Posted by OBAJE AFREECA on November 26, 2009 at 9:37pm
The government is launching a campaign against domestic violence. But rap is responsible for many of these problems, and it can also supply the answer.By Ian DuntAfter months of planning and unprecedented consultation, the government released a new strategy to combat violence against women this morning. There is a wealth of different campaigns and programmes being launched but the headline is that schoolchildren will be educated against violence in their personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education classes. And that's about as much as I'll bore you with.The government will be competing for schoolchildren's hearts and minds with some pretty vocal advertising from the music industry. Officials, especially those working for women's minister Harriet Harman, have been shaken by survey findings which show a worrying level of acceptance of violence against women among teens. They won't be happy to discover, if they even have yet, that 'gash' is now the preferred term for women among many young people. So the new violence against women strategy starts with the kids and works from there.Their principle opponent in this respect comes from grime, hip-hop and garage music, among others, which constantly spout a different message. Swaggering, misogynistic and violent, it has children's ears in a way the government never will. How did it get like this?There are two factors. The first is that rap, coming primarily from poor African-American communities in the Bronx during the seventies, reflected the status of its creators. Men must be able to express their masculinity. We tend to do that by providing for those we love. When you subject a group to poverty you deny men that avenue, and they typically, but not always, revert to strictly physical ways of expressing their manliness. Fair enough. I'd probably do the same. This is a fairly typical response of impoverished communities and rap came from an impoverished community.But when it emerged, it was not entirely dominated by the brutal, shallow tendencies which define it now. By the late eighties, the biggest hip-hop names were Public Enemy and Run DMC. The former used to come on stage with a militia, the S1W's. They were a threatening site to white America. Which brings us on to our second factor. It was far better to have rappers talk about nonsense and money than the call-to-arms of intelligent, articulate black men like Chuck D.The establishment takes that which threatens it and turns it into a eunuch. It is too wise to ban it. Instead it retains its appearance, while gutting it of meaning. That's how feminism turned into Sex and the City, gay turned into camp, and black militancy turned into gangster rap.And so the gates were opened to something completely different. What passes for mainstream rap now is some of the most violent, misogynistic, homophobic garbage imaginable. It's startling that any record company is irresponsible enough to allow it out. Take 50 cent, a man who turned his violent past, and gun shot wounds, into his selling point. He's currently worth around $440 million, has a clothing line, a video game, and a movie career under his belt, along with his multi-platinum album.Through hip-hop, gang culture infected other forms of music, as well as clothes, celebrity and speech. If you want an explanation for all those worrying survey results of school children, look no further. It has infected America, fuelling gang warfare and a fake-masculinity which bases itself on abusing women and proving your strength. It has, gradually, come to contaminate grime ,Britain's hip-hop.Government sanctioned classes and publicity campaigns can't combat something so attractive to kids. So what will?Not, it goes without saying, Mary-Whitehouse-style censorship, which would be pointless and juvenile. But for one, we could start trying to tackle the underlying economic factors which provide the nutrients for gang culture's world-view and attitude. That's a tall order for any government and Labour is eminently incapable of achieving it. The party has assumed, for over a decade now, that comparative inequality is irrelevant as long as absolute inequality is being tackled. That betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the human condition. We assess ourselves by those around us. The gaping chasm between rich and poor has contributed to this malaise.For the less ambitious, there is another route: the emergence of a new generation of musicians, writers and artists with a fierce social conscience: people who look at the world around them and ask tough questions, people who don't just talk about money and cars and guns. There are UK grime stars out there now who started down this road, to minimal fanfare, years ago. I'm thinking primarily of the fierce, angry calls for social justice from Devlin's, or the cheeky, principled and patriotic Sway.We need more of them. One song of theirs is worth billions in government communications strategies. But they will face the same problems as their predecessors: they will be considered a threat to the establishment. That's because they are.
Comments