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"I think that they could have made it like a hip hop video without the guns, n-word, or cursing"
if you left out the guns, n-word and cursing it would not be a hip hop video! That's the satire. You can't satire Bush and "edit out" the mangling of the English language. A video without those elements would not be satire.
The fact that folks are so upset by the video is good, but what folks don't realize is that they are really angry at the state of hip hop, not this particular video.
Hey now, it would still be a hip-hop video. :) All hip-hop is not like that, not even all the hip-hop on BET.
But it wouldn't be the particular TYPE of hip-hop this video is meant to satirize. If you edit out those guns, cursing etc. the video would be pointless, like taking all the racism out of Blazing Saddles.
The whole point of having those elements present is to critique them, not endorse or glorify them..
(BTW, hip-hop videos on American MTV and BET actually never have guns in them either, nor any of the profanity in question.. which may be part of why the video is so jarring, in a way it's a more honest visual representation of what those rappers stand for than the rappers ever deliver in their own vids.)
But the point it, Bronze, I'm not sure you get this but the makers of that video are basically agreeing with you.
I have a degree in literature and I can’t figure out what’s being satirized. But, a 13 year old will?
Watching the video, its clear that the message – AGAIN – is “Black people, Hip-hop is the root of all of your problems. It’s the way you dress. The way you dance. Those superficial lyrics. Those beats.”
I hate all this bourgeois posing and hand wringing. Please explain to me what the hell is wrong with Ay Bay Bay – aside from it being a patently horrible, horrible pop/hip hop song??
There has always been a huge compulsive psychological need by the Black Bourgeois to hate on the Black culture that perceive as vestiges of slavery: They are these black folks that continue to take moral responsibility for “bad” black music when white people are equally complicit in the producing, selling, marketing and buying of the crap.
So in defending “read-a-book” crap – and it is crap. Not Don-Imus crap, but crap nonetheless - you are implicitly conceding that, though hip hop is embraced, and supported by the white owners of BET, white, ass-shaking, hip-hopping, A-Bay-Baying BET still maintains the moral gravitas to castigate Hip Hop fans as non-readers – even in jest?
Black children are less likely than their (apparent book reading) peers to have access to decent child care, a two-parent home or extended family structures, financial stability, a caring adult in school, health care, to live past infancy, to reach adulthood. These and other reasons may draw a child to the superficiality of hip-hop, and to other faces that look like them. Yet, it also, unsurprising, may have a negative effect - on their overall reading habits.
One doesn’t cause the other. So, let it go.
Don't get me wrong, I thought there were things in Read A Book that were funny, but then I find a lot of relatively stupid things amusing. The fact that Read a Book has a few moments doesn't make it politically significant, and there's certainly no real satire here. All that video is is a lot of self-satisfied ha-ha about how n-words stink, don't brush their teeth, don't read, shoot guns, etc. Why is anyone acting like these completely common images of black perfidy are so brave and informative?
Again, I agree that CNN's priorities are off, but two stupids don't make a media revolution. This joke was corny when Chris Rock did it (at least he did it first), and it was moronic politics when John Ridley wrote about the awful n-word menace in Esquire. Our conversation about media has become so impoverished that we experience this kind of low-grade poop as "satire"! It's kind of shame, really.
@problemwithcaring, i have several problems with your argument starting with you brandishing a literature degree yet claiming you "can't figure out what's being satirized." If it's that hard to see that this video is satirizing the overly commercial, hyper-masculine, destructive stereotype of black america as portrayed through the eyes of popular rap music, then you need to return that literature degree altogether. you are either being dismissive for the sake of it, or you really need to turn that thing over.
you come in here spewing insults at the site and making WILD claims about a "huge compulsive psychological need by the black bourgeois to hate on black culture" yet you must not have read what the writers here have been putting down. What in the world gives you the idea that we are blaming black culture and black music?
