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* February 28, 2008 *Contact: *Press Office, 703-875-1271

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*Statement from Hillary Rodham Clinton
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* * "America's prison population has grown at a staggering rate over the
past quarter century. A new report now reveals a staggering and
heart-breaking statistic: One in 100 American adults is currently behind
bars. Our incarceration rate is several times greater than that of any other
developed country. To state it plainly, the 1-in-100 figure represents a
failure of our society at a number of levels. And the cost to our
families, to our communities, and to state budgets to the tune of almost $50
billion are simply too great to bear. Many of those costs are borne
disproportionately by minority communities: One in 15 African American
adults is behind bars, and one in 36 Hispanic adults. We need a President
who will be tough on crime, but smart about it too. A President who will
take innovative steps to ensure our crime policies are reducing crime in the
long run so that we have fewer victims of crime and fewer prisoners. "To
reverse this alarming trend, interventions are needed before crimes are
committed, before offenders are shipped to prison, during their terms of
incarceration, and as they are released and begin to reintegrate themselves
into our communities. I will work to deter crime by re-investing in our
communities, re-invigorating the COPS program, and putting 100,000 new
officers committed to community policing into neighborhoods across America.
Studies have shown that the COPS program deters crime. And I will close the
revolving prison door by reforming our sentencing policies, promoting
effective alternatives to incarceration, and investing in new "second
chance" Reentry Partnership Grants to support reformed offenders and reduce
recidivism. The solutions are within our grasp. What we need now is
leadership, and that's what I'll provide."











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Whitlock Provides Diversion From Imus Issue
Media Laps Up Attack on Black Leadership, Hip Hop
By KEITH T. CLINKSCALES
Sports Commentary

Editor's note: Keith T. Clinkscales is the general manager of ESPN The Magazine and a member of the Founding Team of Vibe Magazine. He is responding to Jason Whitlock columns published by AOL and the Kansas City Star .

Imus Controversy

The mainstream media thanks you, Jason Whitlock. You have provided them with a black-sponsored excuse for the entire Don Imus situation. Thanks to the beautiful diversionary tactic you provided, even Meredith Viera is stepping to Al Sharpton.

Instead of taking this watershed moment in media and culture and honing in on the true cause of the Imus situation, we are now discussing 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and Young Jeezy.

Despite your admonition of Jesse Jackson and Sharpton, the Imus situation has little to do with the African-American fight for true economic and social equality. Imus was and should be a moment to hold a mirror to thousands of media outlets in this country where black America does not have a single voice that decides what gets on, and more importantly, stays on the air.

Jason, your misdirection has given the mainstream media a pair of dancing shoes. For one of the first times in history, black people mattered. Not to the media, but to the advertisers - the true invisible hand of the media marketplace - who spoke loudly and clearly. Procter and Gamble said "no." Then Staples said "no." Then several others followed their lead. They were not hassled by Revs. Sharpton or Jackson. They knew this situation was going to be a no-win for themselves and their shareholders. Eventually, the reverends may have picketed them, but their conscience spoke to them long before picket lines had to.

Jason, for you to question the validity of Vivian Stringer's press conference and to complain about its length speaks does not consider the extraordinary circumstances that she was thrust into as the leader of those young women. To suggest this press conference was some type of recruiting ploy, is as cowardly as the attack that Imus perpetrated in the first place.

Whitlock: 'Imus Irrelevant'
AOL Sports columnist Jason Whitlock takes on
Rev. Al Sharpton over the firing of Don Imus.

The mainstream media also thanks you, Jason because by attacking Sharpton and Jackson you are doing the dirty work that no white person can credibly do. It is such an annoying chore to find enough black journalists around to credibly disseminate the type of disinformation that helps people look away from the real problems and focus on the irrelevant. In the soundbite and headline environment that we live in, it is so easy to reduce the incredibly complex problem of race relations in America to Rev. Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the dreaded influence of Hip Hop. As you watch the talk shows and the internet discussions too much discourse is addressed with this whining phrase ... "what about what the rappers say?"

Advantage: Bigots.

You say that Jesse, Al and Vivian don't have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the "real black folk killas?" While Jesse and Al are not perfect, they have put it on the line year after year for black people. Both have served jail time for their beliefs. Their use of the microphones and the media has been to provide a voice to the voiceless among us. While you may not want them to speak for you, there are many black people who are happy that somebody - anybody - will speak powerfully about their concerns. For every Tawana Brawley reference, you can cite ten Amadou Diallos, Rodney Kings, and Sean Bells. Coach Stringer exists in a world where less than eight percent of college basketball coaches are black women. And often to the detriment of her progress, she has been a consistent supporter of women's athletics while stridently maintaining a pro-black voice.

An individual with elementary knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement would know that in their day, Martin, and certainly Malcolm were not universally loved by their black peers. There were many critics who from the comfort of their critical perches, would high-mindedly discuss their "relevance" and just "who they spoke for." What Martin and Malcolm provided more than anything else was the courage to agitate the system. In the process of agitation, the cleansing forces of righteousness helped America to get to a better place. The agitation is not always pleasant, nor is it rarely universally loved.

You are not agitation. You are flowing with the currents. Black men have an uneasy relationship with the media, from Pacman to Pac, some of it is from their own behavior ... other times they simply "fit the description." You are breaking no new journalistic ground by speaking your version of truth about black men. Your apocalyptic notion of young black men as the "new KKK" again fuels fear, confusion and hatred.

