Black people in America have a long history of being marginalized and muted by the larger society. Often screaming to be acknowledged but rarely heard, many blacks had given up on the political system, believing that it was never intended to represent people of African descent.
The power elite, now more than ever, rules America. Power rests in the hands of a small group of individuals in society. Most Americans, regardless of color, do not have access to the power network and are therefore among the powerless. African-Americans have never been allowed access to the power structure of America.
When it came to gaining the right to vote, Blacks did not have a friend in “The Great Emancipator.” Even as the Civil War was ending and President Lincoln was developing his Reconstruction plan, his plan excluded Blacks from participation in voting and holding office. Lincoln stated plainly that he was not in favor of giving Blacks citizenship. Even in Lincoln’s final speech, given four days before his death, Lincoln said that he preferred that only the very intelligent and the Union soldiers who were Black should be given the right to vote.
Things looked as though they were making a promising turn for African-Americans in the political arena during the Reconstruction era. With the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed Blacks the right to vote, Blacks began the process of political mobilization to take advantage of their newly granted right to enfranchisement. Under federal military occupation of the South over 700,000 Blacks were added to the voting rolls. This allowed numerous African-Americans to be elected Senators and Representatives. The “Force Bills” of 1870-71 provided for federal troops to protect Black voters at the polls.
Even during this unprecedented time of enfranchisement for Blacks, many obstacles were placed in their path to voting rights. Clandestine white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces, and the Knights of the White Camellia used fear and intimidation to keep African-Americans from voting. In addition, Black Codes were enacted to restrict African-American civil rights. The Black Codes reduced Blacks to a state of pseudo-freedom. With the Black Codes firmly entrenched in the South, Blacks were bound to a life without political rights and restricted social and legal possibilities.
The progressive times unfortunately did not last long. By 1876, Black supporters in Congress, most notably Senator Charles Sumner and Representative Thaddeus Stevens, had passed away leaving a vacuum of civil rights champions within the Republican Party to support the rights of Black people. Shortly afterwards, the Republican Party began to abandon African-Americans. The election of 1876, between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, provided the perfect opportunity for the party to sever its ties and they took full advantage of it. The results of the election had Democrat Samuel J. Tilden winning the popular vote, but there were disputes over the accuracy of electoral votes several southern and western states. In 1877, in order to settle the dispute over who would be the new American president, the two parties agreed upon the Compromise of 1877.
In the Compromise, Blacks were the only ones who were compromised. Hayes would be awarded the presidency and in return, federal troops would be withdrawn from the South and Southerners would be awarded more federal jobs. Hayes obliged to the compromise, which effectively ended military protection for Blacks in the South and returned the Southern Blacks to a state of virtual slavery.
The presidential election of 1932 marked the first time that African-Americans overwhelmingly decided to jump party lines and voted for Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt instead of their traditional backing of the Republican Party. This was seen as a major shift in political ideology because since the Civil War, Blacks had seen the Republican Party as the emancipation party and they remained loyal to the memory of the years gone past. In truth however, after the Compromise of 1877 Blacks did not have a political party that had their best interest in mind. The Republican Party embraced a new agenda, while the Democrats would like nothing more than to keep their old agenda, which was to strip Blacks of their rights and keep them in a state of bondage. In backing Roosevelt, African-Americans pledged a “vote for bread and butter instead of for the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”
Before the 2008 Election, it was easy to argue that utilizing the right to vote does not improve the status of Blacks in American society because the candidates of the major political parties do not share African-Americans needs and interests at heart. Both parties have pimped Black votes in the past without benefiting the Black community in the end. The trail of broken promises has left its footprints on the concrete leading out of the Black community.
With the prospect of having an African-American president, black voters turned out in record numbers at the polls. According to a CNN Exit Poll for 2008, Black voters comprised 13 percent of turnout on Election Day. Obama won 96 percent of the Black vote.