*I* certainly am doing no such thing. You seem to have some pent up problems with people elsewhere because if you've read this site, and definitely if you've read me, you would know that I am not so naive as to confuse black culture with the sale of an aspect of black culture by mostly-white companies.
as I wrote on july 16 here:
"Our art form, hip hop, has become a highly profitable product in the hands of corporations who have skillfully, slyly and selectively sold back to us the most destructive images imaginable. They accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive. They set dysfunctional expectations in the minds of the wider community and ourselves of not just what it means to be black, but what it means to be."
so to answer some of your questions
you say that to be satire, you have to have a target, and you ask "what is the target?"
THAT should be clear, but to be explicit about it. the target is the popular rap imagery being sold to our people, our kids and the world at large. It is the industry (artists, managers, executives and consuming public) that promote an obsession with "purple label" brands, luxury cars, spinning rims, black women's asses, gun violence, drug sales, promiscuity and other vices stereotypically associated with black folks.
when the video loads a gun with a BOOK, that is a revolutionary act. remember those shirts from the 90s? "My Lethal Weapon is My Mind"? Like that.
you want to know what is wrong with A Bay Bay.
I admit I picked that example too quickly as it doesn't come near to being the worst offender. however it is an example of yet another song celebrating nothing. guns, sex, money, cars. Nice and original.
The thing that really saddens me about the knee-jerk negative reaction is that shows like CNN make it very easy to confuse Read a Book with the real problem. The tragedy is that the man behind the song, Bomani Armah, is doing more to help black youth navigate these confusing media images than any of the people criticizing him from a distance. He is a poet. He is an activist. He is a youth counselor who came up in DC. He wrote this piece from a knowledgeable and intelligent perspective, yet when his work is taken out of context (and the context is rap videos), he is vilified.
C'mon now. I find it hard to believe that you actually, really and truly think any part of Read a Book is "revolutionary."
While I absolutely respect where you're coming from and the work you've done on this issue, I also have to politely point out that the above hyperbole is precisely what's wrong with our current national convo about media. I'm sure Bomani Armah's a great cat, I hope Viacom paid him a ton of money, but Read a Book isn't a revolution, it's a viral marketing campaign being used by BET to reshape popular perceptions of the channel. (The fact that this discussion is even happening is proof their money was well spent.)
I understand that part your beef with the CNN segment is that it doesn't understand the video's context, but part of Read a Book's context is 30 years of overblown claims for the revolutionary impact of hip hop, spoken word poetry, popular youth culture and so on. One of the reasons we're in this mess is that a lot of very smart people sold (I use that word deliberately) the claim that hip hop was an inherently revolutionary medium, but 30 years later we're all still waiting. (If anyone got an an actual revolution, it was all the white media consumers who have, in Greg Tate's phrase taken "everything but the burden" from blackness, but that's another thread.)
I would press just a bit, though, and ask exactly what people find particularly original about this video. Bullets into books is a pretty old metaphor going all the way back to, like, Lenin, and every knowledge-minded MC from here to Rakim has referenced it. How does Read a Book substantively advance the Black People vs. Nucca meme that you find the famous Chris Rock skit, or in John Ridley's odious "The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger" or in Chappelle's When Keeping it Real Goes Bad, or Bill Cosby's Poundcake Speech, or in any given Stanley Crouch column?
Or maybe Lauryn Hill who had to "add a Mf'er so you ignorant n*ggas hear me."
I personally had no problem with the video and thought it was overdue. When and where it's played is another thing, but for CNN to create a controversy where there really is none is the real outrage here.
Doesn't anyone find it strange that these brotha's are being drugggg through the mud for "TRYING" to do something positive?
Something must be right in a wrong sort of way, because why so much hate, and for those of us who think CNN isn't hate filled towards us, a few weeks ago they had a post about Micheal Vick and the person presenting the story was hands down stereotyping black children, rap music and our communities every chance he got, it was AWFUL!
My second issue is I do believe I smell a rat, and I'm feeling some old divide and concur.
As we begin to try to unite, CNN is now judging Hip Hop?????
I would like to think that were all smarter then that. Lastly I must say none of us are teens (I don't think). When I was young Doctor Dre, and Snoop were in, and never did they tell me to read a book, if they did I might have done just that. Our society is a violent gun toting, sex having place it's up to us to teach our children, NOT BET.