I would agree with you Jason that all is not right with Hip Hop. The fantasy gangsta culture that has been created in the modern hip-hop era is an incredible perversion of the transformative power of Hip Hop culture. You will also get no argument from me that the music and much of the culture has moved into an advanced state of misogyny, and no amount of "I'm just keepin' it real" street excuses can diminish that fact. However, the success of Hip hop music has developed a substantial economy and a unique power that much of the worlds media utilizes for both good and evil.

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To be fair and balanced, you cannot decry the music and the culture without acknowledging that it has created phenomenal opportunities for many young black men and women in entertainment and media, some have become millionaires, many have provided inspiration and leadership to young people. Countless jobs have been created, and the spirit of entrepreneurship has been promulgated by urban lore of companies like Bad Boy, FUBU, Phat Farm and many others. It is fine, and necessary to be critical of hip hop, but since it has provided so much to people like us, I would humbly ask you to utilize your power to transform the game.

As the discussion rages about Imus and the fallout extends into death threats and other equally disconcerting reactions, let's not wrap up the problem in the neat package of hip-hop's culture. Yes, hip-hop has issues, but so does much of our entertainment and media. The body count on the Sopranos continues to climb, yet I hear no one blaming James Gandolfini for the true gangster policy that the United States has in conducting the war in the Middle East. Why not? Tony Soprano is a character, not unlike the Snoop character played by Calvin Broadus or the Jay-Z character played by Shawn Carter. Dragging Dave Chappelle or any other comedian who utilizes words from the magic bag of racial controversy is merely another diversion to the core issue. Could you imagine the New York Times declaring that Bush's war policy is influenced by the Sopranos? ... fuhgedaboutit.

Jason, the fundamental problem that created the Imus situation is a lack of people of color, journalists with your intellect, courage and voice sitting in a seat of power. If there was someone like you in the Imus control rooms or in the executive management of CBS Radio, the response and the consequences would occur internally instead of having to wait for Reverend Sharpton or Jackson to get on the phone. When the American media questions the business need for a diverse staff, this Imus situation is the clear unmitigated answer.

Is rap racist?

Don Imus' shocking comments about the Rutger's women's basketball team were problematic enough on their own, but after the shock jock was fired from both of his jobs, the conversation has evolved -- on talk radio, cable TV and water coolers the world over -- into a discussion of hip-hop culture and rap. The I-Man defended himself by saying that rappers "routinely defame and demean women" and slander them "worse than I ever did." So now, a controversy centered around one man's bad judgment has turned into a public debate about the possible harmful effects of rap music, and whether it is to blame for keeping racist and misogynist imagery and language alive in the public sphere.

We surveyed the cultural commentators we most wanted to hear from to answer the question everyone suddenly wants to ask: Is rap music responsible for promoting racist imagery -- and if so, should there be consequences?

Here's what they had to say.

-- David Marchese

rapIf hip-hop is defined by 50 Cent, Lil Jon and the stuff that's commercial today you might make that argument. But the truth is there are a wide array of hip-hop artists out there -- from MF Doom to Common to Immortal Technique -- who rep other perspectives but who are viewed as either too underground or exceptions to the gangsta rules. The mass media, and much of the adult black and white community, define hip-hop by a narrow prism of attitudes. But the truth is there is no truly "acceptable" hip-hop. People wax nostalgic for the days of PE, Boogie Down Productions, etc., but they forget how much heat those acts and others took for their complicated views of black reality. Hip-hop's vitality is directly related to its rebelliousness. You can tame it if you like (or try to), but whatever the result, it won't be hip-hop.

-- Nelson George, author of "Hip Hop America" and director of "Life Support"

rapRap music, alone, is not responsible for promoting racist imagery. Those who define rap music as such are ignoring a significant part of the music and its artists who focus their music beyond the stereotypical and degrading images of black people that have dominated the entertainment industry throughout American history.

If the question is attempting to address the corporate, commodified and packaged hip-hop music industry, which has helped enrich major record labels and corporate conglomerates, then the answer is no because even within the arena of corporate hip-hop there are rap artists whose music doesn't peddle racist imagery. For example, Lauryn Hill, Public Enemy, the Fugees, Queen Latifah, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West have all created very popular rap music that does not promote racist imagery. The answer to this second question is mixed … yes, the corporate attempt to put hip-hop in a bottle has often relied on racial stereotypes: black men as criminals, pimps and hustlers and black women as oversexed bitches and hos.

So if rap music isn't in and of itself responsible, who should shoulder the blame? Of course individual consumers must bear some responsibility for financially supporting products without criticism. But mostly the onus falls on not the powerless, but the powerful across the board: hip-hop artists who do peddle these images; filmmakers and television producers who create dramas like "The Wire" and animated television shows like "The Boondocks" and stand-up comedy shows that do the same; corporate record executives who turn a blind eye in the interest of the bottom line; radio programming executives who decide what we hear on the airwaves and how often; the Federal Communications Commission for enforcing the law arbitrarily and far too often kissing up to corporate power; our government for failing to take a stand on what we allow our children to be exposed to under the auspices of freedom of speech.

-- Bakari Kitwana, director of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop (www.rapsessions.org) and the author of "The Hip-Hop Generation." He's currently heading a 10-city tour called "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?"

rapYes, rap plays on racist imagery every day, and the more racist it is the more it is defended as authentic and "keepin' it real." Rap's success with young white people (its major market) has a lot to do with being edgy and overly violent and overly sexual. Having black musicians grant them a free pass to use the N-word and speak of black people as gangsters, thugs and amoral criminals is an added benefit. This is a veil on the 21st century minstrel show with the rappers jumping Jim Crow. The most pernicious part of this is the damage done to young black and Hispanic people searching for a strong identity, a sense of who they are in America. Rap's imagery tells them they have a presence in the American mind and media only when the young men are threatening if not violent and dressed like they just got out of prison -- the hip-hop fashion of pants drooping below your underwear as if the jail guards have taken your belt and a do-rag on your head because you don't have a comb and no one sees you in your cell. Rap's imagery for young women of color is also poison: They have a presence only if they are half-naked and gyrating as sex toys for boys. This mix of soft porn, violence and racism is at the heart of rap, both music and video. It makes racism more acceptable and offers excuses for the Imus crowd because they can say they are repeating the language of rap."

