This past weekend, Thomas Chatterton Williams, a graduate student at NYU, had an op-ed in the WaPo called Black Culture Beyond Hip-Hop which argues that for most Americans “hip-hop culture is black culture” and that the culture’s “misogynistic, violent and nihilistic” nature poses “the most formidable obstacle to success and equality in the black middle classes.”
Except that Williams is clearly talking about a specific type of hip-hop:
Born in the projects of the South Bronx, tweaked to its gangsta form in the ‘hoods of South Central Los Angeles and dumbed down unconscionably in the ghettos of the “Dirty South” (the original Confederate states, minus Missouri and Kentucky)…
Anybody who knows the genre knows that is true about some hip-hop, but not all hip-hop. 50 Cent is not k-os.
And I’m a little dubious that black culture as a whole is caught in “the python-grip of hip-hop.” I live in the Washington-Baltimore area, and I don’t find that to be universally true of the African Americans I know.
Finally, I’m pretty sure that the notion that academic achievement is to be looked down on as “acting white” precedes hip-hop by years. For example, this study quotes a 1986 work that states:
‘‘[African Americans] began to doubt their own intellectual ability, began to define academic success as white people’s prerogative, and began to discourage their peers, perhaps unconsciously, from emulating white people in academic striving, i.e., from ‘acting white’’’
It also points to Franklin Frazier’s 1957 book Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class in the United States as a work that accused upwardly mobile blacks as “selling out.”
On Davey D‘s site, he has an article from NyceStylez called “Black Culture & Hip-Hop: One & the Same?” which challenges this “myth.” Her argument is that hip-hop is a part of black culture, but is also universal in nature.
Hip-Hop has always been its own culture. Not all of the fathers and godfathers of Hip-Hop were African-American. The original breakers were black and hispanic. The first graff writer, Taki, was Greek. Speaking of graff, Seen isn’t black. I could go on and on, but it would be quite long and boring, so I’ll just stop here with my point that Hip-Hop was composed of different races, different ethnic groups, different styles, and different cultures. Hip-Hop still is composed of all these things, as well as different age groups, different nationalities, and straight up different people.
Of course — even after we ignore who is actually buying all of these records — the other questions are: Has crime in the black community increased since the rise of hip-hop? Doesn’t seem so. Has the rate of education and achievement decreased? Doesn’t look like it.
I’m not arguing that hip-hop is always or often a positive influence. I’m asking where is the sweeping cultural plague?
One Response
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Stephanie Says:
I saw Thomas Chatterton Williams on Tony Brown (a public television show that’s been on the air for years), I had not heard of him before. But, it seems, he is stating that, generally speaking, far too many African Americans are not in a position (academically speaking, and to some degree culturally) to compete in the world as it changes, and things do not seem to be getting better in that regard.
He also seems to suggest that Hip Hop culture is identified as the epitome of black culture (being black), when it is not. In other words, if you asked someone to identify black culture (someone not black) that person would more than likely point to hip hop, and possibly the black church as if this is all we are. Bottom line, we’re not fairly represented for our differences. That’s what I got from him…I could be wrong. But basically, I tend to agree that African Americans (as a group) seem to be losing ground, in terms of being able to compete in the global economy… Just a few random thoughts.