Obama’s ability to connect with young voters was a significant asset in his campaign. Obama utilized social networking websites to attract young voters. He attracted two million "friends" on Facebook, and he drew 90 million viewers to his video presentations on YouTube.
There were 6.3 million African-American citizens and 5.6 million citizens age 18-29 during the election. According to CIRCLE, the leading monitor of youth voting trends in the United States, of the 44 million total citizens 18-29 years old in the US, around 23 million voted on November 4, an increase of around 3.4 million as compared with 2004. Of that 23 million, 16 million of them voted for Obama. At least 52 percent of eligible voters under 30 participated in the election, up from 48 percent in 2004. In addition, forty-five percent of 18-to-29 years-old African-American voters and 61 percent of 18-to-29 year-old Latino voters cast their ballots for the first time during the election.
Hip-Hop proved it had the ability to influence people to register to vote during the 2004 election. P-Diddy (Citizen’s Change) and Russell Simmons (Hip-Hop Summit) utilized their influence to urge young Americans to vote. The Vote or Die campaign helped to draw an increase of 4.6 million 18-30 year old voters in 2004. More than 1.2 million young people registered to vote through the Rock the Vote campaign. The Hip-Hop Caucus held massive voter registration drives. All of these organizations helped to increase the youth vote in that election.
Hip-Hop came out in mass support for Obama during the 2008 election. Artists such as Common, Jay-Z, Nas, Kayne West, T.I., and Bow Wow, as well as record executives Russell Simmons, P-Diddy, and Kevin Liles all publicly endorsed Obama. The election also marked the first time rap artists Young Jeezy, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Juelz Santana, Jin, Soulja Boy Tell’em, T.I. and Maino cast a vote.
The social significance of the Hip-Hop generation’s voter turnout is enormous. For the first time, young people have definitive proof that their vote counts and the knowledge of this fact can help to galvanize the youth vote for future elections. Black people also have the statistics that prove that when we come out in masses to vote, we can make a difference. Future Presidential candidates will have to learn to communicate and connect with the youth voters utilizing the numerous technological resources that young people use in their daily lives. Meanwhile, the 2008 election has also marked the coming-of-age of the Hip-Hop vote, and if we can band together in a political coalition, we can force future candidates to address the needs of our community in their campaign agenda.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Rise of West Indian Culture and Influence on Brooklyn Hip-Hop
Hip-Hop music is an outgrowth of the rhythms and toasting traditions of Reggae music. The large Carribean communities in boroughs of New York brought with them the musical stylings of the Islands that they emigrated from. The borough that had the largest concentration of West Indian immigrants was Brooklyn, and Brooklyn Hip-Hop artists benefitted greatly from the influence of Reggae music.
The influx of West Indians into the United States is based, in part, in the Post World War II Immigration laws of Britain. A labor shortage after World War II led many employers to recruit job candidates from former British colonies. By 1948, Britain passed the Nationality Act, which offered British citizenship to all subjects of its colonial Empire. This led to an influx of immigrants into Britain, which included many from the West Indies.
Britain’s economy grew stronger after World War II, with the national income almost doubling by the end of the war. Which the British economy thriving, many Jamaicans migrated to Britain for economic reasons.
The democratic-socialist government of Michael Manley halted the economic growth of Jamaica, stopping its push toward industrialization. While the country tried to decide whether to push forward with industrialization or remain an agricultural society, the economy faltered. Without a distribution of wealth, many Jamaicans were left without access to property. In 1961, the year before independence, 10 percent of the population owned 64 percent of the land and this pattern continued to grow in the 1970s. The standard of living declined due to economic inflation and low salaries. By 1975, unemployment rates in Jamaicans hovered around 25%. The poor economic conditions led to the exodus of nearly half of all Jamaican professional from the island. During this period, Jamaica suffered from a "brain drain," losing perhaps as much as 40% of its middle class.