-- Juan Williams, author of "Enough -- The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America and What We Can Do About It"

rapLet's examine the question from a certain white male viewpoint.

What's a white man to do, given history?

If Africans had come here as citizens instead of slaves, white men would never have had to argue over their right to be citizens. We wouldn't have to argue about them at all.

If African-Americans hadn't spent over four centuries creating their version of an English many whites found so seductive, intriguing and sexually empowering in ways that only a man can truly understand -- that it was taken into our literature, our theater, our music, our everyday speech and our culture as a whole -- if that hadn't happened, then Don Imus could have insulted black people using our language, not theirs. He could have used Anglo-Saxon English to express his opinion of those Rutgers female athletes. Like "coarse-haired sluts." Or "woolly-headed (that's a term we used to love) wenches." Some say that "jigaboo" is of Scotch or Irish origin. But "wannabe" has traced back to a black man. If African-Americans did not use their own language to mock, criticize and insult themselves, a man like Don Imus might not have to go on believing they deserve to be mocked, criticized and insulted.

Now Don Imus has lost his job. He can no longer earn a good living by using a language of insults that African-Americans invented. But certain African-Americans can go on using this language to earn very good livings.

No African-American has ever had the right to earn more money insulting black people -- black women in this case -- than a white man. And so it is essential that the blame be placed back where it belongs: on African-Americans.

Would racism even exist if they had refused to come to America in the first place?

-- Margo Jefferson, author of "On Michael Jackson"

rapLike most media junkies/media workers in America I spent most of last week wondering if Imus would bite the dust behind calling a group of African-American athletes kinky-haired so and so's. In the process I too learned that [Rutger's women's basketball coach] C. Vivian Stringer and her team are far more estimable human beings than most of us will ever be, not because they forgave Imus, but because they set a new bar for sustained human dignity and ethical lucidity in the cartoon face of what passes for political discourse in this country.

Re Imus and rap: Ultimately Imus' professional mistake was in not being as media-savvy as your average hip-hop MCs, who only target each other by name for personal insults and, generally speaking, don't identify their bitches, hos and pussies by race or name and sometimes not even by feminine gender, since by inference we've come to understand that other men can be bitches, hos and pussies too.

Regardless of your wording, I know Salon means to ask, "Does the hip-hop industry promote sexism, racism and greed?" Absolutely. "Now just who owns the hip-hop industry?" would of course be Salon's follow-up question. Obviously, as we all know, the same captains of the American consumer products and media industries who decided Imus had to go -- and not because his decrepit comedic tongue flagrantly, unconsciously and unconscionably conflated racism and sexism in ways that hadn't been heard flowing so trippingly in public off a well-established and feared white man's tongue since Thomas Jefferson, but because he had suddenly become a very bad investment. Thank God for laissez-faire capitalism, the self-correcting invisible hand of the market, and all that other good doo-doo kaka.

Salon probably also means to ask, "Do the black content providers at the top of the hip-hop industry management chain help promote sexist and stereotypical images of the American Negro for majority white consumption?" Ab-so-fucking-lutely. Like Imus, however, they also exist at the behest of their corporate masters, and if they should ever be so uncharacteristically unsound in judgment as to offhandedly label an actual person, living or dead, a nappy-headed trollop, they too will likely get the boot. Or maybe not, if they can get her labeled crazy and unstable first. See Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, for historical reference.

In an age of ambiguity, shifting ethical standards, various legal quagmires, eroding notions of civility, public decency, and constitutional rights, blah blah blah, I'm glad, thanks to Ms. Stringer and her sterling team, that the line that has finally been drawn in the sand is one that forces us all to acknowledge that some normal black women can be human beings too.

My own black neocultural nationalist heartstrings did however get quite the tug when I saw the National Association of Black Journalists, Sharpton, Jesse, Bruce Gordon, Oprah, Al Roker (!) and Barack all "black-up" (like man-up, only blacker and less masculinist) agree on something. My own post-bippie (sic, courtesy Redd Foxx), Hendrix-loving inner integrationist also got a kick out of seeing a rainbow coalition of progressives, feminist and not, coalesce around anything but Bush for the first time since Watergate.

That all said, I also realize that post-Imus I remain something of a hip-hop hypocrite -- that I really don't believe an Imus has the same rights and privileges in public discourse as a Young Jeezy, if only because I believe Jeezy's publicly broadcasted genocidal hate speech, though in actuality more protected by Viacom, the FCC and Polygram than the First Amendment, is still "fiction," not white-supremacist diatribe, even though both encourage racial, sexual and psychological violence against young black women. This is what you might call one's bass-ackwards cultural biases in action.

James Baldwin always reminded us that utter dishonesty frames most discussions about race and sex in America. Ntozake Shange tells us black people are the subconscious of America. In tandem they suggest black women are likely the nation's collective unconscious, the ground on which our racial and sexual mythologies have been savagely formed.

