weighing in on imus.

I'm not going to ramble on about this for as long as everyone else seems to be willing to, but someone needs to make the obvious point in response to the backlash on the Don Imus debacle.

What I'm reading in the media everywhere is that the real problem isn't radio personalities making racist statements on the air, and that making this a major issue is a waste of time. What I'm hearing instead is that the real problem is in the perpetuation and commodification of sexist and racist attitudes in the Black community, and especially in hip hop music. To be honest, I've never before read 50 Cent's name so many times in a story so tangentially and tenuously related to music.

The difference is, as much as I agree that there is something poisonous in the self-loathing that I think underlies these images and attitudes, in the music world, comparing Imus to a rapper is a bullshit move. What we are discussing is someone directly insulting a group of students with his racist commentary. He was speaking about individuals. That's a little bit different that a song that suggests disrespect for an abstract group (rarely aimed at all black women, and almost never at a specific few for no reason).

And that is ignoring the very obvious point that music isn't the same thing as talk radio. You can complain that The Velvet Underground encouraged drug use with the song 'Heroin', but if you ask me to believe that I should be madder at him than I am at the guy who is telling people directly to use the stuff, I will have a lot of trouble respecting you.

I have many, many problems with the content of much mainstream hip hop. I agree that the reflection of this in Black culture is something that needs to be addressed (and despite constant reports to the contrary, despite your or my opinions on them, Sharpton and Jackson have been addressing this for years, to far less media attention) but at the same time, I think suggesting that it's hypocritical to go after Imus is a little weak. There are cultural issues that need to be addressed, there is no arguing about that. But suggesting that we shouldn't fight racism in the real world, and instead focus on eradicating it from an art form, is similar to the people who believe that it is more important to fight videogame violence than real violence.

When we start blaming the depictions in art for all of the problems in the real world, we effectively tell parents, educators, and real world role models to give up. Saying that it's hypocritical to ignore sexist and racist arts and aggressively fight racist and sexist behaviour in the real world is saying that art and expression should be limited to what is socially acceptable, because people can't separate reality from depictions. Some of the reasoning behind this is surely based on the authenticity that is a part of hip hop music, the emphasis on these depictions being true to life. I get that. Art is not just supposed to show you how to be. Sometimes it shows you the horrors of how we are. This is where other socialising influences are important. I have good parents, and was raised with boundaries in terms of what behavior was acceptable. I've also listened to Clipse's latest album at least a dozen times, and yet I'm not selling crack.

If I was selling crack, would it make more sense to blame me, or the album?

Blaming the music is no different than blaming the xbox, or the movie, or the comic book. Suggesting that holding people accountable for their statements shouldn't have different rules between art and talk radio (which is essentially opinion broadcast wide) is idiocy.

[For transparency's sake, I should point out that I'm half-Black, and not just rambling about a community I have no connection to, or know nothing about.]

[EDIT: I just realised that I may not be clear to readers who don't listen to much hip hop, than the Clipse album is, in large part, about selling drugs. I was in no way suggesting that this is the defining feature of hip hop.]