Hip-Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women Essay

According to Jennifer Mclune, a writer, activist, and librarian, sexism, and homophobia saturate hip-hop culture and any deviation from these forms of bigotry is made marginal to its most dominant and lucrative expressions. In her article â€Å"Hip hops betrayal of black women† Published on first of July 2006, Mclune is informing and trying to persuade her audience of this generation of teenagers and young adults, also seen as millennials, that hip-hop songs that have these elements of woman-hating, sexism, and homophobia, are basically a normal thing and it should not be because it causes an influence and makes the actions seem like it’s okay to commit rather than seeing it as something offensive. She claims that â€Å"Hip-hop owes its success to the ideology of woman-hating† By this, she means that it creates, perpetuates, and reaps the rewards of objectification. I strongly agree with Mclune she feels that the hip-hop world has degraded women and it became the †norm† so people became blinded so, now it’s time to fight back. To help support my claim, Mclune uses real-life evidence/examples such as song lyrics, another article similar to her topic, and language. First off Mclune starts off addressing Kevin Powell’s ’’ notes of hip-hop heads ’’ and he states how poverty breeds into sexism and that hip-hop is saturated with the past and homophobia. Mclune feels that that’s a way to silence the feminist critiques of the culture. Mclune also states how Powell forgets to mention the fact that women too were raised in the violent and poor environments as men too. Basically, it shouldn’t excuse the fact that men are degrading women through the hip-hop culture. When we as black females need to stand up and gain knowledge on how the hip-hop world participates in women-hating. You have men writing songs about black women pain, but have rappers such as jay-z who has lyrics such as I pimp hard on a trick. In particularly this article written by Sharpley Whiting called †Pimp Up, Ho’s Down† Whiting argues that hip hop’s commercial success is heavily dependent upon young black women. Creating both, this masculine and misogynistic gap in understanding the real complexities of young black women in hip hop’s commercial art. The color prejudice and sexually charged lyrics in a dominated culture, hip-hop. Whiting also states how the millennium generation has grown into the wake of the hip-hop culture, blinded by their unconscious participation, they fail to connect the destruction of feminism in hip-hop, this statement is similar to what Mclune has been saying throughout her article. It is not hip hop itself that has made the uniqueness of its own culture, but it is hip-hop itself that normalizes it. It’s very understandable that the hip-hop world bases their lyrics on real-life situations but the things that are said about such as †gold diggers,† † chicken heads† about women shouldn’t be motioned because it doesn’t do anything but make those situations become the norm. In an article written by Dr. Johnnetta Cole argues in her article that there is a â€Å"war between the sexes†. Also, that hip-hop plays a significant influence on is battle that has been going on since the 60’s. We as black women need to stand our ground for something that we believe in, which is treating us with respect and not degrading us in hip hops music. The sense of impudence toward the woman is being noticed by boys and girls at an early age. Therefore, to them it seems that what is being said and demonstrated in videos is okay. The ruthless and tyrannical gender talk in today’s hip-hop music must be put to rest, but to do that we must chan ge the way we put out our message. Words can be very motivating and inspiring, but you can’t influence someone by humiliating others.