The mass migration began in the 1960s, after the US government relaxed the strict quota laws that restricted the movement of non-Western Europeans into the United States in 1965. The 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act changed the U.S. immigration policy and, inadvertently, opened the way for a surge in immigration from the Caribbean. During the mid to later 1970s, a wave of Jamaican immigrants flooded into New York. This was initiated mostly by the tightening of British immigration laws in the mid 1960s.
As the Caribbean migration to the United States progressed, many migrants settled in large urban settings with the majority settling in New York and Florida. The boroughs of New York became the biggest recipient of West Indian immigrants, which Brooklyn being the largest of all. It was in this setting where the Reggae movement and the Hip-Hop movement meshed and grew together.
Clive Campbell a.k.a Kool Herc, Hip-Hop’s acknowledged founding father, was born in Jamaica on April 16, 1955 and emigrated to the Bronx in 1967. It was Herc’s knowledge of Reggae music that led to his incorporation of breakbeats into the hip-hop scene. Jamaican records are recorded with dub versions, which is an instrumental version of the song. Herc knew that the instrumental break, or rhythm section of a song was the part that people liked to dance to, so he mixed two copies of the same record together to extend the break. So the Jamaican influence of Hip-Hop was evident from the very infantile stages of the music’s roots.
Hip-hop and reggae have a lot in common. Both developed out of a poverty stricken environment. Both created a counter-culture movement that was influenced by the environment it grew out of. Both grew to embrace social maladies that were outgrowths of the social conditions that they were formed in, i.e. drugs, sexual exploitation and violence. Both forms of music were able to grow without a true infrastructure during its infancy, and because of this, they both relied on the underground networks of music sharing and street marketing. Reggae music and Hip-Hop grew in the streets. DJ’s spread the music throughout communities using their mobile sound systems. Both benefited from a mixtape type of music sharing that helped spread the music from community to community.
While many prominent Hip-Hop artists such as KRS-One, Heavy D, and The Fugees have been heavily influenced by Reggae music, the influence of Reggae music on Brooklyn Hip-Hop is also quite evident. Whereas Hip-Hop artists from the Bronx clearly acknowledge the Reggae roots of the music, nowhere is it more apparent in the sound than in Brooklyn. Brooklyn rap artists such as The Notorious B.I.G., Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Shyne, Busta Rhymes, Mos Def, Chubb Rock, Jeru tha Damaja and Special Ed all displayed heavy Reggae influences in their music. Hip-Hop owes a huge debt of gratitude to Reggae music, and nowhere has the contribution of Reggae music to the genre been more apparent than the borough of Brooklyn.
The influx of West Indians into the United States is based, in part, in the Post World War II Immigration laws of Britain. A labor shortage after World War II led many employers to recruit job candidates from former British colonies. By 1948, Britain passed the Nationality Act, which offered British citizenship to all subjects of its colonial Empire. This led to an influx of immigrants into Britain, which included many from the West Indies.
Britain’s economy grew stronger after World War II, with the national income almost doubling by the end of the war. Which the British economy thriving, many Jamaicans migrated to Britain for economic reasons.
The democratic-socialist government of Michael Manley halted the economic growth of Jamaica, stopping its push toward industrialization. While the country tried to decide whether to push forward with industrialization or remain an agricultural society, the economy faltered. Without a distribution of wealth, many Jamaicans were left without access to property. In 1961, the year before independence, 10 percent of the population owned 64 percent of the land and this pattern continued to grow in the 1970s. The standard of living declined due to economic inflation and low salaries. By 1975, unemployment rates in Jamaicans hovered around 25%. The poor economic conditions led to the exodus of nearly half of all Jamaican professional from the island. During this period, Jamaica suffered from a "brain drain," losing perhaps as much as 40% of its middle class.
The mass migration began in the 1960s, after the US government relaxed the strict quota laws that restricted the movement of non-Western Europeans into the United States in 1965. The 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act changed the U.S. immigration policy and, inadvertently, opened the way for a surge in immigration from the Caribbean. During the mid to later 1970s, a wave of Jamaican immigrants flooded into New York. This was initiated mostly by the tightening of British immigration laws in the mid 1960s.
