|
|
Confessions of a Hip Hop Racist: Has Hip Hop Replaced Black Culture? by Min. Paul Scott |
|
|
"These are my confessions….. If I gotta tell it, then I gotta tell it all" - Usher They say that you can always remember what you were doing the day that some great historical event took place. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was loungin' on the couch, eating a big bowl of Lucky Charms, watching the Brotha's and Sista's go down the Soul Train Line. Then it happened! Just as Jody Watley was about to sing the hook from the latest Shalamar jam, "Billy Joe Mc Challester" made history as the first white man to desegregate the Soul Train line. As I sat their choking on my Lucky Charms Batman decoder ring secret prize that had fallen into my cereal bowl, a collective chorus of "What tha.....????" echoed throughout my 'hood. After that day, Don Cornelius's ultra-Black benediction of "Peace, Love and Sooooul !!!!!" just didn't sound so funky anymore....... White involvement in Black culture is nothing new. The old folks can tell you about the first time the long haired white dude from Tennessee with the Johnny Bravo sideburns caused mass hysteria when he started singing that "negra music" or when Mick Jagger and tha Stones sang "Time is on my Side" so well that you could have sworn that BB King and Muddy Waters were singing background. But back in those days there was a movement and even though the entertainment industry may have decided to mix vanilla drops in with the chocolate chips, there was still a Black Consciousness Movement that was Black to tha bone. No matter how far you traveled into the Vanilla suburbs, you knew that you could always return to Chocolate City. But today in this Hip Hop Era, Chocolate City has gone neapolitan.. Twenty years after the Beastie Boys cracked the Hip Hop color barrier and 3 years after Eminem tore it out the frame, Black culture stands the risk of being totally replaced by a pseudo cultural Hip Hop with a racially ambiguous identity. Call me a Hip Hop Racist (even though by definition black folks can't be racist because we do not have the economic power...Aw, you know the rest) but I miss the days when we had our own stuff. I miss the days that I could walk down the street and proudly wear my Bart Simpson "It's a Black Thang, You Wouldn't understand" T-Shirt. And as a matter of full disclosure, Yes, I did stand up and cheer when Hillman College finally kicked the two white kids out of the historically Black college on a "A Different World!" As Afrikan people, we should "do us" and let others "do them". We should guard Hip Hop like the good ol boys guard Honky Tonk. You have never even seen Rev. Al and Rev. Jesse roll up on the Grand Ol Opry trying to force integration. Even the one token Black country singer, Charlie Pride didn't make any waves. He always had that "runaway slave/just glad to be here" look on his face. I mean, it's not like he got some Brotha's together to bumrush Hee Haw and give Buck Owens a beat down for not having enough Brotha's on the show. Nor did he diss the purity of Southern womanhood by making a video surrounded by Southern Belles in daisy dukes seductively grindin' against him in a cotton field. Even today you don't see Xibit going down to NASCAR trying to pimp one of the good ol boy's stock cars. Some things are just sacred. For many, Hip Hop has become more than just a "culture" it has become an ethnic group. I would not be a bit surprised if the next census listed Hip Hop as a separate racial category. This identification with Hip Hop as a race is highly problematic in a society that has taught Black people over the years to hate themselves. We would rather be anything than Black. I remember the tongue lashing that Pops gave me when I proudly marched into the living room and announced that because of my recent discover that my great great grandmother was part Cherokee I denounced my Africaness and now wished to be called Little Chief Pop-Along-Kid. If there was ever a need for an Afrikan consciousness, it is now! With the Black on Black violence, high incarceration rate, an ever present educational divide, we are in serious need of 5,000 Watts of PFunk (uncut funk, tha bomb.) I don't think that there is anything wrong today with even the most wayward Black youth that a shot of 1000 milligrams of straight Black nationalism won't cure. If the Brotha's and Sista's in Hip Hop knew that there was a "Black Watch Movement" watching them, they would not carry on the way that they do. I just can't see Killa O Dog on stage rappin' about shootin' another Black Brother if the Power to the People Party was in the audience glaring at him. Nor, do I believe that Sexxx Kitten could perform " Let's Get Butt Naked and ##$$" after Soul Sista Nzinga has just ripped the stage with her version of "Ode to Assata.' Because the Hip Hop Nation has been so separated from the Black Nation, we must develop some sort of "foreign exchange program.” The Black Nation must send "Black Power Missionaries" into the Hip Hop Nation and the Hip Hop Nation must send Hip Hop Goodwill Ambassadors into the Black Nation. The Hip Hop Headz must start visiting more Afrocentric websites such as LIBradio.com, Thetalkingdrum.com and Harambeeradio.org. The Afrocentric community must start visiting websites like Allhip.com and Daveyd.com to keep up with the latest happenings in the world of Hip Hop. If we do this, we would indeed have the best of both worlds. But as of now, Hip Hop has a major identity crisis, not sure if it wants to be Malik Zulu Shabazz or Clarence Thomas, George Clinton or Lionel Richie, militant Lil Michael from Good Times or Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. In 2005, Hip Hop Headz must answer the question that Curtis Mayfield asked back in tha day. "If you had a choice of colors? Which one would you be my brother?" The future of our race depends on your answer. Minister Paul Scott represents
|
||
