New notes and quotes

‘Black Demons: The deception Of The African American Male Criminal Stereotype’

"The news media, for example, have taken the lead in equating young African American males with aggressiveness, lawlessness, and violence.”

“Likewise, the entertainment media have eagerly taken their cue from the journalist, and these false images not only affect race relations but also create achievement can be predetermined for them by suggestions in the media.” 

Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority

“The genesis of all these attitudes can be traced to American slavery. It was in America, in the ‘Land of the Free’ that Africans were chained and branded, both physically and psychologically, as subhuman beasts.”

“Blacks, who’ve been conditioned to expect less from people who look like themselves, automatically insert these high profile black achievers into the ‘exceptional expectation’ file.”

Chang, J. (2005). Can't stop, won't stop: A history of the hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin's Press.

“’Keeping it real’ has become just another fad word. It sounds cute. But it has been pimped and perverted. It ain’t about keeping it real. It’s about keeping it right”

Charnas, D. (2010). The big payback: The history of the business of hip-hop. New York, NY: New American Library.

“When America desegregated, the music business itself remained one of the most segregated industries in the country.”

Chuck, D., Jah, Y. (1998). Fight the Power: Rap, Race and Reality. Delta 

“For too long I’ve felt that this art form is tossed aside as a Ghetto game for black youth and that limited opinion is ignorant” 

Dates, J., Barlow, W. (1993). Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media. Howard University Press

Historian Joseph Boskins statement – “To make the black man into an object of laughter, and conversely, to force him to devise laughter, was to strip him from masculinity, dignity and self-respect”

Dyson, M. E. (2004). The Michael Eric Dyson reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books.

“hip-hop culture, to the chagrin of a whole lot of black folk, has literally darkened the face – some would say given it a black eye – of popular music”

Gangster Rap and its social cost: Exploiting hiphop and using racial stereotypes to entertain America

“Other observers have asserted that hip hop is the result of young people’s being locked out of the American economic mainstream.”

“The belief that one’s actions are more important than one’s words originated in the gang peace dialogue and became a core value of hip hop.”

Ghansah, R. (2013). When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative. LARB

“In the summer of 1945, Ralph Ellison wrote a review of Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy’, Wright’s semiautobiographical novel about his tough boyhood in Mississippi. In Ellison’s piece he suggested that ‘Black Boy’ is shaped more by the blues tradition”

Hip Hop matters: politics, pop culture, and the struggle for the soul of a movement

“Significantly, the event was arranged because there was a genuine fear that the already violent feud between Ja Rule and his chief nemesis, superstar rapper 50 cent, was spiralling toward another hip hop tragedy."

Hip-Hop revolution: The culture and politics of rap

“The popular fixation of black people as criminal, lazy, witless miscreants in American popular culture has been well documented.”

M.K. Asante – It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip Hop Generation

‘Post-hip-hop is an assertion of agency that encapsulates this generation’s broad range of abilities, ideals, and ideas, as well as incorporates recent social advances and movements’

Politics in Rap

“Upon mention that Eminem was white, Dr. Dre famously remarked, “I don’t care if he’s purple, as long as he can rap.” His defense of Eminem’s ability in light of his race is notable: Hip-hop, a predominantly African American genre with ever-increasing nationwide popularity, presents a valuable opportunity to examine how racial tension still manifests itself.

     Pulse of the People: Political Rap Music and Black Politics

  ‘Clearly, Hip-Hop has a strong relationship with political and social issues’

Rose, T. (2008). The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters. Basic Civitas Books.

“if the late Tupac Shakur were a newly signed artist today, I believe he’d likely be considered a socially conscious rapper and thus relegated to the margins of the commercial hip-hop field”

Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics

 ‘Perry defines rap realism as rap that is chiefly concerned with the social conditions of (black) working-class (urban life)’

Suspicion Nation (Trayvon Martin)

“Historian David Levering summarizes it:  “Whites commit crimes but blacks are criminals.” While whites can and do commit a great deal of minor and major crimes, the race as a whole is never tainted by those acts.  But when blacks violate the law, all members of the race are considered suspect.

The Black Male Handbook” A Blueprint For Life

“I had grown up fatherless, reared by a poor young black woman in Jersey City. My concept of manhood, of black manhood specifically, had been shaped by the absent dad and the destructive images I saw all about me: street hustlers, thieves, pimps, numbers runners, drug dealers, and bootleg preachers who seemed to have more interest in our meagre earnings than our souls”

The impact of rap and hiphop music on American youth

“It is from Big Pun’s “Brave In the Heart” lyrics that affect the minds of young Americans by telling them that they must use violence in order to win or survive.”

“Ever since the rise of rap and hip-hop music, teens have been turning to them to help solve their problems. However, these kinds of music can be very destructive to teens. It is not the youth’s fault, it is the content that the music contains”

The Socialist’s Journal: The Effects of Rap Music

“Rap music is different from other kinds of music. Stylistically it is distinct from all other vocal music in that the artists are speaking rather than singing the words to the songs. That is the surface difference though.”