Now that hiphop culture has become the lingua franca of international media and business, it ironically keeps a class of Black Americans, especially youth, in isolation. That’s how hiphop preserves it source–the engine of its innovation and perpetuation and commerciality. This conclusion is unavoidable after perusing educational statistics or watching many of the current Dirty South rap acts–Cassidy, Trick Daddy, Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys–whose language and behavior are a throwback to the socially-deprived manner and habits of black folks before the civil rights era. All varieties of social and economic progress seem to have passed by them. Only a few (Up North, West Coast, and across the country) stand to reap profit from exploiting their own deprivation. Yet the glorification persists. It’s as if an iron curtain had descended between these black youths and other Americans.
This Black Curtain’s divide is not economic or moral but cultural. And unless one is sensitive to the deprivations black youth face, the Black Curtain is virtually invisible because the black youth behavior that popular culture frequently displays cannot be easily distinguished from what admirably, and naturally, defines black American lifestyles. Like the Iron Curtain Winston Churchill described at the end of World War II, hiphop’s Black Curtain cuts off a real segment of the population, exerting influence and control over a group’s aspirations. The habits and achievements of these children of capitalism are not autonomous; they have come to fit a pattern, reflecting the commercial conventions of the day.
Behind this Black Curtain, anything that pertains to black segregation is considered acceptable, whether it is an intrinsic style of speaking, singing, dancing, dressing–or unlearning or lassitude or fecklessness. Just ask a ruthless and wealthy entrepreneur like Def Jam/Rockafella’s Damon Dash, a privileged spokesman for the marketable deprivations of black youth culture. The less-fortunated are perpetually teased by Success such as Dash lives out. The myth of the American Dream is embodied–celebrated–by black-face revenants from Russell Simmons and P. Diddy to Queen Latifah and Eve. A generation of media consumers remains in the straits between their subculture and mainstream culture.
Hiphop’s prominence results from a collision between prideful black nationalism and Reagan-era capitalism. Who knew the fall of Communism would coincide with a new, homegrown Balkanization? Both the Civil Rights Era ideal of advancement through integration and the race man/woman’s vision of black solidarity have been subsumed by avarice. “We Shall Overcome” has been replaced by the imperative “Do What You Gotta Do.” This development was underscored by comedian Chris Rock while hosting the MTV Video Awards. Following a performance by Snoop Dogg and his mentor Don “Magic” Juan who hoisted a pimp’s chalice in salute to the chorus line of half-clad, vixenish sisters parading in front of a global audience of viewers, Rock ad-libbed, “Isn’t it wonderful to see Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream come true?” Here are several recent moments in our hiphop era’s waking nightmare.
1
Chris Rock’s obnoxious performance at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony was what African Americans down South describe as “showing your ass.” The mainstream media responded differently, praising Rock for being “edgy,” because it was content with the liberal condescension to which Rock caters. Typically, Rock will angle his stand-up comedy routine to ridicule black culture and black behavior, justifying cultural stigma and racist stereotype. This has won him acclaim as “The Funniest Man in America” in a Vanity Fair cover story (a rare exception to its white cover conventions). Rock also received a featured profile in the New York Times Magazine; one of the story’s anecdotes recounted how even white officers at a police precinct in the notoriously racist Staten Island proclaimed Rock as their favorite comedian.
The Oscars confirmed Rock’s mainstream approval. His hosting gig was praised in advance as a social advance, elevating Rock from his neo-chitlin’ circuit/hiphop subculture. Fact is, Rock’s precedent set back the progress of black performers by demonstrating how easily success in mainline culture can be had if one lacks principles. His presumed “edge” was to seem outside Hollywood corruption while simultaneously being all up in it. Rock’s tactless, unfunny jokes (against left pariahs George Bush, Mel Gibson and box-office failures Jude Law, Colin Farrell) got great reviews from pundits because he displayed enmity for the incorrect and mocked momentarily disgraced celebrities.
Rock’s comic specialty should be properly recognized as “punk”–not in the sense of British pop music rebellion but in the long-standing American sense of bratty yet cowardly behavior. (He joined the Hollywood mob against Bush and Gibson and kicked Law and Colin at career low-points.) In the now unfashionable sense of ethnic accountability, this can be called: selling out.
In the most high-profile moment of Rock’s career, he brazened “blackness” while misrepresenting it. The pretense of black folks’ advancement–further promoted by the Oscars’ celebration of Jamie Foxx’s performance as Ray Charles–is what’s most troubling about Rock’s new status. (In 1969, film critic Pauline Kael bemoaned Hollywood’s exclusion of black pop performers: “Hollywood did more with Fats Waller in the 40s than it has done with Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin throughout the 60s.” She pointed out the reality of cultural racism that has not changed despite the current heroicizing of Charles and Rock’s recent ordination.) Selling-out means Rock can accept Hollywood’s blandishments without having to reject its racism.
