Hip-Hop, Racism, Larry Summers and the National Review
Posted on April 8th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
Those of you who’ve read this blog for some time (or who read Harvard Rules) will know that one of the things that struck me as upsetting about the Larry Summers-Cornell West episode was the criticism West received for making a “rap” album.
I put that in quotes because anyone who listened to the record would know that it wasn’t rap. But even if it was, the attack on West for making that record felt deeply racist to me. If he’d made an album of classical music, would Harvard’s president (and so many outside commentators) have objected? I highly doubt it.
I thought of that undercurrent of racism again when reading this opening line from an article by the National Review’s Rich Lowry about Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick:
It could be an item on a David Letterman Top Ten List of “How to Know Your Mayor is Headed for a Major Scandal” - he’s known as the “Hip-Hop Mayor.”
Hmmm. Well, that’s an interesting connection. Because he’s associated with hip-hop in some way, he’s headed for scandal?
Lowry doesn’t bother to explain the logic, probably because, for himself and many of his readers, it’s self-evident: Hip-hop is generally African-American music, and it’s popularly associated with poor blacks.
So: hip-hop=inner-city black=”headed for scandal.”
Let’s try another equation: Rich Lowry=racist.
9 Responses
4/8/2024 2:31 pm
I see your point - ok, politically, not a smart thing to say…but you’re acting as if race is the only association one is likely to make with hip-hop. How about guns, crime, drugs, and the degradation of women? Racists might not like hip-hop, but a hell of a lot of other people don’t like a lot of hip-hop on the principle that its most popular themes are morally subversive.
4/8/2024 6:01 pm
Um, yes, Richard? Hip-hop artists value their street cred above almost any other asset, and many of them secure and defend it with gunplay. That’s less true in recent years but is a generalization that is borne out easily. Consider the West Coast - East Coast Tupac vs. Biggie Smalls thing, and this passage from the Wikipedia entry:
“Early hip hop has often been credited with helping to reduce inner-city gang violence by replacing physical violence with hip hop battles of dance and artwork. However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related rap during the early 1990s, an emphasis on violence was incorporated, with many rappers boasting about drugs, weapons, misogyny, and violence. While hip hop music now appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of gangsta rap.”
I think it’s fair to say that Cornel was doing something more ‘socially and politically conscious’ than the adulterous mayor was doing during his philandering. On the other hand, yes, NRO is race-baiting with its conflation of a personal-peccadillo scandal and the broader crime world invoked by mentioning ‘hip-hop and scandal’ in the same sentence.
Richard, show us your street cred! Surely you know more about this musical culture than your post implies — or are you the baseball-only New York culture type?
Standing Eagle
4/8/2024 6:03 pm
One of the Wikipedia links is to this thinly argued defense of hip-hop culture, which claims its violence is a media creation. But so are the personae of the artists themselves!
“In 1997, following the murders of rap superstars Tupac and Nortorious B.I.G., the media was bombarding the public more than ever with talk of how rampant the rap violence had become. Critics had warned against the intense rivalry between East Coast and West Coast rappers, and now L.A.-based Tupac and New York-based B.I.G. were both dead. However, industry insiders say that much of the reputed ill will between the two groups had been blown out of proportion by the mainstream media.
” “There’s no East-West feud,” said Chris Muhammad of Relativity Records. “That’s a lie created by the press. All you had with Biggie and ‘Pac was a beef
between two guys. It was nothing beyond that” . . . “But you get the press talking ‘East-West’ and ‘rap war,’ someone on the street believes it, and then you do have problems. It could kill hip-hop.”
” New York Daily News writer David Hinckley also defended the integrity of genre: “Hip-Hop songs come in lullabies and love ballads. Sometimes they strut, sometimes they slash. They comment on life. Sometimes they offend. Very often they’re funny. They’re used to teach the alphabet and to sell orange juice. Whatever killed Tupac and B.I.G., it wasn’t this music.” ”
Perception and reality mingle as always.
Again, does it need to be said that NRO is race-baiting?
NRO is race-baiting. It’s what conservatives do. Why read it?
SE
4/8/2024 11:02 pm
And how about the fact that hip hop is the sort of childish waste of time that any professor who wants to be taken seriously ought to avoid?
4/9/2024 12:26 am
SE,
If the best you got is Tupac and Biggie from 1997….
That statement, “many hip-hop artists defend and secure [their street cred] with gunplay” cries out for some examples more recent than the East-West feud of a decade ago. Kanye West? Eminem? Jay Z?
As to Anon’s comment, well, that’s just silly. One of my professors at Yale, Robert Thompson, was fascinated by the origins of American and African-American music, and would have loved to make a hip-hop album if he’d had any talent for it. (In the early ’80s, he became a hero by inviting the Talking Heads to speak at Yale.)
West has explained that, as a black academic, he feels an obligation to reach out to young people who aren’t likely to hear him and others like him in the prestigious halls of the academy-the same kids who might listen to Tupac or Biggie, for example. He wasn’t trying to impress Harvard peers with that album; he was trying to reach out to black kids with music that, he felt, had a more positive message than some of what they were hearing. (I agree with the comment about degradation of women, by the way.)
If that’s a bad thing for a Harvard professor to be doing, then that’s truly unfortunate.
Oh, and SE, Lowry’s column was carried in the NY Post, which is sort of a must-read down here.
4/9/2024 12:27 am
Oh, and I guess I should say, though I’d rather not have to, that Robert Thompson is white.
4/9/2024 12:28 am
And one final point: Which is more socially valuable, making a hip-hop record with a positive message for black youth, or advising a hedge fund?
I think you could argue it either way, but I don’t think the answer is obvious.
4/9/2024 7:52 am
No contest.
And Anon, yeah, the best I got for examples offhand is Tupac and Biggie. I’m not really very cool.
4/9/2024 10:16 am
SE, that Anon was actually me-I don’t know why it didn’t register. Hope you take the point: Before you start generalizing about rappers and guns…..