Imus and the hip-hop industry were both found to share a philosophy: Black bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks. But since the new/old racism demands the dishonest illusion that only black people hate black people, Imus crossed a line he didn't even know existed. The dishonesty lurking in the American subconscious made him believe real and fictional black women were interchangeable and therefore fair game for any predatory old pale-faced fool's public abuse.

Salon might also ask, "Do powerful black men do enough in public to make black women feel loved, respected and protected?" That's what ya call one of them rhetorical questions.

In conclusion: Yet do I marvel at the power of hip-hop, still so marginal in American culture as a whole, if we use the minimal radio, television, film, news and even Internet space it occupies as a guide, to be the frame through which we will now attempt to grapple with the nation's racist-, sexist-, greed- and gossip-ridden soul. I think, except for Stringer and her team, we all must be out of our cotton-picking minds.

-- Greg Tate, author of "Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking From Black Culture" and "Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience"

rapI have been a participant, lover, critic and consumer of hip-hop for more than two decades and not once have I ever considered hip-hop culture racist. Not even when its most commercial elements -- rap music and videos -- produce sexist, misogynist, homophobic, violent, hyper-masculine content that exploits some of the undeniable pathologies that exist in the black community and mass-markets them for a consumer base (much of it white) far too comfortable with limited expressions of black youth culture's lowest common denominators.

So is hip-hop racist? No, but like black-on-black crime, disproportionately high intraracial rates of domestic violence and sexual assault, and the alarming rate HIV/AIDS cases in the black community, hip-hop at its worst is a tragedy with many unsung victims. Despite the similarities in language, Don Imus' racist, sexist comments (amazing how sexism gets lost in this conversation) are not representative of all rap music or hip-hop culture. It does highlight those areas in the culture, specifically the black community, where sexism and self-hatred intersect in particularly painful ways.

As for those misguided souls who don't think that Imus should be punished because "rappers say those things too," black women don't like it when rappers indulge in verbal misogyny at our expense either. But if Imus' comments have inspired others to move from silent outrage to action, then perhaps a higher purpose has been served. What is frustrating to me is the way mainstream media has colluded with certain black leaders and media personalities who are woefully out of touch with hip-hop culture to launch the "Enough Is Enough" rallying cry. I'm so whatever with that. Hip-hop has always had its own critics -- writers, scholars, activists, feminists, filmmakers like myself, Kevin Powell, Bakari Kitwana, Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Mark Anthony Neal, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Rosa Clemente, Byron Hurt, Tim'm West, MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, Davey D, Moya Bailey, Michael Eric Dyson, Greg Tate -- who have been dedicated to doing the incredibly gratifying, hands-on and unsexy underground work of critical self-examination and consciousness-raising in the last 20 years. Our motivation? We love hip-hop enough to hold it to its highest standards.

-- Joan Morgan, author of "When the Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-hop Feminist"

rapThe framing of the question reveals the poor language at hand to get at the problems provoked by controversial art. Rap music certainly can promote vile images of women and other blacks, but I wouldn't call it racist. That term suggests a relation of power exercised by folk with the ability to impose significant harm with the backing of official culture -- for instance, the state through police brutality.

There is, however, a great deal of bigotry and prejudice that flows in the stream of some hip-hop lyrics. Long before the Imus affair, there had been great concern in black quarters about the harmful impact of gangsta rap's lethal misogyny and its glorification of violence. But not until white bodies are at stake do black bodies become relevant or noticed -- and only then as a prop for a larger mainstream agenda, even if that is to prove how harmful black pop culture is and, by contrast, how even a powerful, arrogant white man like Imus can't escape its influence.

So the big point really isn't to score rap for its vicious sexism -- if that were the case the mainstream white media would have been on the bandwagon a long time ago. It is to partially exonerate a racist and bigoted representative of its own ranks, in part to exonerate all those other white journalists who either appeared on his show or stood by in silence while he had his way with whatever vulnerable group he chose to attack that day. The white media has to scapegoat rap now to cleanse its hands of the blood -- and to wipe clean its conscience -- of the suffering of citizens, like black women, it never cared enough to oppose before Imus put his foot in his mouth. Black women are a footnote -- and an afterthought -- to the controversy.

Thus, all the hand-wringing and feigned horror over how young black males could ever speak about their women in such hateful tones is the delayed reaction of the partially guilty -- not through active discourses of assault as with Imus, but through the passive indifference to the plight of women they didn't care enough about either to learn their condition or to cry out over it on their airwaves. As we've seen in the last week, when white media elites are so inclined, they can use the airwaves to tell stories of black life with far more time and resources in one week than they're used to spending in a year. If black women matter, they can't just matter when white men mess up.

It is typical of a media that ignores black life that it also ignores the outrage black folk have felt about rappers spitting invective toward its women since the early '90s. And it's equally apparent that the white media has no interest in the fierce debate raging within hip-hop about its future and soul. Hundreds of "conscious" rappers who extol the virtues of black female identity -- and who indict the materialism and misogyny of rap -- can't get a word in edgewise on white or black media outlets, from radio to television. There's a blackout of conscience-driven, racially astute, politically motivated rap that contains progressive gender messages, in large part because such rap also contains poignant and prophetic indictments of white supremacy and social injustice, themes that even ostensibly liberal white media is not ready to hear, air or acknowledge. So it closes the mouths of such progressive artists, with the consequence that the women-hating harangues of hip-hop artists drown out the considerable complexity of conscious artists. It does so with the complicity of the very media machine that now wants to point fingers at only half the equation -- the rap artists who pour acid on the heads of black women -- while failing to self-critically indict its very participation in this unseemly affair. That is utter and naked hypocrisy.