Your outrage speaks more to your bourgeois angst than any claim I made against *you*. It was not my intention to insult. I was simply responding to the post, stating some credentials, offering an opinion. My momma used to say "a guilty conscience needs no accuser...”
To the heart of the matter, you only asked me one substantive question (took a lot of words to put me in my place, I suppose) that is actually more of a straw-man. You ask:
“What in the world gives you the idea that we are blaming black culture and black music?”
Re-read my comment: I never said that. I am willing to concede that you may not even realize what you are doing in defending the video and calling it revolutionary. (By the way – Ugh.)
By endorsing this video (granted, done in the name of what Armah was TRYING to do), you say you are blaming – oops, I mean satirizing - some thing that is “Black” but that is definitively not, now, a part of you or a part of the “right [black] people.”
The Fallacy is the implication that hip hop is synonymous only with “black culture” and therefore can only and should be the moral responsibility of “our people.”
The satire – your message - is therefore unclear or off-target. It fails. Your “activist” failed. I’m sorry if when people realize that and speak their minds about it, it “saddens” you .
It’s not a bad thing that your activist’s skills are better suited working with youths across the river in Anacostia. They need him more than BET.
let me step through this again for my own sake and maybe other readers. i have a feeling your own position is set, and that's fine by me. I'm not trying to "put you in your place." I'm trying to be clear in the way I know how. This is long.
you wrote phrases like:
"bourgeois angst" and "my momma used to say a 'guilty conscience needs no accuser'
there you go again putting beliefs, emotions and an entire mode of thinking inside of me. and you've done it in what looks to be a very insulting and condescending tone. you think you can find me "guilty" of something here? i find that insulting.
the reason I was defensive vs. your first comment was that you seemed to stray far, far away from what I actually wrote when you said things like "huge compulsive psychological need by the black bourgeois to hate on black culture"
that sounds like you've already had this thought bouncing around in your head for a while and just decided to slap that label on this post, this site or the video or all three. I felt that was a misplaced analysis. There may very well be such a compulsive psychological need, but I doubt you're the one to diagnose it.
you wrote about your literature degree and claimed that even you (implied) could not see the satire, so how could a 13 year old?
that's just too far for me. you're implying that your degree gives you an all-seeing eye able to correctly identify satire. And you're claiming that because YOU didn't get it, neither would a 13 year old. At least that's how it came off. If I am putting extra meaning into your comment, correct me, but that's how it reads to me.
you wrote that you never claimed we are blaming black culture and black music.
really? then why did you bring up:
"hate all this bourgeois posing and hand wringing." and "There has always been a huge compulsive psychological need by the Black Bourgeois to hate on the Black culture [they] perceive as vestiges of slavery"
Since I defended the video, sounds like you're saying I'm part of this bourgeois posing and hand writing, psychological need to "hate on the black culture..."
I admit I skipped over responding to an excellent point you and ebogjonson brought up, namely, does BET really have any credibility in "teaching this lesson" considering its shameful programming tendencies?
That's a great question, and I'm sorry I didn't respond to it. I was a little upset at what sounded like someone claiming I hate my own people and am a poser. To the BET point, I'm just not sure, but my first reaction was a sign of relief that they would air and help create something like Read a Book.
The criticism of the potentially damaging effects of hip hop must come from somewhere. Why not the force that has aided in the destruction? I also do not believe this video alone is enough to address all the issues, and I think a lot of weight is being placed on it to do just that. It is there to spark a thought and plant a seed. It is also there to entertain. Mostly it is playing a part in the conversation using the language of the problem, which is NOT black culture but a big part of what is being SOLD as black culture and hurting, yes, our people.
your point that in defending the video I'm blaming some thing that is "black" but definitely not part of me or the "right black people" is off. I don't really know what you mean and would love for you to try hitting me one more time with your point. I have no image in mind of who the "right black people" are. My only point close to this is that commercial rap selectively showcases an image of black people, a narrow and largely false image, which is destructive. I see a distinction between real black folk and the IMAGES of us in the trifling videos
you wrote:
"The Fallacy is the implication that hip hop is synonymous only with “black culture” and therefore can only and should be the moral responsibility of “our people.”
