Essay 2: Gender, Race, and Ackright: How We Oppress Ourselves Notes: As we conti

Question

Essay 2: Gender, Race, and Ackright: How We Oppress Ourselves

Notes:

     As we continue to move forward in the course, we are starting to change the subject from strictly an issue of race, and have shifted to the subject of sex, and the system behind “gender roles.”

     Now, I want to move the class into the subject of current pop culture, specifically in regards to Hip Hop, and focus on ideas of sexuality (both physically and physiologically) and gender roles within the hip-hop community/aesthetic.

     The next essay that we are reading for this week is by the Journalist/Feminist Activist/Teacher/Satirist, Joan Morgan. I feel like this assignment is important because I love hip-hop (among a couple other genres), but I am constantly confronted with the issue of misogyny and the oppression of the female body. Because of that, I think we should write about it. So first, read this excerpt:

“From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos” Joan Morgan

     This essay is an excerpt from her book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks Down (1999), where Morgan continues to discuss different themes regarding gender and race oppression, or the perpetuation of hatred and death with each chapter of the book.

     BUT one thing that we should keep in mind as we read this very stimulating article, is that it is somewhat outdated. Yes the themes of systematic racial oppression in America that she discusses, and the violence embedded in hip-hop culture is still very real, BUT there has been a lot of change in tastes and trends since this book was written in ’99; that’s almost 20 years of scene evolution! And, although a person could probably still argue that hip-hop contains themes consistent with those that Morgan discusses, in 2017 the climate has changed, and people of all genders, races, orientations and creeds are demanding equality.  

     For this week, I want you guys to use a combination of the essays that we’ve read so far, and also information and data that you collect from an outside source. You don’t have to use the Library Databases (yet!), but you will be using the internet to research some magazines, and draw conclusions about what you see/read.

Recommended Websites (if you read something that's not on this list, you can use that too):

Vibe

Urb

Complex

XXL

Source

Your Writing Assignment:

Survey the current issues of several magazines aimed at fans of rap music. Look through their front pages, make note of the ads, the images and themes of the websites, and the types of articles that they are hosting on their homepages.

What images do they present of women, men, and human relationships? How often do they reflect the themes that Morgan discusses? How often do they contradict the themes that Morgan is discussing? What other themes and patterns do you find? To what extend, if any, have the subjects and attitudes of hip-hop changed since the 1990s? Even still, with all the change, what still needs to change to make the scene even more “equal”?

After your Intro, begin your argument with a discussion of Gender Identity (reference the Devor article), and observe how these “gender roles” play a role in your life and community. Then begin to explore how these types of roles affect the lives of men and women in terms of power structures; in the story of America, who is always the “more powerful” or “head of the household?” This will create a nice springboard for your discussion of gender within hip-hop.

***

Guidelines:

3-4 Pages

MLA Format - Header, 12pt Font, Times New Roman, Double Spaced

Use a reference or direct quote from at least one (1) essay/article that we've read for class, and use two references or direct quotes from (2) different magazines in your research.

Work Cited Page

Explanation / Answer

Misogyny observed in rap music

The themes that Morgan has discussed in her article, don't really seem to fade away even almost after two decades. True, times have changed and so has the perception of people towards women, especially black women in this case, but the gist still remains the same. Women are objectified and made a subject of ridicule. Yes, the situation is not as worse as it was then, women have started to come up as well as rap artists who embrace their se-xuality. As an example, if you search for the top 50 best rap magazine covers, we find only 1 cover in which missy Elliot is being featured. All the rest covers either include Eminem or Notorious Big. There's also one of the covers, published in 1995 though, where we see 'ol' keeping it dirty'- where ol dirty peeks out from the girl's shoulder with his hands pressing her assets. Fortunately, such objectification has been 'mitigated' in the recent years.

It can be said that such lyrics used in rap music is to assert their control over the females, which is not acceptable when the females do. For example, with the advent of an increasing number of women rappers, embracing se-xual lyrics and their se-xuality , there develops a roar, calling THEM hyperse-xual. If the males try using misogyny as jewel opfor selling their records or just as a way to bring out their frustrations, is really not clear. Today, not only black rappers use misogyny, the trend is also being followed by the white rappers, as opposed to Morgan's view, where Eminem continues the trend. In on e of his albums, he has used such lyrics in 11/14 songs, with repeating words like bi-tch and ho. The themes of such songs are so derogatory, that the portray the black women as an object to use, which is greedy, without any sort of self respect and uses se-x as their weapon to get things done.

Such themes did give some fumes at the times of Morgan, but now, with and increase in women's right activities and protests, female artists have started to do the opposite in their music, where they emphasise womanhood. It is not that such lyrics do not cause any impact on a person's mind. A study conducted by Rudman and Lee, "Implicit and Explicit Consequences of Exposure to Violent and Misogynous Rap Music", they have emphasised the attitudes of people towards the blacks. Due to such music, blacks were less likely to get hired for intellectual jobs, and a beginning of a stigma for the black people adding negative attributes to their characters.

Maybe the active impacts of such mipusic is not seen by people, but repeated incorporation of such lyrics in a person's head creates a passive prejudice that requires to be removed before it becomes discrimination.

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