Quote:
Originally Posted by Marie Monday
I'm very ignorant when it comes to hiphop, but:
- taking the bad with the good does not mean you're excusing or ignoring the bad. It just means that a lot of great art (especially of the past) happens to have bigotry issues, but that it would be a pity not to recognise and enjoy it in spite of that. You can condemn the bigoted aspect at the same time, and it's also important to distinguish between bigotry being adjacent or central to the art. The same thing applies to many old novels for instance and I bet that adi has enjoyed reading some of those in spite of their issues just like I have. I feel like people tend to be more critical of these issues in genres of art they don't like much.
- complaining that hiphop gets special treatment in writing off bigotry issues is just plain nonsense. Trollheart pointed to metal, and there are countless other white subcultures (many sports for instance) where the same applies. In fact, I feel like hiphop may even get criticised more harshly than other subcultures for its depiction of women and sexuality, from racist motives
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Yeah, see, I have to apologize for harping on about this issue in this way, but I think it's helpful to try and make a comparison with racism and see how there is a double standard at play. Try to imagine a white rapper having a song where one of the verses speaks about how black people are bad and they should all go back to Africa or something (set to a really dope beat of course). I think that that one "little" verse would be a
whole lot more difficult to ignore by anyone than an anti-gay verse is. Still. And how many people would be coming here and saying, yeah sure, he's racist and that verse is terrible and hateful
but his music is still dope etc? I mean, apart from racists of course.
And yeah there are racist musicians in all sorts of genres, but I can't think of one that enjoys or enjoyed massive popularity and topped the charts with overtly racist lyrics in the past 70+ years (unlike the DMX song which topped charts less than 20 years ago and
still isn't really considered problematic).
Btw, I honestly can't think of anything I read that was overtly hateful towards anything that I actually enjoyed (although I have read and enjoyed books by authors who went on to write some hateful things, like Celine for example).
I think Charles hits the nail on the head there, and of course I understand partly the reasons why Afro-American culture is more conservative and why there is this insistence on hypermasculinity by people who have been oppressed and abused for centuries. But I come to the problem from an outsider's and rather neutral perspective. And maybe naively think that everyone should be held to the same standards.