I have for nearly 20 years, as "the hip-hop intellectual," defended a beautiful and complex art form while criticizing its ugly and self-defeating features. I am disturbed by misogyny and sexism and patriarchy -- and what I have termed "femiphobia," or the fear of women -- in all their appearances across the political, cultural and racial landscape. What rap artists have done to spread their blight is undeniable, and worthy of the kind of sustained and vocal opposition that have gone on for years unnoticed by mainstream culture. But rap neither invented brutal antipathy toward women nor benefits from it as much as quarters of mainstream culture -- including the media -- that continue to restrict and ruin women's lives with a vigor and subtlety that are stunning. After all, you don't have to call a woman a "bitch" to treat her like one; and you don't have to say "ho" to exploit women's bodies and minds for your purposes. Just ask the mainstream white and black media.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, University of Pennsylvania professor and author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop"

I had every intention of writing about hair and beauty products, and my fabulous experiences as a celebrity DJ over the last month … but then Don Imus decided to call the Rutgers basketball team "nappy headed ho's" and "Jigaboos"- soooo…
My first thoughts, besides the obvious of sympathizing with the young ladies on the Rutgers team were, "Did this RACIST man just become the catalyst for the Black Women's Empowerment Movement?" It seemed as if the entire country was suddenly weighing in on the treatment of women and more specifically the plight of the African-American female.

This certainly wasn't the first time that Black women have been insulted and degraded over FCC regulated airwaves. Last summer an MTV cartoon titled Where My Dogs At? depicted Black women as "bitches"…literally. In it, a look-alike of rap star Snoop Dogg strolls into a pet shop with two scantily-clad Black women with dark skin and afro puffs, tethered to leashes, walking on all fours, and scratching themselves as he orders one of them to, "Hand me my latte!" The scene ends with the women/"bitches" pissing and defecating on the floor. On the popular HBO series Entourage, a group of Black women dressed in summer attire attend a daytime party for resident rap artist, Saigon, in a hotel suite. In the scene the girls get on an elevator, get off an elevator, and simply walk into the party. At the end of the episode the credits for these girls read 'Video Ho 1 thru Video Ho 4'. (There was no video nor did these women participate in 'ho-ish behavior'). In the same episode a White woman meets the lead character, Vince, at lunch and ends up having sex with him within a few hours in a store dressing room then later finishing up at a hotel. However, at the end of the episode the credits for her role read 'Woman'. On a different episode of the same show one of the lead characters used the terminology 'video hoes' when referring to two black women. The mother of that character then referred to those same black women as 'ANIMALS'.

On a recent episode of The Apprentice Donald Trump was so offended by one of the contestants' use of the deplorable term "white trash" that he fired him on the spot. He then turned around and gave the winning team a chance to hang out with his "good friend" Snoop "bitches ain't shit but hoes-n-tricks" Dogg; a mixed message to send especially after just firing someone for offensive and disrespectful language towards Whites.

In 2006 when the Academy Awards gave out an Oscar for the song "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" (written by Three 6 Mafia) many Black women felt like it was a message to the Black community to "Keep pimpin' them hoes! "

This "Imus situation" is the tipping point for a problem that has been invisible while in plain sight. There is an existing climate that devalues and dehumanizes Black women and allows all types of stereotypes, insults, and disrespect to go unchecked and without any repercussions. Eminem certainly didn't fear any backlash when he wrote a song early in his career disrespecting Black women.

But by far the worst insults that Black women endure daily are actually from our own community -mostly in the form of entertainment and even more specifically hip-hop. Young Black girls and Black women are and have been insulted and assaulted for years by offensive and abusive images and word that have been hacking away at the self esteem of our women in the most subliminal of ways. The first step to fixing a problem is first admitting that there is one. That is exactly what happened on a recent episode of the 'Oprah Winfrey' show when she held a forum on Hip-Hop & Don Imus' comments. Music exec Kevin Lyles, rapper Common, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, and music mogul Russell Simmons all admitted (after some coaxing from O) that they recognize there is a problem with misogyny in hip-hop. Perhaps moguls like Russell should put the same kind of effort and support behind this issue like those he and Jay Z put forth for the Jewish community.

A few months back Russell Simmons and Jay Z decided to use their combined power to STAND UP for Jewish rights and do a Public Service Announcement speaking out against anti-Semitism. They stated in a series of commercials (which played frequently on BET and other stations) that they believed it wrong to make racial slurs against Jews ….Now yes - we all know anti-Semitism is WRONG, and while I applaud their "we are the world" attitude, Are racial slurs against Jews any more inexcusable, hideous, repulsive, and appalling to these Black hip-hop music moguls than the many degrading and misogynistic slurs against Black women or the Black-on-Black violence that exists in Hip Hop?

And what about "Little Timmy"!? On the same episode of 'Oprah' Kevin Lyles heavily deflected the issue regarding the disrespect of young Black women in hip-hop and seemed to be more concerned with his rise "from intern to president" and the well being of 'Little Timmy'-his son's white playmate and Timmy's assimilation into oneness (seeing no color) via hip-hop.

The "Little Timmy Syndrome" may be a problem with why many hip-hop execs have trouble weighing in on this issue. Perhaps their economic status has them too far removed from the pressing social issues that concern the Black community. Instead of praising Lil' Timmy for his assimilation into our culture shouldn't we be thinking of ways to nurture little Lil' Shaniqua and Lil' Jamal so that they can uphold our culture? Corporate record executives and radio programmers are (as Rhymefest says) "POVERTY PIMPS" who do not care about the advancement of Black people....not even the Black ones. If they did someone would have taken the lead on this issue before it blew up in their faces. They have the power to determine who is signed, what is heard, and what children are exposed to, yet they don't even acknowledge the conscience side of hip-hop and they make no effort to create balance.

