Hip-Hop and White America

I have been thinking a lot about the Don Imus scandal lately. While I realize this is somewhat of a delayed reaction, it actually sort of fits a pattern in the way I experience news and politics, especially when this "news" or political intrigue has to do with popular culture or celebrity gossip. I normally find ways to ignore these delectable items of news (and so resist formulating opinions on them) while they are firmly in the limelight, but as soon as they have faded into the woodwork and disappeared from the Internet news headlines, I begin to reflect on these events I had somehow managed to ignore. So I have been thinking about the Don Imus scandal lately, and especially about the recent flurry of attention being given to racist and sexist lyrics in rap music. And the one thing I have reflected upon the most is the use of the word "nigger" in rap music and other forms of black American art and culture.

The use of the word "nigger" in predominately black hip-hop and rap music seems to be something that everyone has a strong opinion about, even to the point of making it a pseudo- political issue. I have never really had a problem with the common use of the word by black singers, musicians, rappers, and other black cultural figures, simply because much of the music and art that employs the word comes from a strong sense of hardship and persecution, whether from the back-breaking poverty of inner-city ghettos or at the hands of a bigoted, privileged white society. The word "nigger" is a direct symbol of this racist persecution and a reminder of black Americans' heritage of hardship, and the event of a persecuted group taking the very word that is a symbol of their persecution and turning it into something positive is not an unprecedented incident at all. The gay population of the eighties and nineties warped the derogatory term "queer", long used an an insult against gay and lesbian individuals, into a positive word of pride and encouragement, and the white, working-class, urban youth of '60's and '70's Europe twisted the insulting "punk" into a word that would define them and their culture for decades to come. To me, it seems only logical that a group as persecuted as black Americans would create some sort of culture from the decades of bigotry they have had to endure.

Unfortunately for my argument, though, it is hard to disagree with the fact that hip-hop has moved from the street corners and inner cities of black America into the dorm rooms, car stereos, and boomboxes of thousands of white, middle class youth. And it is apparent that many of these middle-class white youth have adopted the norms of black culture as their mantra, thus once again finding a way to incorporate the word "nigger", hurtful rather than empowering on their lips, into a white society cleansed of that kind of language by Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. It is just this kind of paradox that led Don Imus to say the deplorable things he did, and just the same kind of paradox that allows rural, white America to idolize black rappers and comedians, while still displaying a frightening level of day-to-day racism and fear of minorities.