool. Devolution is not cool, it's plain dumb and a waste of one's potential.
2003-06-04 19:34 | User Profile
Xmetalhead:
There used to a great college metal station out of Rutgers(?) that I could get in Westchester. I think its still there.
Avalanche: I believe it goes a little deeper than that. There was always a vein of "Ragnar Redbeard" for loss of a better term, running throughout metal. The Iron Cross was the symbol of metal when I was a punk. With some notable exceptions, including MTV desperately trying to promote black metal musicians, metal always had a characteristically white crowd. How many black fans of Danzig do you think there were/are?
MR:
There was a great PBS Frontline episode on the Music Industry's promotion of teen angst music. The message was that no matter how taboo, alternative, or anti-social a music genre underground had become, they would still buy out the leading band of the form, repackage it, and sell promos of it with Pepsi. Of course there is a certain strata of Metal/Punk that is untouchable- that the "non-ethnic" capitalist biz execs won't touch. Is it Anti-White rap? No. That's Kosha. Its overtly "pro-white" music like BFG, Landser, etc. Many of these guys are talented rock musicians, as seen from the subject of this thread. There was also a Swedish band, I believe, that wouldn't get any publicity for a top ten song in their country because before switching over to pop, they had a repertoire of consciously pro-white music.
2003-06-04 20:26 | User Profile
I like some genres I listed (with the exception of punk, perhaps) not because the musicians are white or pro-white (pro-white applies only to some specific music I haven't even sampled even and don't know whether I'd like it), but simply because I like it. Not everyone here has the same high tastes as you do. I don't think you want to draw a line in the sand who's civilized and who's not along the music tastes :sm:
2003-06-04 20:52 | User Profile
The key factor for me is intelligence. I like intelligent music and that can run the entire gamut. From classical to folk/gaelic to bluegrass/honkytonk to metal/alternative and yes, even some black rap. If it shows talent, creativity and intelligence, then I can at the very least appreciate it. Of course I have a pretty eclectic taste in music that I listen to depending on the mood I'm in. I like music that moves me, spiritually and emotionally.
2003-06-04 20:59 | User Profile
Tex, you, eh, gettin' jiggy wit it? :afro:
2003-06-04 21:03 | User Profile
Campion Moore, that New Jersey college station is WSOU out of Seton Hall Univ. Thanks for reminding me. It doesn't always come in well but they do play some really good metal. They also play alot of bad metal too, but what can ya do?!
Tex, I'm with you. If the talent and intelligence and honesty of an artist is there and it shines, it must be respected in the least, regardless of genre.
AY, I definitely agree that just because it's "white" don't neccessarily make it "right", but even the Sex Pistols make more sense to me than Busta Rhymes on any given day.
2003-06-04 21:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Jun 4 2003, 14:30 ** > Originally posted by madrussian@Jun 4 2003, 20:26 ** I like some genres I listed (with the exception of punk, perhaps) not because the musicians are white or pro-white (pro-white applies only to some specific music I haven't even sampled even and don't know whether I'd like it), but simply because I like it. Not everyone here has the same high tastes as you do. I don't think you want to draw a line in the sand who's civilized and who's not along the music tastesÃÂ :sm: **
My point is that punk rock celebrates many of the same types of depraved behavior as does rap. Given that this is the case, the only reason those who criticize rap praise punk rock seems to be that punk rock is largely "white." So once again, are lyrics promoting thuggish behavior and nihilism "better" if a white person writes them? If anything, I would say they are worse, because unlike the negro, the white man really should know better. **
I appreciate the broader point you make here, namely, that white produced trash is nonetheless trash, but I would suggest that your reconsider your overall assessment of punk rock music. I mention this, as I just read the new issue of The American Conservative, which included in it, a glowing review of an alternative (and arguably, punk) rock band, the Smiths. My limited exposure to this particular band comports with the analysis of the review, namely that the Smiths is a band that is carrying the western flag and doing so with true talent. While it is obviously not realistic to compare the Smiths to Mozart, it is not fair to consider their music trash, either. That's not to say, of course, that there is not plenty of punk rock out there that is, indeed, trash. And, of course, what is packaged as punk rock today is trashier than what was out there 20 years ago, and the same can be said for rock music as well, and even pop music.
2003-06-04 21:05 | User Profile
Originally posted by madrussian@Jun 4 2003, 15:59 ** Tex, you, eh, gettin' jiggy wit it? :afro: **
:lol: :afro:
Nah, no jiggyin'. But I will admit to liking Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Digable Planets, etc. back in the late 80s, early 90s. More of the jazz/fusion stuff. Admittedly, some of that was drug-induced, though. <_<
2003-06-04 21:07 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Jun 4 2003, 11:24 ** > Originally posted by W.R.I.T.O.S@Jun 3 2003, 19:23 **negroes are scared of heavy metal.ÃÂ **
Not all negroes. A few that I can think of off-hand are Doug Pennick, bassist/lead singer of King's X, the lead singers for Sevendust and Killswitch Engage, and the guys from Living Colour.