As the Caribbean migration to the United States progressed, many migrants settled in large urban settings with the majority settling in New York and Florida. The boroughs of New York became the biggest recipient of West Indian immigrants, which Brooklyn being the largest of all. It was in this setting where the Reggae movement and the Hip-Hop movement meshed and grew together.
Clive Campbell a.k.a Kool Herc, Hip-Hop’s acknowledged founding father, was born in Jamaica on April 16, 1955 and emigrated to the Bronx in 1967. It was Herc’s knowledge of Reggae music that led to his incorporation of breakbeats into the hip-hop scene. Jamaican records are recorded with dub versions, which is an instrumental version of the song. Herc knew that the instrumental break, or rhythm section of a song was the part that people liked to dance to, so he mixed two copies of the same record together to extend the break. So the Jamaican influence of Hip-Hop was evident from the very infantile stages of the music’s roots.
Hip-hop and reggae have a lot in common. Both developed out of a poverty stricken environment. Both created a counter-culture movement that was influenced by the environment it grew out of. Both grew to embrace social maladies that were outgrowths of the social conditions that they were formed in, i.e. drugs, sexual exploitation and violence. Both forms of music were able to grow without a true infrastructure during its infancy, and because of this, they both relied on the underground networks of music sharing and street marketing. Reggae music and Hip-Hop grew in the streets. DJ’s spread the music throughout communities using their mobile sound systems. Both benefited from a mixtape type of music sharing that helped spread the music from community to community.
While many prominent Hip-Hop artists such as KRS-One, Heavy D, and The Fugees have been heavily influenced by Reggae music, the influence of Reggae music on Brooklyn Hip-Hop is also quite evident. Whereas Hip-Hop artists from the Bronx clearly acknowledge the Reggae roots of the music, nowhere is it more apparent in the sound than in Brooklyn. Brooklyn rap artists such as The Notorious B.I.G., Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Shyne, Busta Rhymes, Mos Def, Chubb Rock, Jeru tha Damaja and Special Ed all displayed heavy Reggae influences in their music. Hip-Hop owes a huge debt of gratitude to Reggae music, and nowhere has the contribution of Reggae music to the genre been more apparent than the borough of Brooklyn.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Big Sell Out: The Embrace of Conformity in Hip-Hop
Society is filled with individuals who conform to the rule of the majority. Many would rather transform their actions to fall in line with the collective masses than to exercise their individualistic beliefs. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that we live in a modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority. It appears that nowhere is this more apparent than in today’s Hip-hop music.
It appears that long gone are the days of the golden era of Hip-hop when the music was as diverse as the artists who recorded it. We can categorize the differences in the ways that the music moved us: the party grooves of Doug E. Fresh and Heavy D; the socially conscious philosophies of Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions; the hypnotic lyrical flow of Rakim and Big Daddy Kane; the funny storytelling rhymes of Bizmarkie and Slick Rick; and the juxtaposed feminine perspective of Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte.
Today the music has regressed into complete lyrical anomie. The majority of artists embrace a counter-culture of norms and ideals. Artists promote violence as a vice to be glorified and yet lack the maturity to accept responsibility for its effect on our community. By no means do I blame the artists for the social ills that they write about, America’s demons are rooted much deeper than the Hip-hop culture, but it is negligible to perpetuate criminality and sell it as art.