BLACK YOUTH ARE IN CRISIS. There is a looming state of emergency in effect that exists in the inner cities of the US concerning young people of color. African-American females between the ages of 12 and 25 are now leading the nation in all new cases of HIV infections. The many negative images portraying women of color as objects with little worth beyond their physical attributes has actively affected the way many of our young girls view themselves today. Unfortunately many people still do not want to admit that there is any correlation between the images/words on TV and radio and the decline of our youth. Some see speaking out in the defense of Black women and girls as an attack on hip-hop. Those Black people that don't want to admit that there is a problem are a part of the problem; much like the slaves who questioned, "Why we need to leave Massa's house?" once slavery was abolished.

The issue is about QUALITY not CENSORSHIP. When Dead Prez said, 'Turn Off The Radio!" those of us looking for better quality hip-hop understood. When Nas said
"Hip Hop Is Dead!" those of us longing for better quality hip-hop understood. Certainly misogyny didn't start with hip-hop but hip-hop wasn't always this misogynistic either. There are BITCHES! There are BITCH-ASS DUDES too! There are HOES -MALE AND FEMALE. Sometimes rappers/artist MUST write about the ugly truths that exist in their realities and they should have the artistic freedom to do so. Sometimes certain songs, as inappropriate as they may appear to some, are humorous to others, -but the over-saturation of this one-sided view of women in general is an unfair misrepresentation of all women and a dangerous message to send to our youth. 'Bubble-Gum' nursery rhyming rappers (who seem to be dominating the airwaves right now) look for easy targets like… PICKING ON GIRLS.

I'm surprised at how many MEN –intellects and idiots alike, are speaking out against Oprah saying that she had no right to speak out on this issue because she is not "hip-hop". Let's make this clear. YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE A DEGREE IN "HIP-HOP" TO SPEAK OUT ON THE DISRESPECT OF BLACK WOMEN- AS A BLACK WOMAN. PERIOD!!.... Especially someone like Oprah (THE RICHEST WOMAN IN AMERICA) who is using her platform, power, and far-reaching Long-Arm-Of-Publicity to HELP! If Oprah can't speak out on this topic, her male critics themselves have also forfeited their rights to speak out on the same topic because they are not WOMEN. The disrespect of Oprah is yet another example of how Black women are disrespected within the Black community. Oprah reaches out to help and gets backlash. R. Kelly (the self proclaimed Pied Piper) pisses on underage girls and then comes back on the remix of 'Make It Rain' singing, "Don't ask me what my name is/ Stupid Bitch I'm famous" and gets praised.

Louis Farrakhan said at the Million Man March to his many opponents "I don't need you to validate me. My people validate me!" Ladies! This is an issue that we are going have to take the lead on ourselves. Russell Simmons advised, "Those who know better should do better". As a woman whose career is built in Hip-Hop I can't turn a blind eye to what I see. Last year I founded 'BLACK GIRLS ROCK!' blackgirlsrockinc.com a non-profit female youth empowerment organization as a reaction to the negative images of Black women in media. Empowerment begins with self-love and self-respect, not just individual respect but respect of your people, YOUR CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIETY, YOUR HISTOY, and YOUR community as a whole. Just because we have been given a rope it doesn't mean we have to hang ourselves with it!
Black Women Are The Mothers Of Civilization!! (As Sean Price would say) "RESPECONIZE!"

"We Started This Sh#t -And This The Mutha- Fu**In' Thanks We Get!?"

Beverly Bond
*Heavy Hitters*- NYC

To Sweat.
Check out our party on March 26th at APT in New York. The Flyer is the profile pic on my page.

Until,
Joan

ACADEMIC HIP-HOP? YES, YES Y'ALL...
BY Reyhan Harmanci, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, March 5, 2007

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/05/DDG3MOE3041.DTL


When hip-hop journalist and former emcee Davey D, a.k.a. David Cook, turned in his undergraduate thesis titled "The Power of Rap" in 1987, he didn't think he had a problem with sources.

"I handed it in with no footnotes," he remembers in a phone interview, "and my professor was like, 'Cool. This is good but there aren't any footnotes. You need footnotes.' I mean, I'm talking about something I was a part of, something I knew a lot about, and he was like, 'Footnote something. There's got to be books about hip-hop.' "

But there really weren't any source books on the subject, so Cook the student ended up footnoting emcee Davey D -- himself -- as someone who had been quoted in Bomb magazine.

"I got an A and left," he says.

Today, Cook would have no trouble filling a bibliography. With hip-hop itself hitting its third decade, hip-hop studies has become one of the most explosive subjects to hit academia in decades -- as UCLA Professor H. Samy Alim says, "It's reinvigorating the academy." But Cook's story highlights some of the tensions inherent in the ivory tower taking on a street-born culture such as hip-hop: namely, who are the experts? David Cook from UC Berkeley or Davey D the emcee? According to a 2005 survey by Stanford's Hiphop Archive, more than 300 courses on the subject are now offered at colleges and universities across the country.

"There is a literary flood," says Jeff Chang, a writer, UC Berkeley graduate and sometime Chronicle contributor, whose award-winning book "Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation" is one of the primary texts in many classes. "It's becoming a tidal wave. Right now, I have six or seven books on my desk for me to review or blurb. They weren't there a year ago."

And that might only be the beginning. "What has been published to date doesn't tell the whole story, because a whole generation of young scholars is coming along, at the moment, and those researchers will produce a sudden gush of publishing within a few years," says Peter Monaghan, a correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education. "This is already becoming evident in academic publishers' catalog listings of forthcoming books."

