The movement that young black women and their mothers and grandmothers are bringing to challenge the spiritual bilge of the worst of hip hop is clearly the most important American cultural movement of this new century.
It reveals that black women have begun to break away from all of the conventions that button their lips when they find themselves disturbed by rap's demeaning lyrics and videos.
The regular defense of the worst of hip hop is that these images should be accepted because they provide a way for black men at the bottom to become successful. An additional aspect of this defense is that young men are making so much money one should not mess with the flow of the dough. The next defense is that anything that makes money is good - especially if it is not illegal. At the end of the argument is the manipulative racial ploy that black people should not use "white" standards to attack something that comes out of the neighborhood, that arrives from black street culture. This last point has been far too successful for far too long among middle-class blacks, who are often made to feel as if they have lost contact with their roots and should never question anything "authentically" black, lower class and street.
Illness kept me from a panel discussion Tuesday on the images of women in rap. (It was presented by the Center for Communication - www.cencom.org - at the Fashion Institute of Technology.) I wanted to be there because every one of these "defenses" needs to be refuted. But according to Michaela angela Davis, an editor from Essence magazine, the audience included some younger black women who see nothing wrong with what isgoing on in rap. Such women do not think there is anything wrong with the images of black women as sluts, scantily clad nubile meat.
There were those who even likened the rap videos to what is seen in the behavior of Paris Hilton or on "Girls Gone Wild," with white college women exhibiting all kinds of nude, lewd and dubious behavior. That was countered by arguments that black women at the bottom are not in college and will not get degrees or move into affluent lives by embracing the street ethos.
I surely missed something, but it seems like some young people are missing even more.
Yes - outside of race, it disturbs me GREATLY how our culture treats women just in general. We have little respect for women in this culture. And if you are growing up and coming of age with all this stuff going on I can see how you will end up getting hurt, because you get conflicting ideas and therefore an identity crisis
And of course the "black" community mirrors that and it festers and is in many ways even worse.
What is super hard to take is that young women will be hurt the most - They will reach 30 or 40 or 50 and say "Geez - I was exploited" etc.
Posted: Wed 30 Mar 2005 23:09 Post subject: Something About A Boy
I remember getting sucked into this really cute movie called "About a Boy" Hugh Grant is in it and it's definitely a "Chick Flick".
I was in an adjacent room to the television that had been left on. I had no idea what was on but it sounded like it was some movie. Suddenly, I hear this young British boy shouting "Shake your ASS! Show me whatcha got! Show me whatcha workin' with!" I thought to myself, what the heck kind of movie is this? Why would anyone give lines like this to a child to say? I left the table and went into the family room to see what was going on before turning the channel from this rude movie. The scene that I walk in on involved the young foul mouthed boy around 11 or 12 being approached by older teens who asked him if he was alright after his apparent "fit". It turned out that this boy wasn't very popular and was simply trying to fit in with the crowd. He thought that he could show everyone how cool he was by these antics. The boy explained to the teens "This is what black people listen to in America!" The teens still didn't seem too impressed. These rap lyrics were so absurd that I thought the writers made up a rap parody for this scene. It turns out that this is a real song!!! Anyhow, I got drawn into the movie. It wasn't as bad as I thought.
I don't like being associated with this garbage.
Here's some trivia:
The directors of this movie are Chris and Paul Weitz. These men are the sons of Susan Kohner who played the white mulatto daughter Sara Jane in the 1959 version of Imitation of Life.
Joined: 18 Feb 2005 {Posts: 7 } Location: California
Posted: Fri 01 Apr 2005 17:20 Post subject:
Ms. Powell,
Thank you for sharing, I wish I could have been in the room to listen in on this discussion also. With a nine year old going on 13 , I feel like I'm fighting all these messages she receives and I'm so scared for her, I keep reminding myself that I was a teen from 84-90 living in the Washington DC area, with go-go music, crack and HIV being some of the detriments to my age group. I survived with less than half the love, support and encouragement that I'm trying to give my daughter. I pray that it will sustain her! When she sees these images I remind her that these are grown woman who made the choice to dance and dress like this, and that it is something that she will have to decide for herself once she is a woman, not as a young girl and not as a teenager.
Mixedmom,
I know your daughter is a little older than my daughter, but what are you telling her and how do you explain these things to her???
I guess this is a question for all, what are your suggestions for raising daughters or sons for that matter in this environment that tells them this is what is cool, this is what you do to be accepted, this is the way to dress. Especially for multiracial children who are made to feel like they have to choose! And that this is being African American! This is keeping it real! My 3rd grader comes home from school and tells me about outfits that kids are wearing at school that I wouldn't wear out with the girls for a night on the town!