I am not implying that. Hip hop was born of black culture, yes. That is not my issue. My issue is that hip hop (and I prefer to focus on the commercial rap world specifically) is being SOLD AS black culture. To be black, one must embody the imagery of "Make it Rain" or countless other CARICATURES of blackness.
Also, nowhere have i said or implied that moral responsibility lay ONLY with our people. You are attacking a fallacy of your own creation, because I don't believe that nor have a said it. However, it is OBVIOUS that it is in black people's interest to take moral responsibility for SOME of the damage done by commercial rap and its videos. Are we to wait around for the white executives and teen consumers to realize that black folks are hurting because of the anti-black propaganda machine that is commercial rap videos? I sure hope not.
you wrote:
"I’m sorry if when people realize that and speak their minds about it, it “saddens” you ."
Again, you're putting words in my mouth even when my words were VERY clear. What I said was "The thing that really saddens me about the knee-jerk negative reaction is that shows like CNN make it very easy to confuse Read a Book with the real problem"
In my view, CNN, and specifically Tony Harris, missed the point. They compared Read a Book to SchoolHouse Rock and Sesame Street when they should have compared it to "Make it Rain" or something like it. The "real problem" is not Read a Book. To me, the Real Problem is that Bomani felt the need to pen this song in the first place because of what commercial rap has become. The Real Problem are the expectations of blackness that are being set by people solely interested in making money by selling any image that proves popular.
I understand you are a blogger, but the “words words words” of your overlong manifestos won’t shore up your arguments nearly as well as simply FULLY READING the posts and the comments. Let me ask you to read your own words, and the comments in their entirety before posting a response this time.
Until you do that, this is pointless. Because, all the language I used is your language. Do you ‘member writing:
“The entire presentation of the story was wrong including the use of the black parents who are angry at the video.”
“In the real world, the right people are probably getting the message of "Read a Book.”
“If it's that hard to see [what] this video is satirizing…then you need to return that literature degree altogether.”
"Our art form, hip hop, has become a highly profitable…”
“…the real work that needs to be done [] is to reclaim the images and messages of our people.” ?
If you don’t remember writing all of that then try to keep re-reading my comment, until you start to realize that most of what you are attributing to some sort of personal attack against you was actually aimed at the message of the video.
You say that the language in the video is “NOT black culture but a big part of what is being SOLD as black culture and hurting, yes, our people.”
My point, again, is that: “knee-jerk” embraces, such as the one evident in the post, of so-called satirists like these help to make the sell and reinforce that notion at every turn.
i wrote out another long response, but whatever. It comes down to this. If you don't get the satire, you don't get it. I'm sorry you missed out.
peace
Sometimes Black Bloggers have to be do what African American Intellectuals/College-Educated Minority/Black Middle-Class have to do a lot of: be self-appointed spokespeople for our modern media-infected Racial Politics.
Being the Official Authority on All Things African American probably isn’t a new thing to most of these bloggers: I imagine there’s hardly Black person alive in America who has not, at one point or another, had to explain to some non-black person WHY some things happen in the ghetto or HOW things are done differently there. We educate. We explain. We analyze our ex-'Hoods to illuminate the problems therein.
But sometimes explaining looks like defending. And make no mistake, the New Black Bourgeoisie must strive just as hard as their rap/gangsta counterparts for that coveted Black Authenticity. The quickest way to lose it is to be caught being an apologist for/or ignoring the existence of what is seen as an underlying, undeniable Black Pathology.
So, Black Bloggers are obsessed with Black Pathology. And it makes sense if you think about it:
Pretend your job is to itemize and detail the injustices of White America as perpetuated against Black America. The only substantive way to document the phenomenon is through a straight-up comparison, whereas the statistical success of whites is used as the only barometer of the true Black Burden.
The measured success of the fabled “white counterpart” go-to rationale for the integrationist of the Civil Rights era and now is the gold standard of the New Black Bourgeoisie. Under such a pro-white milieu, is it any wonder, then, that things most associated with “black culture” are the same things that will appear the most problematic and dangerous to Black success?