In truth, many rap artists who write about criminality, drugs, and pimpin’ do not participate in the lifestyle that they claim to embrace. The decision to conform with the view of the masses is dictated by record sales and the pressure to produce profits. Artists often jump on what is currently selling and abandon personal ideals and beliefs in order to be accepted by the masses. Many choose to follow comfort rather than conviction. Hip-Hop music is a sound that is heavily influenced by the inner-city streets and artists feel an obligation to “keep it real”, which ultimately means to keep the identity of one’s behavior, attitude and sound in tune with that of the streets. During the mid to late ‘80s, Black power, pride and self-awareness dominated the rap music landscape. Essentially, it became cool to have Black pride and it was the “in” thing to rhyme about. Being Black was “keepin’ it real.” With the rise of NWA in the late ‘80s, the gangster mentality took center stage and thus became the focal point of the industry.
African-American men have traditionally been emasculated by a society that says that in order to be respected as a man you must have money, power, and status, and yet, the power structure plays the gatekeeper that blocks his access to those same ideals. Alienated and frustrated, young Black men thus become fixated on attaining these ideals with a “by any means necessary” type of zeal. This has led to high rates of incarceration of Black males. Perhaps, for African-American males the biggest effect of conforming to the dominant society’s values and image of success can be measured by what has to be sacrificed in order to attain it.
The stereotype of the uneducated rapper has been overplayed in our society. The reality is that there are many rap artists who have college degrees, or at least have some level of college education. But until we stop conforming to the stereotype of what a rapper is suppose to be, we will continue to undervalue our worth to the Hip-Hop community, and thus limit the opportunity to take the art form to the next level.
It appears that long gone are the days of the golden era of Hip-hop when the music was as diverse as the artists who recorded it. We can categorize the differences in the ways that the music moved us: the party grooves of Doug E. Fresh and Heavy D; the socially conscious philosophies of Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions; the hypnotic lyrical flow of Rakim and Big Daddy Kane; the funny storytelling rhymes of Bizmarkie and Slick Rick; and the juxtaposed feminine perspective of Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte.
Today the music has regressed into complete lyrical anomie. The majority of artists embrace a counter-culture of norms and ideals. Artists promote violence as a vice to be glorified and yet lack the maturity to accept responsibility for its effect on our community. By no means do I blame the artists for the social ills that they write about, America’s demons are rooted much deeper than the Hip-hop culture, but it is negligible to perpetuate criminality and sell it as art.
In truth, many rap artists who write about criminality, drugs, and pimpin’ do not participate in the lifestyle that they claim to embrace. The decision to conform with the view of the masses is dictated by record sales and the pressure to produce profits. Artists often jump on what is currently selling and abandon personal ideals and beliefs in order to be accepted by the masses. Many choose to follow comfort rather than conviction. Hip-Hop music is a sound that is heavily influenced by the inner-city streets and artists feel an obligation to “keep it real”, which ultimately means to keep the identity of one’s behavior, attitude and sound in tune with that of the streets. During the mid to late ‘80s, Black power, pride and self-awareness dominated the rap music landscape. Essentially, it became cool to have Black pride and it was the “in” thing to rhyme about. Being Black was “keepin’ it real.” With the rise of NWA in the late ‘80s, the gangster mentality took center stage and thus became the focal point of the industry.
African-American men have traditionally been emasculated by a society that says that in order to be respected as a man you must have money, power, and status, and yet, the power structure plays the gatekeeper that blocks his access to those same ideals. Alienated and frustrated, young Black men thus become fixated on attaining these ideals with a “by any means necessary” type of zeal. This has led to high rates of incarceration of Black males. Perhaps, for African-American males the biggest effect of conforming to the dominant society’s values and image of success can be measured by what has to be sacrificed in order to attain it.
The stereotype of the uneducated rapper has been overplayed in our society. The reality is that there are many rap artists who have college degrees, or at least have some level of college education. But until we stop conforming to the stereotype of what a rapper is suppose to be, we will continue to undervalue our worth to the Hip-Hop community, and thus limit the opportunity to take the art form to the next level.