We moved from Gaithersburg, MD to Columbia, MD. I grew up in Prince Georges County so I know how the Washington DC area is.
My daughter is 11 years old. She's going through a "black is cool" fad right now. What I mean by this is, in her eyes, black girls are tough, they dress well, they have shapely butts where white girls have flat butts. (YES, these are some of the topics up for discussion in my daughter's 5th grade peer group.) I reminded her that she was more white than black since I'm mixed and her father is white. She use to like country music. Now, she says that she likes rap music.
One night, her father and I sat down and watched rap videos with her. We commented on the styles of clothing and the images that we saw. We had an opportunity to tell her that a lot of what was being glorified in many of these videos were negative things that should make anyone involved ashamed. The lewd dancing was discussed. The violent images were discussed. She was slightly embarrassed to have us watching this stuff with her and she even lost interest in watching the videos. She opted for Animal Planet. Usually, her television viewing is limited to Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, and the Cartoon Network.
We also encourage (er, I mean force) her to read. We regularly take trips to Borders Books. On our last visit, I bought her a nice hardback copy of "Because of Winn Dixie". She's been wanting to see this movie (about a cute little dog). I told her that she had to read the book first so that she could compare the written work to the screen version. I told her that the book would give her the story with a lot more details and better character development. Then I explained what I meant by all of this. You just can't cram all of this into a one and a half hour movie because movies, especially the ones targeted at children, must be edited so that it's not too long. I've been buying Nancy Drew books from Sam's club. They're a great price, you can get a pack of 5 books for $9.98. They have all 56 books in the hardback yellow cover series. These same books at Borders Books are almost $5 each!
Some of my daughter's friends that she met at school exhibit some characteristics that my husband and I find questionable. They aren't bad people but they're into gossiping and talking about people. We're doing what we think is best to steer our daughter away from this. She'll want to talk on the phone with her girlfriends and as soon as she starts in with what sounds like gossip, her father and I tell her it's time to get off the phone and do something else. We then tell her that she was gossiping. "But I just want to get the story straight" she'll protest. Her father or I will then tell her that the story is irrelevant in the end because what you're talking about is meaningless when the story doesn't involve anything worth talking about in the first place. This is not to say that Naomi's buying into all of this. In fact, at her age, she probably isn't. She still feels that it's important to "get the story straight" none the less. But at least Miss Jabber Jaws knows that she's gossiping and that we've had another opportunity to tell her that gossiping is bad.
I took my daughter over to the slumber party of one of her friends. I was suppose to pick my daughter up in the morning by 10:00 am. At 9:30 am, my daughter called and said that she was invited to a church function at her friend's church in the afternoon. She wanted to stay there instead of coming home. After talking to the girl's mother to see what was going on, I told her that she could go but she still had to come home and I'd bring her back later in time ride with them to the church. Later that afternoon, the girl called my daughter and told her that they'd be leaving soon for the church, she told my daughter that her mother had called from the beauty parlor and said that she'd be leaving there shortly and would be home soon. I still didn't like it that the mother wasn't home yet but I decided to take her over to the girl's house. We didn't leave our house right away though. I didn't feel like I had to rush since the mother wasn't home. We left 20 minutes after the girl called. The mother still hadn't yet arrived home from her hair appointment so I decided to stay and wait for the mother to return. I wanted to see just how long it would be for this woman to return. IT WAS OVER AN HOUR before the mother actually returned. Supposedly, there was an older brother in his twenties (I never actually saw him) at home with the younger children. He stayed in his basement bedroom with the door shut. During the wait, the girl (who is my daughter's age) and her 12 year old brother, and another friend who came over decided to watch BET. These girls squealed with excitement over some of the rap "artists" that came on. I commented to the girls about what we were watching. One girl would say "OHH he's SOOO CUTE!!!" I'd look at the knucklehead on the screen with plaits all over his head going in every direction sneering at the camera trying to look so tough. I'd ask the girls questions like "Why do you think THAT guy is cute? Can't he at least smile? He looks like he wants to kill someone! Is that the kind of boyfriend that you'd want? Then, the dancing started. I watched these girls do the type of dancing that they were obviously learning from these videos. My daughter wouldn't dance. Maybe it was because I was there watching. Her friends tried to encourage her to try a move like this (they'd show her) but she was just too bashful. I asked her later why she didn't dance. She told me that she doesn't know how to dance as well as the other girls and she felt embarrassed. I told the girls that Naomi wasn't allowed to watch rap videos because so many of them showed lewd dancing and had language in them that was not appropriate for children their age. With the videos playing, it wasn't hard to point out to the girls what I was talking about.