Historically black Howard University is ahead of the pack: After being the first to teach hip-hop in 1991, it now offers a minor in hip-hop studies (as of fall).

Not surprisingly, the impetus for teaching and studying hip-hop tends to come from the younger members of the academy.

In fall 2006, a group of UC Berkeley graduate students, led by sociology doctoral candidate Michael Barnes, formed the Hip-Hop Studies Working Group to increase "the presence of hip-hop studies in academia," which includes, as a long-term goal, to recruit more faculty who are interested in hip-hop. Similar groups already exist at the University of Michigan and UCLA, and there is one in the works at UC Davis.

The group's participants number at least 20 and hail from a wide array of disciplines: African American studies, American studies, history, linguistics and ethnomusicology, among others. Some come to the group as active contributors to hip-hop, such as Larisa Mann, a.k.a. DJ Ripley, and spoken-word poet Aya de Leon, as well as scholars.

Mann, who has been a DJ for 10 years and is doing an ethnography on Bay Area rap, says that there is a direct connection between hip-hop as she studies it and hip-hop as she lives it. "I'm studying how people relate to law from the music industry," she says. "They find it threatening or ignore it altogether and make awesome music."

The study of hip-hop is contentious -- the definition of what hip-hop is, for instance, never fails to provoke passionate debate. Many point to the Bronx, circa 1975, as a historical starting point. "It's really tough to pin down," says Barnes. "It can be less tangible -- more of a feeling or energy that comes from performance techniques, DJs, emceeing, dancing."

"My working definition? Oh, no," laughs Rickey Vincent, a group member and author of "Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One." "Here goes: an urban, youth-oriented culture based on rhyme and color that originated in black and Latino communities in New York in the '70s.

"But that's just a frame of reference, a starting point."

Chang calls the Bay Area ground zero for this swelling field.

"There is so much incredible hip-hop intellectual talent here," he says, listing hip-hop journalists such as Davey D along with San Francisco State University Professors Shawn Ginwright and Antwi Akom and Stanford Professor Marcyliena Morgan. "When you look at what's happening with a broad scope, you see the Bay Area emerging as a center."

It's hard, actually, to find people inside academia who would dismiss the study of hip-hop as simply specious and silly (although media coverage of UC Berkeley's class on Tupac Shakur and Syracuse University's course on Lil' Kim would suggest otherwise). Ever since the various social movements of the '60s and '70s opened up the university canon, African American history, women's studies and pop culture became subjects for research and study.

While cultural thinkers, such as Greg Tate and Steven Hagar, and magazines including Bomb began dissecting hip-hop in the '80s, a few key books in the mid-'90s provided roots for the current conversation. Brown University Professor Tricia Rose's 1994 book, "Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America," along with the writings of University of Pennsylvania Professor Michael Eric Dyson and University of Southern California film Professor Todd Boyd, provided the first layer of academic inquiry. Many point to the evolution of jazz studies as a blueprint for hip-hop's growth.

Actually, according to Ginwright, business schools began studying hip-hop before it surfaced in the humanities.

But the study of hip-hop does have its critics. Some, such as Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam -- who, in December, devoted a column to praising the "great books" curriculum at St. John's College while disparaging Morgan's Hiphop Archive -- find it to be unworthy of serious study. Others, like Davey D, critique the narrow confines of what constitutes "legitimate" academic inquiry.

"Now it's like everybody is dealing in hip-hop," says Davey D, "but they have nothing to do or no connection with the culture at all. The edicts that drive academia -- publish or perish, for instance -- aren't hip-hop.

"You have an interesting phenomenon, where the 'hip-hop experts,' with university appointments attached to their name, have no credibility whatsoever in hip-hop circles. That, coupled with the fact that academia in a lot of places has always kept a distinct separation between what goes on in community and what happens on campus, is a source of tension."

It's a concern shared by many who work within the confines of the university.

"Our hip-hop class at San Francisco State University began in an effort to close the gap between theory and practice, academics and activists, 'descent and street,' " Akom says by e-mail. Vincent started the San Francisco State class in 2001.

It was clear from the occupied seats and vocal participation that students in the San Francisco State class were responding well to the material. At a recent lecture focusing on race, Ginwright opened the class by playing Public Enemy's classic "Fear of a Black Planet" (which was also part of the homework), diving into the notion of race as a social construct. Later, Adam Mansbach, author of the award-winning novel "Angry Black White Boy," spoke. Ginwright says that the race lecture tends to be one of the most explosive discussions of the semester, as the class talks about personal experiences.

"Hip-hop is a space where we can dialogue," he says to the class. "It's a space where, as my colleague Dr. Akom says, 'We can have 'courageous conversations.' We peel open the cover and expose issues of race and power.

"Hip-hop forces those in the academy to examine a people's culture, so to study it, you have to be among the people. You can't look at scholarship in the typical way."

Local hip-hop artists Boots Riley from the Coup and rapper and producer Kirby Dominant express reservations about hip-hop university classes. "One time, someone came up to me, and said, 'I know so-and-so, they're a professor at Harvard, they're a big fan of your work,' " Riley says in a phone interview. "But that doesn't impress me more than any other people feeling that way. I don't need to be validated by academia because that presupposes that academia is a pure endeavor and not guided by market forces, which is not the case.

"Anthropology, for instance, was all about studying the natives so they could figure out how to control them. Again, the natives are being studied."

