It's also worth pointing out that about half of the "gangsta rap" albums are bought by suburban white kids.

then

so

I think it probably has a small negative influence. Things like institutional racism and stupid drug laws are orders of magnitudes worse.

BTW, I grew up in Memphis and went to a high school that was 70% black and I know plenty of people of different races who listened to gangsta rap in the late 80s who weren't in gangs and who ended up just fine.

There is a huge segment of white society that glorifies and promotes not only gun ownership, but an archaic notion of self defense that justifies killing people over such transgressions as theft of $100 TV, trespass, and even looking like you are a part of "hip hop culture." Like, real violence over amazingly petty ****. In fact, they are changing laws to make this ok all across the country. But no, Hip Hop is what we should fixate on.

i see. personally i think the influence is bigger than just 'small'. but like you said originally there are plenty of other things that have substantial negative influence on society as a whole and within the black community. and yes institutional racism and drug laws are definitely worse. it is too bad that our politicians haven't done too much to curb such things over the past 20 years, or even the last six. i wonder why :/

That's an interesting theory.

But how would you explain the prevalence of racism among poor rural white people, who aren't in any position to exploit people and, as you acknowledge, have been on the receiving end of exploitation?

Somewhere I recall reading the view that in the antebellum south, since all black people constituted an underclass, even the poorest whites could feel that they at least weren't the lowest class, and that this status was one reason why even non-slave-owning poor whites might protest the end of slavery.

I'm not making any effort to really support the assertion, but it's an interesting idea

Totally ignorant on gangster etc etc all the young music sounds a bit tuneful to me.

but the conversations sounds so much like the one going on when I was young. The music was violent and packed with calls to violence, angry contempt, sex of dubious morality, drugs and devils. At least that was the headline but if you were into the culture it was also packed with social progressiveness, morality, proper anti-drug messages etc.

The culture reflected the problems and helped enable the change. The youth were right to be angry and contemptuous but they were also full of the best of human qualities as well. It was a big +ve as far as I'm concerned and I wonder if the same mistake is being made today.

A stretch, though, especially when trying to apply this rationale to understand racism 200 years and multiple generations later.

I think it's important to distinguish racial oppression from racism. Seems like they're being interchanged freely ITT.

okay? yeah, the us has what i personally (and it appears you do too), an issue concerning gun control that should be explored and fixed, along with one of a culture of violence, and one that is focused against minorities disproportionately as well.

so take it to the gun control thread? your point is only tangentially related, and your overall rant isn't at all.

i think we should address our current gun laws. i also think that imprisoning people for immoral drug laws, which are unfairly racist as a bonus, into private prisons is a bigger deal than the gun debate. i think that murdering foreign civilians in unjust wars is bigger than gun control too. as well as the global relative enslavement of the controlling ultra rich and corrupt.

who cares? the topic of conversation had moved towards the gangster rap / hip hop culture that glorifies misogyny, violence, gang activity, and general ****-all towards what a lot of people would consider a better society.

take your bizarre white people love guns rant somewhere else if you do not wish to engage in any conversation.

I don't think you get to tell people where they can post their thoughts. You're not even a mod!

This is basically it from what I've read. People don't want to be at the bottom rung. If you were a poor Appalachian white person, no matter how poor and ****ty your life was, at least you were better than black people. As things have progressed, too, the rhetoric has shifted to placing blame on minorities for poor white's condition.

Because the "hip hop culture" discussions always have a racial bent to them. The people that bring it up aren't ever worried about white youth becoming "gang bangers." There's always the implication that it is causing black people to be scary and justify white people shooting them. It's racist. White people, and their violent cultural aspects are rarely talked about as having a corrupting influence on society. Here are Johnny Crash's first posts on this:

He is talking about black kids.

The reason this matters is that discussions about "hip hop culture" are used as a dogwhistle. That's why Fox News fixates on this ****, because it resonates with their viewers, who are largely racists. But then people like you come in and legitimize that **** by trying to pretend that it has any value other than to denigrate black people and justify policies that oppress them. It doesn't.

ITT Beyonce glorifies having a nice ass and that's leading to the downfall of black society or something.

Hi, I don't know what any of this has to do with rap music.

There is nothing better than a guy with a username homaging Johnny Cash ripping hip-hop.

My sister once had a relationship end because her boyfriend got super bent out of shape when she pointed out that Cash wasn't some counter culture icon, but basically a pop star. This made her boyfriend so upset that he told her about all the times he cheated on her. Swell guy.

Hip-hop (and art in general) doesn't define a or shape culture, it reflects it, the good and then bad.

