Reply #26: Do Rappers control our Congress, Courts, Corporations? No. White Men Do.

[bread_and_roses]

I don't think that discussing this issue as if there is parity of power between white men - Imus' demographic - and black rappers makes sense. Rappers have a cultural impact, but it is not they writing the laws, setting the prices, building a vast prison state, waging war around the world, exploiting the third world's resources, busting unions, controlling our credit, our wages, our energy, our airwaves. Who is it making sure that something like one in four black men are cycling through jail/prison? And an increasing number of black women?

Who has the greater power to make real the implicit threat in degrading language? Who can put you in jail or deny you an apartment, crdit for a house or a car, a job?

I'm a feminist, I object to the degrading objectification of women in music as well as anywhere else. But I think that we white men and women had best attend to the institutionalized racism and white privlege that benefits us - the beam in our own eyes - before digging for the mote in the eyes of our black brothers and sisters.

edit for "we" and "our"