Rock’s “progress” is facetious. He actually upholds cultural stigma. That was clarified by his disgraceful Oscar segment taped at a Magic Johnson movie theater in Compton, CA. Rock’s shtick was to show the Oscars were out of touch with movies that “real people” (black ghetto folk) enjoy. But he manipulated the skit to show only those blacks who went to stereotypical exploitation films like White Chicks, Saw and Soul Plane. He left out blacks who went to Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator, as well as those whites (or any one else) who went to Soul Plane and White Girls. Rock fostered the racist notion that all black folks think alike and enjoy the same dumbed-down entertainment. He appealed to white racist ignorance by excluding other ethnic groups (and their varied, surprising, democratic range of taste) from his jokey film culture essay. Rock’s basic message–as usual–was: Yes, blacks deserve to be stereotyped negatively.
2
Tyra Banks’ reality tv series America’s Next Top Model is the best of the prime time shows that pretend documentary realism but are really sweepstakes contests. Banks offers her young female contestants the carrot of extending their 15 minutes of fame. But more importantly, she gives viewers a helpful look at the competitive nature of American big business (plus the insight that fashion and entertainment are indeed parts of big business). Producer-creator-host Banks–perfectly named–is one of the few contemporary Black pop figures to balance her pride of accomplishment with social consciousness. She ensures that ANTM is also a civics lesson. The show’s biggest revelation came in the episode where the most feckless black contestant declared: “My mother and grandmother are not ghetto but I choose to be ghetto.”
When the stubborn fashion-industry hopeful refused to participate in the show’s games then laughed off her failure, Banks exploded. She berated the girl with the full indignation of the previous generation of African American strivers. Banks nailed young blacks who angrily defy social strictures without summoning the energy to accomplish worthwhile goals. P. Diddy’s Making the Band series for MTV, by contrast, embraces those ingrates’ attitude of entitlement. Diddy’s show is built on arrogant tantrums, which he manufactures. While Banks’ preferable program offered rare, raw proof of illiteracy and rascality (hiphop era defiance) chosen as a kind of life-style option, ANTM condemns this dire social development; Banks instructs her young charges rather than exploiting them Diddy-style. Though glamorizing the competition for fame and riches, she manages to shine a light through the fog of caste.
3
Ossie Davis’ funeral marked the end of the Civil Rights Era’s Old Guard. This solemn occasion illuminated the existence of the Black Curtain more than even the controversy over Bill Cosby criticizing the failures of modern black parenting. Davis’ passing was mourned by a retinue of elderly, unfashionable cultural figures, even a retired American President (Bill Clinton surprisingly quoting Nina Simone). It was a rare public demonstration of blacks and whites who shared a social vision that’s fading. Actor Burt Reynolds’ confession, “Ossie Davis took the bad part of the white south out of me,” was humble, loving, familial–a startling contrast to the cartel-brotherhood modeled by Eminem, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent.
With each testament to Davis’s now unfashionable political drive and ethical stance, the line of obsequies (from Attala Shabazz’s personal memories to Alan Alda’s professional recall), began to resemble a parade of shattered hopes. As a tv broadcast–indicative of America’s consciousness–it seemed anomalous amongst the game shows and celebrity marathons regularly televised. Although it was “live,” it was also sur-reality tv–and saddening for its evidence of social decline.
In Black gospel parlance, a funeral is called a “home-going;” the perspective meant to revitalize mourners suffering through their time of loss. But a cultural leader’s funeral marks a larger moment of transition; it is more than a personal tragedy. The author of Purlie Victorious (the satire about an itinerant 1960s Black preacher finally overthrowing the remnants of Jim Crow) and the man whose oration designated Malcolm X “Our black shining prince” demonstrated an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. Davis epitomized the 60s moment when activists not only had a sense of duty, but felt anxiety lest they fall below the level of achievement that would uplift their people, and move the whole wide world up a little higher. Davis believed in culture that edified and sustained his people, while affirming their claim upon society. But today the claim has narrowed into the covetousness that pop entrepreneurs now cultivate to tease–and delimit–their audience’s aspirations. Laissez-faire capitalism and laissez-faire democracy are the bulwarks of the Black Curtain. Davis’ funeral is the perfect moment to realize hiphop’s confusion of doing well with doing good. As a result, hiphop culture’s demand for black folks’ acceptance and prosperity by any means necessary has unwittingly become a barrier to their empowerment.