Even Barack Obama feels the need to get his Bill-Cosby on: They preach to their “brethren” and white folks eat it up and don’t understand the controversy. Their speeches are called “Tough Love,” “Telling it Like It Is,” "Saying What They Don't Want to Hear." The Black people who “don’t get it” simply aren’t as brave as these New Black Bourgeoisies: instead of blaming the white man, poor black folks need to start looking in the mirror.
Uh-huh.
Well, it’s hard for Black Bloggers to toe this line. Blogging isn’t exactly like anchoring for CNN. By nature, it’s a little more “populace.” Black Bloggers have to balance their distaste of America’s Criminal Justice system with their righteous indignation at the existence of “Ay Bay Bay.” From the blogger’s perspective - as a Media Soldier, an image peddler – white privilege is bad, but black buffoonery is worse.
And yet, the New Black Bourgeoisie is in no position to offer a systematic social critique of “black culture” because intellectually, they are so removed from it, they cannot even see it, save through their own jaundiced eyes and motives.
Take for example – the most favorite example: Commercial Rap, or whatever the Black Bourgeoisie and White Negro are calling their ex-love child, Hip Hop. In college, I took a class on Hip Hop - the good, ole “B-Boys”, Common/Talib kind, of course - where these genuflecting 20-somethings sat around and used all of our Edumacation to compare the Hip Hop “movement” to the Harlem Renaissance.
!
Yea. Exactly. So I won’t waste time ridiculing Hip Hop’s past or present “revolutionary” poses. Twenty plus years of “ass-shaking” has defanged even its most marginal of radical postures. (Flavor Flav, anyone?)
On the other end of the spectrum, though, I couldn’t tell you how many urban policy roundtables I’ve attended where people (Black) are hollering that Hip Hop is the root cause, or at least an aggravating factor in, why the African-American (child, especially) will suffers so much as a citizen. In this reasoning, Hip hop is more than emblematic – it’s fully a part of the pathology.
Astute readers will take issue with the false dichotomy. Bill Cosby, Jason Whitlock, Al Sharpton, Baratunde a.k.a. Jack Turner – perhaps they all mean well. But lots of smart, well-meaning people fail to recognize as “American Culture” what they deem “Black Culture.” They confuse and dismiss the patently American, Shreveport-grown, St. Louis-raised, Harlem-bred sounds, images, dispositions, prejudices, and willful-ignorance as Black Pathologies. Basically, they buy the lie that power is selling; Hip-Hop is the domain/responsibility of Black people.
It may seem odd to some that I would disagree with that sentiment in any but the most flippant way. And yet, what if all 18 year-old white girls who grew up in trailer parks were castigated for America’s love affair with Pornography? Everytime a white girls said anything about voyeristic sex, the attacks would start. “Don’t you see what all this Barley Legal and Girls Gone Wild videos are doing to the state of feminism?” the arbiters of femininity would say. “You’re setting us back 100 years!!”
But rational minds would politely chime in: they can’t be held responsible for society's collective, insatiable appetite for Bus Bangs. Whatever the effects of the obvious masochism in Porn, it isn’t something that can be separated out from other cultural rituals and images that reinforce female subordination. Porn can’t be held responsible. And even if it could, that poor 18 year-old white girl is not the agent of porn. It’s the porn procurer – the American citizen – that’s the real criminal.
Yet, all black people are encouraged to Read A Book (And Wear Deodorant and Raise Their Kids) - the implication being, to do that instead of “celebrating” Black pathologies.
Powerful message, indeed.
Even I can admit that there is something extremely comforting in the notion that Black people’s problems are all a manifestation of the “slave mentality” and Blacks can become a part of the American Dream once we overcome our own inadequacies.
I can also admit, it was a little disappointing that after six years of higher education to return to the same notions of American Race Politics that I had solidified way back in the sixth grade after reading Malcolm X: racial parity in American society is something colored people will have to rip away forcefully from White America. But hey, cultivating a new taste in music is a start.
Take away:
Only with increased income, options, and opportunities can we see the kind of “hope” necessary to breed change in desperate communities across America – BLACK, LATINO, WHITE, whatever.
Creating and calling attention to those conditions is the moral responsibility the new Black Bourgeoisie should - but will forever be unwilling to - take up.
How's that for manifesto?