:afro: :punk: **
Tex- I like Kings X and Living Colour, too, but I would not classify those bands as heavy metal.
2003-06-04 21:13 | User Profile
Originally posted by Phillip Augustus@Jun 4 2003, 16:07 ** Tex- I like Kings X and Living Colour, too, but I would not classify those bands as heavy metal. **
Well, King's X does defy classification somewhat. I like to just label them as the best rock and roll band of all time. Nobody's rocked and moved me like Ty, Doug and Jerry.
2003-06-04 21:14 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Jun 4 2003, 15:13 ** > Originally posted by Phillip Augustus@Jun 4 2003, 16:07 ** Tex- I like Kings X and Living Colour, too, but I would not classify those bands as heavy metal. **
Well, King's X does defy classification somewhat. I like to just label them as the best rock and roll band of all time. Nobody's rocked and moved me like Ty, Doug and Jerry. **
They never got much radio play, but I have to say, from what I have heard of them, they definitely had a terrific sound.
2003-06-05 01:09 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Jun 4 2003, 14:20 ** > Originally posted by madrussian@Jun 4 2003, 18:51 ** I forgot to mention Goth, punk and industrial on my list of what's there on college stations.
I didn't know that New York is such a dump that even college students have become total dummies.
There is a lot of good music out there (AntiYuppie will disagree), it's just not being promoted. The music distribution and promotion business has become totally corrupted and subverted. I just can't believe if not for the crap that the joos push, there'd be so many wiggers and otherwise white teenagers thinking that aping the apes is cool. Devolution is not cool, it's plain dumb and a waste of one's potential. **
I guess I never understood the mindset that says "as long as it's done by whites, it's good." Is a white car thief, rapist, or murderer better than his colored counterpart just because he's "one of us?" Similarly, am I supposed to prefer the cacophany and depraved lyrics of punk rock to Duke Ellington or Scott Joplin because punk rockers are white and Duke Ellington isn't?
The way I look at it, Ellington was a civilized black and an example of the best that black culture could produce. He couldn't hold a candle to the best white musicians, of course, but Ellington has the same relation to Gangsta rap as Beethoven has in relation to punk rock etc. One is a talented man versus the self-expression of black street trash (which, I will grant you, are the vast majority of blacks), just as the latter example represents the pinnacle of white achievement versus the self-expression of depraved, nihilistic urban white trash. Why is it that when whites celebrate thuggishness, hedonism and criminality it suddenly becomes "good?" As far as I'm concerned, such people are as much "white n*ggers" as those who more openly emulate the inner city negro.
I was never pro-white because of the color of our skin, but because I value the civilized society and high culture that white civilization has to offer. When white society ceases to be civilized, I will probably cut my losses and learn Japanese.
As for my attitude towards White Power music, it is identical to what Dr. William Pierce had to say about it: perhaps it is politically useful, but judged as music it is trash. **
I guess you're not any better than Ted Kennedy then. Racial solidarity and survival must be a primary all-encompasing imperative, or it is useless. Every other race does this. Jews and blacks defend their own no matter what. To even feel one has to justify it on "objective" criteria is to lose the fight. The fact the some white people are bad or do bad things is an internal issue only.
You can learn Japanese but you will never be accepted in their society because your white skin places you outside of the ingroup. Japanese criminals will be afforded more acceptance than you will. That someone who thinks they understand race would say such foolish things is not encouraging.
Thank god there are people in Europe doing productive things for me to send money to.
2003-06-05 02:47 | User Profile
Campion Moore Boru: Avalanche: I believe it goes a little deeper than that. There was always a vein of "Ragnar Redbeard" for loss of a better term, running throughout metal. The Iron Cross was the symbol of metal when I was a punk. With some notable exceptions, including MTV desperately trying to promote black metal musicians, metal always had a characteristically white crowd. How many black fans of Danzig do you think there were/are? But it doesn't MATTER if there's redbeard/blond hair running through it! If it's CRAP "music" -- then it's just NOT 'good' for whites! That nasty, loud, unmusical, pounding-bass, screaming "singers" CRAP is still degrading the listeners! What is uplifting about screaming boys even if they ARE screaming "we love whites."? How is your morality, morale, intelligence, reaching for good and higher and better HELPED by "fake" black/animal music?
**xmetalhead: If the talent and intelligence and honesty of an artist is there and it shines, it must be respected in the least, regardless of genre. ** But HOW can there be talent and intelligence in unmusical "music"? Because the lyrics "speak" to you? Read some d@mned poetry!! I can't see much difference between heavy metal and rap crap -- it's all heavy drums, screeching humans and tortured guitars... why is one any less offensive/objectionable?