A Call to Action
What gives us the right to be mediocre? Everyone has reason or purpose for his or her existence. We should strive for excellence, so that if we miss our mark, we still wind up being extraordinary. We cannot allow ourselves to embrace the banality of mediocrity. Our children have to get beyond the mind-set that being smart is un-cool. We need to challenge ourselves to raise the bar of achievement. According to a 2008 report prepared by the Federal Project in Education Research Center, almost half of all public high school students in the fifty largest cities in the US fail to graduate. The national high school graduation rate is only 70 percent. Through the promise of our newly elected President, I hope that our youth become motivated to seek higher ground and raise their level of academic achievement.
I am proud of President Barack Obama and what his achievement means to the greater African-American community, but we need to hold him, as well as ourselves, accountable for what we do from this day forward. Will we press to re-commit ourselves to serving the greater good of our community, or will we follow a path of recalcitrance and ignore our responsibility to be productive members of our society?
We can no longer afford to be detached from the responsibility for our own personal actions and the affect it has on the greater community. Without accountability we cannot have order, and without order we have anarchy. Our communities have been victimized by anarchic behavior due to the lack of accountability at every level of our society. We cannot glorify street life and then not accept a level of responsibility for its actions. It is time for our music to stop reporting the problems of our society and begin offering solutions.
Although we have lost much do to the brutal effects of racism, does seems as though we are beginning to redeem the time. It took over 400 years to end slavery in the US, an additional 100 years to gain civil rights, and only an additional 40 years to get an African-American elected as President. As we move forward, what will be our enduring legacy from this day on? We have officially run out of excuses for a lack of progress. We can no longer blame “The Man” for our shortcomings because the headman in charge is one of us.
Hip-Hop now stands in a position to take the lead in pushing a new agenda among our youth and being the vote of change in our communities. In its ability to influence young people to vote, Hip-Hop has proven that it has the ability to affect change and lead people to positive outcomes. Let’s begin to take that initiative to ebb the tide of hopelessness and advocate the virtue of social progress.
I am proud of President Barack Obama and what his achievement means to the greater African-American community, but we need to hold him, as well as ourselves, accountable for what we do from this day forward. Will we press to re-commit ourselves to serving the greater good of our community, or will we follow a path of recalcitrance and ignore our responsibility to be productive members of our society?
We can no longer afford to be detached from the responsibility for our own personal actions and the affect it has on the greater community. Without accountability we cannot have order, and without order we have anarchy. Our communities have been victimized by anarchic behavior due to the lack of accountability at every level of our society. We cannot glorify street life and then not accept a level of responsibility for its actions. It is time for our music to stop reporting the problems of our society and begin offering solutions.
Although we have lost much do to the brutal effects of racism, does seems as though we are beginning to redeem the time. It took over 400 years to end slavery in the US, an additional 100 years to gain civil rights, and only an additional 40 years to get an African-American elected as President. As we move forward, what will be our enduring legacy from this day on? We have officially run out of excuses for a lack of progress. We can no longer blame “The Man” for our shortcomings because the headman in charge is one of us.
Hip-Hop now stands in a position to take the lead in pushing a new agenda among our youth and being the vote of change in our communities. In its ability to influence young people to vote, Hip-Hop has proven that it has the ability to affect change and lead people to positive outcomes. Let’s begin to take that initiative to ebb the tide of hopelessness and advocate the virtue of social progress.
President Obama and the Hip-Hop Nation
With the Inauguration of President Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, America is indeed entering a new phase of its history. The stench of the dirty laundry of its racist past has wafted from the beginning of the African slave trade into the 21st century. The thought of America electing an African-American as president was unimaginable fifty years ago, unthinkable twenty years ago, and improbable ten years ago. President Obama's appeal has reached across gender, racial, generational, and party lines. During the election, Obama scored big with the Hip-Hop generation voters. His "Change" campaign slogan appeared to galvanize the masses and invigorate the youth. But what effect will his presidency have on the Hip-Hop Nation?
