A few months ago, my band was involved in a battle of the bands competition at the Scarlet and Grey Cafe. The majority of contenders were rock bands, but in the midst of the guitar solos, vocal riffs and head banging stood a single hip-hop duo called A-List.
Tha Hafrican and cWeed were the only two rappers to face off against all the other rock bands.
My enthusiasm for their performance waned when I heard Tha Hafrican, who is biracial, spew out some of the most derogatory words and ideas I’d heard in a while.
Repeatedly, the rapper referred to himself as a n—-, and spoke about his love of drinking, chicken and smoking. During one song, he pulled out a large cardboard cut-out of a marijuana blunt and passed it around the crowd.
Most of his fans in the audience were white and they didn’t hesitate to sing along – n-word and all. All I could wonder is what self-respecting black person, biracial or not, could put on such a spectacle that glorifies these black stereotypes and somehow be just dandy with it?
But then I remembered mainstream rap is no different.
On an episode of the “Tyra Banks Show,” Keith Boykin, a black author and speaker, said 70 percent of all rap music is purchased by white males. That statistic bothered me, given the stereotypical nature of most mainstream rap music.
It reinforces old stereotypes of blacks while creating newer ones that are just as degrading. To me, this is like the minstrel shows that were popular during the Reconstruction period where white, and sometimes black, performers would dress in black makeup called “blackface” and take on black stereotypes for the entertainment of white people. But today you don’t need blackface to put on a minstrel show.
Blacks are affected in two ways. Like all stereotypes, people assume if you are black you act, sound and think like those rappers; meaning you’re crass and glorify drugs and violence.
On occasion, college men walk into my job at Moe’s Southwest Grill, where I’m a manager, and call me “g-dog,” “homie” or “player.” But moments later they’ll call one of my white coworkers simply “man” or “dude.”
Rappers commonly call women hos and b—–s, so sometimes people assume because I’m black I do the same. On more than one occasion, I’ve had to tell some of my white friends not to say n—- because it offends me. But they think is it’s OK because they are quoting a rap song and because “black people say it all the time.”
On the other hand, rap music has given society a distorted image of what it means to be black. Being from the ghetto, urban dress and having an inner-city accent have become some of the pre-requisites of being black.
Anyone who defies the criteria is not black enough. And that’s what I’ve been told for years, by blacks and whites, because I have decent grammar and am articulate. My pierced lips, nose, ears and eyebrows and my tendency to wear studded belts and band shirts give people the impression I’m more a rocker than a rapper. But these things don’t define my race or culture.
Unlike the New York City Council, I am not asking for a ban on the word n—er or n—a. I am also not calling for rappers to stop being who they are or be ashamed of where they are from.
But, I think Russell Simmons had the right idea in saying performers have a responsibility for what they put out to their fans. If black people are to ever move beyond these stereotypes, rappers have to stop perpetuating and glamorizing them.
First impressions can be the best deceptions. If people base their first impressions of an entire group on four minutes of a rap video then they are getting the wrong impression.
Jeffrey E. McCants can be reached at [email protected].