I've had open discussions about this with my daughter. I try to make her comfortable enough to have a dialog with me rather than me just preaching at her. I've overheard my husband doing the same. I've denied many of my daughter's requests to go to the skating rink with some of her other friends because these girls (an 11 year old and a 10 year old) are merely dropped off under the "supervision" of their 13 year old older brother and since I know that the mother won't be there the whole time, I've said no. I've explained to her that she will NOT be dropped off at the skating rink without adult supervision. She finally quit asking. This is probably a good way to curb some of the peer pressure that she'll no doubt encounter.
Currently, I'm looking to get my daughter and myself involved in a sewing class being taught at a near by Joanne's Fabric. Naomi, my daughter, has asked for a sewing machine and neither of us know how to sew. These machines look so intimidating to me. I think we should take lessons before buying one.
In my opinion, I feel that a lot of negative peer pressure and influences can be curbed by my husband and me occupying and/or influencing most of my daughter's free time versus leaving her to her own demise.
Joined: 18 Feb 2005 {Posts: 7 } Location: California
Posted: Mon 04 Apr 2005 16:22 Post subject:
I do agree with you 100% about occupying unused or unscheduled time, I see all too often children left alone in my neighborhood, looking for something to get into and that something usually isn't good!
The community that we now live in has an excellent community resource center with activities going on all the time for families and children, I let her go through and see what she might be interested in and get her signed up, she (Deja) just finished her 3rd year of basketball and has started volleyball, I'm going to be coaching her volleyball team and I think this will give me another opportunity to stay connected with her and nurture the lines of communication.
Thank you so much for you help and suggestions, they are greatly appreciated.
And by the way I moved from Charles County, MD just last year and now live in the Los Angeles area. We could have a whole other discussion on the huge population of multiracial families and children in the Maryland area.
I'm going to be coaching her volleyball team and I think this will give me another opportunity to stay connected with her and nurture the lines of communication.
You are so right about that, plus the two of you are going to have a ball together! (no pun intended)
Naomi and I took a bellydancing class together from April '04 to December '04. We had a great time going to the fabric store and buying pretty sheer material for our veils. We got our coin scarves and zeils (the finger cymbals). This experience broadened our appreciation for Middle Eastern music. We also got to learn some things about the history and customs about this part of the world. I learned that bellydancing is an art originating in ancient Egypt. It goes back 5000 years! The routines that we learned were folksy type dances with a feminine touch and very classy.
I thought more about what you said in your earlier post about the influences from your daughter's peers to "keep it real". I'm sure there are many African-American families who steer their children away from these influences by doing the things that you've mentioned doing with your daughter. I told my daughter that I am her "black roots" and therefore I'm the one who authenticates her claim to blackness. I think that information regarding appropriate ethnic expression should be defined by the family. When outsiders start telling our children something different, our children will be able to sort out fact from fiction. Anyone who REFUSES to do their best in school (and elsewhere) and blames their self-inflicted problems on others is their own worst enemy. It doesn't get anymore REAL than that!
I once had a conversation with a white co-worker. He told me about a conversation he had with a black female friend who lives with her black husband and children in an upscale all black neighborhood in Prince Georges County MD. I believe this neighborhood is in Upper Marlboro. The neighbors began to notice some thuggish-looking black teens with their boom boxes, loud talking, foul language and sloppy manner of dress who were not from that neighborhood playing basketball on their neighborhood courts. They didn't want this element around nor did they want their children to mingle with them and get the "lost sheep's" idea of what black is "suppose" to be. The black parents in this neighborhood were all too familiar with this undesirable element within the black community and didn't want this in the community that they were creating for their black children. These are the black parents who saw many of their peers fall to this element and end up nowhere near their potential, or in jail or even dead. They'd be damned before letting their children even get started on this path. They knew the devastating effect these outsiders would have on their children and these parents didn't want their parental nurturing to become undone. The community took action. They took down the hoops, not just the nets and made the court unusable for basketball. It didn't take long for these unwanted visitors to move on.
You moved from Charles County? My uncle and his family moved from Waldorf about three years ago. He said that his neighborhood was being overrun with drug dealers. The area looks like a nice quiet townhouse community but it's being built up at a phenomenal rate. They now live in Virginia.
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, I feel like I'm fighting all these messages she receives and I'm so scared for her, I keep reminding myself that I was a teen from 84-90 living in the Washington DC area, with go-go music, crack and HIV being some of the detriments to my age group. I survived with less than half the love, support and encouragement that I'm trying to give my daughter. I pray that it will sustain her! When she sees these images I remind her that these are grown woman who made the choice to dance and dress like this, and that it is something that she will have to decide for herself once she is a woman, not as a young girl and not as a teenager.
Usually, her television viewing is limited to Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, and the Cartoon Network.