Hip-Hop music at its core has always seen the world through a political and social lens. Songs like Fearless Four’s “Problems of the World Today”, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message”, Run-DMC’s “It’s Like That” and Divine Sounds’ “What People Do For Money” all addressed social issues that ate at the core of the African-American community, while artists like Public Enemy, Paris and KRS-ONE wrote songs that spoke from a political perspective. Now we have elected a President who has a political agenda that focuses primarily on re-knitting the social fabric of our society. How will the Hip-Hop community respond to the social paradigm shift? Will we begin to see artists move toward recording more positive and uplifting social commentary? Some have called Hip-Hop the “Black CNN” because of its ability to speak on the ills of our society. But why is our music so unevenly represented toward negativity?
How will the Black Hip-Hop community embrace President Obama during his presidency? Will Hip-Hop give him a “ghetto pass card” or will he be subject to the same scrutinty that other president’s that have preceded him has been subjected to? Obama will be in a very precarious situation. There will be many who will scrutinize every move he makes. They will keep score of every failed objective or slow reform. Nowhere will this be more prominent than outside of the black community. But with many members of the African-American community hanging our hopes on his success, how will we handle his perceived failures? While it is important that we hold the President accountable for his actions while in office, it is equally important that we begin to hold ourselves accountable for our actions from this day forward. As African-American men, it is our mandate that we uphold a higher standard of social responsibility for the benefit of our children.
What will President Obama’s lasting legacy be in the hip-hop culture? Will young African-American males begin to emulate the image of our president instead of the image of a street hustler? We need to recognize that being black is not a singular ideology. Being educated, wearing a business suit, and speaking proper English do not make us less black. Using the same criteria as a barometer for blackness, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Stokley Carmichael, Medgar Evers and many other leaders of the civil rights movement would not be considered black enough by the same standards.
I look forward to the maturation of Hip-Hop music, and while we revel in the thrill of the present, let us begin to pave the way for a new consciousness for tomorrow. In order for us to bring about change we must first change our mindset. So let us be the change that we seek in our society.
Hip-Hop music at its core has always seen the world through a political and social lens. Songs like Fearless Four’s “Problems of the World Today”, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message”, Run-DMC’s “It’s Like That” and Divine Sounds’ “What People Do For Money” all addressed social issues that ate at the core of the African-American community, while artists like Public Enemy, Paris and KRS-ONE wrote songs that spoke from a political perspective. Now we have elected a President who has a political agenda that focuses primarily on re-knitting the social fabric of our society. How will the Hip-Hop community respond to the social paradigm shift? Will we begin to see artists move toward recording more positive and uplifting social commentary? Some have called Hip-Hop the “Black CNN” because of its ability to speak on the ills of our society. But why is our music so unevenly represented toward negativity?
How will the Black Hip-Hop community embrace President Obama during his presidency? Will Hip-Hop give him a “ghetto pass card” or will he be subject to the same scrutinty that other president’s that have preceded him has been subjected to? Obama will be in a very precarious situation. There will be many who will scrutinize every move he makes. They will keep score of every failed objective or slow reform. Nowhere will this be more prominent than outside of the black community. But with many members of the African-American community hanging our hopes on his success, how will we handle his perceived failures? While it is important that we hold the President accountable for his actions while in office, it is equally important that we begin to hold ourselves accountable for our actions from this day forward. As African-American men, it is our mandate that we uphold a higher standard of social responsibility for the benefit of our children.
What will President Obama’s lasting legacy be in the hip-hop culture? Will young African-American males begin to emulate the image of our president instead of the image of a street hustler? We need to recognize that being black is not a singular ideology. Being educated, wearing a business suit, and speaking proper English do not make us less black. Using the same criteria as a barometer for blackness, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Stokley Carmichael, Medgar Evers and many other leaders of the civil rights movement would not be considered black enough by the same standards.
I look forward to the maturation of Hip-Hop music, and while we revel in the thrill of the present, let us begin to pave the way for a new consciousness for tomorrow. In order for us to bring about change we must first change our mindset. So let us be the change that we seek in our society.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