So I found a paper that talks about this subject, but focuses on the influences of the interactions between music producers, consumers, and artists:

Augusta National integrated only in recent memory, and it was still an incredibly desirable place to play when segregated.

I don't remember who made the argument more eloquently than I'm about to paraphrase, but one argument that's been made that segregated restaurants would exist if you let them goes like this. There are tons and tons of restaurants out there. They don't necessarily make money by making sure they cater to a maximally broad audience. Some do, like Applebee's and such, but Italian restaurants don't necessarily attempt to cater to the lactose intolerant or folks with Celiacs, and the Rainforest Cafe chain thrives even if tons of people find eating there obnoxious. Many restaurants are successful because they differentiate themselves and make money by catering to a dedicated audience, even if it's a niche one. It's pretty reasonable to think that a restaurant could do well for itself being the one eatery in town where unabashed racists don't have to be bothered by the presence of black people, even if some other people would boycott and/or protest the place. The racists might choose to eat there every time.

No one gets called racist for wanting to end the drug war. It's when people feel compelled to whitewash or apologize for Ron Paul's lengthy history of white supremacy that they get called racist. Hope this helps.

See above.

The Roots are The Tonight Show's house band. That's the state of Hip Hop in America 2014.

So when you say you're against hip-hop culture, you mean you don't like rich black people who keep a high profile?

One could argue that racial tension in this country has produced one of our national treasures, Jazz music, adored by much of the world. I'd argue the same has contrubuted greatly to blues, rock n roll and hip hop. Music has always been a way to deal with hard times. Some of my favorite music was inspired by the turmoil in the 60's, the war in Vietnam, etc. I once joked the war in Iraq/middle east must not be so bad because music these days sucks. Anyway, yeah, I don't blame music for our problems. Like any art form, it's open to the interpretation of the listener.

Of course it is, like duh.

Racial base slavery was wildly profitable, the chain-gang-system was wildly profitable, it's pretty LOLtastical to believe that discrimination pre-civil rights movement wasn't wildly profitable. They are, in fact, direct successors systems, crafted to enrich the same owning class, at societies expense.

As has been pointed out, it's LOLtastical to lump all retail into one giant category, and then use PraxLOLogical 'reasoning' to conclude that reality is physically impossible. Let's (briefly) take restaurants as an example: There's restaurants that specialize in Vegan fare, Halal, only serve road-kill, etc. If it wasn't illegal there would be restaurants that specialize in serving endangered species. All of these can thrive as a niche... the LOLtastical PraxLOLogical non-sense not withstanding.

Catering to racists isn't niche. It's a big business. Of course racist restaurants would be successful. The other part of reality this LOLtastical PraxLOLogical 'reasoning' fails is imagining every restaurant is a stand-alone operation, and the owners only consideration is short term increasing market share. That's simply not the case, a diversified corporation, who profits in other spheres by discrimination, would certainly run their lunch counters in a racist manner, even as a loss-leader. In addition, the owning class doesn't work that way at all... large scale operations always prioritize class solidarity over profits. Every single time.

But it's rather misleading (and insulting) to assume the whole issue is lunch counters. Even if it was lunch counters, it wasn't like people of color weren't able to eat out. Typically they could buy an inferior product to go, and at an increased price. Thus generating a higher profit margin.

The same is true with grocery stores, and is still true today. Typically in areas with high density of people of color, there will be significantly less (or no) mainstream stores. Instead they have to opportunity to purchase inferior products and/or at higher prices from the few retailers that supply those areas... often owned by the same mainstream store corporations. The same effect holds across pretty much all brick&mortar retail segments.

Then we have access to health care... same effect. Or access to housing... same effect. Much more important is access to credit. All the way from major banks 'redlining' on down to payday loan sharks... same effect.

And most important of all... access to work. The inferior product at higher price phenomenon has a special name when it comes to employment... different pay for the same work. It's not really the "we don't serve blacks" sign that causes the most damage... it's the "blacks need not apply" sign.

I'll repeat one more time:

Without being class reductive, it's important to understand racism always has an underlying fundamental class characteristic. Those, like spanktehbadwookie who exclusively focus on mumbo-jumbo like 'inner change' are ignoring this issue. This tends to trivialize it, and enables others to deny this fundamental class dynamic. Racism can never be confronted without taking direct action against this underlying class dynamic... it's too profitable to die otherwise.

Interesting paper, thanks.

So leaving aside the politically impossible (socialist economics or reparations), what policies or programs would remedy “the disadvantaged starting point that blacks face as a group”?