Reading While Black

A few blogs have celebrated their one year anniversary, and I realize that mine has come and gone, but I’ve been rather quiet to justify celebrating it. But anyways, as I browsed What About Our Daughters? my eye fell on a post about Genarlow Wilson (if you don’t know, he was a 17 yr old black teen convicted of child molestation for engaging in oral sex with a fifteen yr old) whose true topic broke my heart.

ALL KIERRA Johnson wanted for her Sweet Sixteen was to wear a fancy blue gown and learn to walk in heels… It all came to an abrupt end March 7 when Kierra, of East Germantown, was found dead, half-naked on an exercise bench in the basement of a teenage boy’s house, her body covered in vomit.

–Philadelphia Daily News

I was filled with so much sorrow over this girl’s death, I wanted to cry. And if you knew me, you would know that I’m rarely moved to tears. Not because I don’t find things sad, I just want to do something when something gets me. But when read this article, I could have cried anywhere–in public, in front of strangers, anywhere. Kierra was obviously looking for love and affection in all the wrong places and her search for it ended in her lonely, brutal death.

I was just so sad as I went about my daily duties, so I flipped on the radio. I generally listen to anything, but Top 40 radio is a good old standby, but as I flipped stations and heard all of these rap and hip-hop songs, I was filled with just…disgust. Listening to the lyrics, really listening to them, made me want to vomit. It was these sort of songs, songs that glorify sex, drugs and the thug-life that influenced those boys to do what they did and for Kierra to feel so unloved that she needed to seek it from other people.

I’m a 90s baby, but I’m still young enough to remember when hip-hop became commercialized and when the corporate world began to package it as a “lifestyle” for black Americans–and how black Americans have gobbled it up for the past fifteen to twenty years. I’ve never been a person to blame any form of music for everyone’s behavoir, but what you choose to listen to does show what type of person you are. I am a witness to how the mainstream hip-hop culture has degraded black men and women into thinking that is a sign of blackness, that young boys become men based on how quickly they can lose their virginity, how many women they can pull, and just out and out disrespect for the black woman all for the sake of trying to gain some sort of status in a world they’ve been acculturated to feel has it in for them. How this “culture” has made young black girls feel the only way they can get a man is to have sex with him, to entice him by her body and little clothing, and that having his baby will keep him.

Slow jams and r&b songs about getting it on are pretty much standards in the urban music field, but they were also tempered by genuine love songs, songs about hope, and joy and peace. When I click on the radio, if the song isn’t about just getting some, it’s about “my wo/man cheated on me” or “you ain’t no good” or variations of the theme. The average rap song is just chock full of pseudo-masculine pursuits concerning guns, girls, cars and cash. No mention of loving and accepting yourself, of hope, of joy, of overcoming adversity. And it’s just gotten worse, even comparing the class of 2008 with my graduating class.

Which is a reason why I detest the Black Dagger Brotherhood and the appropriation of hip-hop for the male characters. Non-black Americans will never experience the same acculturation from hip-hop as black Americans (those non-blacks who were raised in the ‘hood only receive the brunt end of the stick regarding class, not race), so for Ward to characterize her vampires with hip-hop music and culture, without needing to experience or acknowledge the negativity and degradation, as well as the pain that goes into hip-hop, offends me deeply. The fact that she, as a white American, buys into the notion that hip-hop=masculinity just…astounds and wounds me as a black activist who struggles with what it means to be black, as well as deal with the wounds the mainstream hip-hop culture has dealt the male and female relatives of my generation.

So next time you listen to a rap song, or a hip-hop song, stop and ask yourself what message this song is sending, what is the agenda behind it, and the possible consequences of it?