Dominant, a UC Berkeley alumnus who actually attended the much-publicized class on Shakur in the late '90s, says that he finds value in hip-hop studies, provided they take the long view. "With hip-hop and all black music, you can't talk about the art separate from a lot of other things," he says. "You can't talk about hip-hop as an art form without talking about the people, the economics, how and why it was made. You have to be pretty thorough."

Finding ways to teach and study hip-hop from within a university setting is not easy. "I worry that scholars like us get so obsessed with trying to justify hip-hop that we end up running in circles," says Berkeley grad student Felicia Viator, a DJ who's finishing up a doctorate in history.

Getting it right -- by providing a range of voices; by keeping the hip-hop community central to the academic discussion; by integrating the study of hip-hop into the general studies of music, language, history and other disciplines; and by opening up ideas of who gets legitimated as an expert and why -- proponents conclude, is crucial. As Vincent notes, "Hip-hop is the language of this generation. If you don't want to speak it, you don't even understand the language, and you're not engaging with the population that needs to be addressed the most."

"Remember," he continues, "the academy needs hip-hop more than hip-hop needs the academy."

E-mail Reyhan Harmanci at rharmanci@sfchronicle.com...

------So I've just spent another week wandering around in the wacky world of American racial politics only to discover that according to Debra Dickerson's "Colorblind" column on salon.com http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/22/obama/ that as a Jamaican born South Bronx raised woman of African descent that I'm not black and neither is man I'm wholeheartedly hoping will be the next American president -Barack Obama.

Dickerson writes "I didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn't black. "Black," in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term."

Judging from the pages of criticism Dickerson has already received regarding the arrogance and danger of playing self-appointed gatekeeper to the Republic of Blackness, I'm gonna leave all that alone. At this point, it should be painfully obvious (and I'm mean painful as in post-verbal-ass-whooping painful) that when it comes to Blackness that African-Americans do not hold the monopoly. Nor do they hold the monopoly on the equally painful legacy of colonialism, slavery and imperialism that descendants of West African slaves have experienced around the globe. Same shit, different boat. And if delving into all this common history proves to be too much, I would expect Dickerson not to make light of the equal opportunity racism waiting for "Voluntary Immigrants of African Descent" as soon as they set foot on American shores.

But clearly she's not the only one. A recent New York Times article broke this apparently startling news, "So Far Obama Can't Take the Black Vote for Granted". Maybe it's just me, but I'd already assumed that Black folk were politically astute enough not to back a candidate solely on the basis of a mutual melanin count, that the policies, sincerity and abilities of the candidate to affect change in the areas most pertinent to us - educational reform, health care, unemployment to name a few - might matter more. If Condi Rice suddenly became the Republican answer to the double threat of Hill and Barack she wouldn't get my vote. Why? Because I can acknowledge her as an extremely accomplished Black Woman with an enviable shoe game and still recognize that having her as the HNIC in the White House would be a four-year extension of the Bush administration's callous neglect and bungling ineptitude.
What I wasn't prepared for, and the NY Times seemed happy to point out, was that there were Black folk who seem to feel that the distinction of being the first Black President of the United States is one that should be reserved solely for an African-American, a sentiment summarized by a brother the reporter interviewed in DC barbershop. "Mr. Lanier pointed to Mr. Obama's heritage - he is the American-born son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - and the fact that he did not embody the experiences of most African-Americans whose ancestors endured slavery, segregation and the bitter struggle for civil rights."
"When you think of a president, you think of an American," said Mr. Lanier, a 58-year-old barber who is still considering whether to support Mr. Obama. "We've been taught that a president should come from right here, born, raised, bred, fed in America. To go outside and bring somebody in from another nationality, now that doesn't feel right to some people."

To see black folk so closely mimic the very prejudices that white American reserved for European immigrants almost two centuries ago saddens and surprises me. Specially since white folks have already figured this one out: That when Europeans immigrated to America, became citizens, paid taxes and contributed their substantial labor force to the economic, cultural and political growth of the country, they stopped being European immigrants and became just regular white folk easily united in the common interest of holding on to "white power", that is every bit of entitlement that whiteness guarantees in a country like America whose emergence as a superpower is historically based on the maintenance of very specific forms of racial oppression.

So I guess my question here is when are folks like me, we "Voluntary Immigrants of African Descent" considered Black? Because according to Dickerson and brother man in the barbershop it certainly isn't doesn't happen when I look in the mirror every morning and damn sure see a black face. I don't get that honorary pass every April 15th when I pay my taxes or on the daily as I raise my American born black son. Dickerson's definition of blackness evades me even though I happen to consider helping black women (a great many of them American) navigate the quagmire of both racism and sexism as part of my life's work.

It seems Dickerson's reluctance to confer this status on us "Voluntary Immigrants" for simply just being black and loving black people irrespective of their point of origin is more a matter of willful ignorance than anything else. As she accurately points out, "We know a great deal about black people. We know next to nothing about immigrants of African descent (woe be unto blacks when the latter groups find their voice and start saying all kinds of things we don't want said)."
So let me offer some insight. When black people immigrate to America we are not at all exempt from the experience of being Black American and not only because we will inevitably be subjected to American racism. We learn your history. We absorb your culture. Some of us even acquire your accents. We do this as a matter of both acclimation and survival because we recognize the potential power we unleash by finding the distinct commonalities between our histories and our culture. Perhaps if Dickerson took a moment to do the same she would could replace these limited notions of blackness and truly expand Black America into a diverse, multi-ethnic powerbase, savvy enough to elect the most viable BLACK presidential candidate America has seen in over 20 years.

Because really, the difference between rice and peas and black eye peas is hardly as great she, the barber or anyone else questioning Obama's blackness might think. It's the distance between stops on slave ship.