Leo Pennant: 2015

Are black people co-conspirators in their own demise? The Rap artist make a lot of money and their fans love the back beat. But what does it say about their intellect? What is Rap culture all about and why is so much rotten speech and attitudes emanating from their mouths?

My research has come across some interesting items for example, in some ways, a TV show like The Cosby Show did a lot to destroy stereotypes about African-Americans, leading a lot of white Americans to feel less intimidated by other races; they were just like us! But, it seems that a lot of rap artists see The Cosby Show as a betrayal of what it is to be black, and essentially declare, "Um, we are nothing at all like you; WTF are you talking about?"

By ensuring people know that there is a divide between African-Americans, white Americans, and other races, can it be said that rap music perpetuates a lot of -- often negative -- African-American stereotypes?

"If I could have the nigger show back again in its pristine purity,

I should have little use for opera." -- Mark Twain

Blackface performers are, "...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." -- Frederick Douglass

The mask which the actor wears is apt to become his face -- Plato

Blackface is more than just burnt cork applied as makeup.

It is a style of entertainment based on racist Black stereotypes

that began in minstrel shows and continues today.

The stock characters of blackface minstrelsy have played a significant role in disseminating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. Every immigrant group was stereotyped on the music hall stage during the 19th Century, but the history of prejudice, hostility, and ignorance towards black people has insured a unique longevity to the stereotypes. White America's conceptions of Black entertainers were shaped by minstrelsy's mocking caricatures and for over one hundred years the belief that Blacks were racially and socially inferior was fostered by legions of both white and black performers in blackface.

It’s no secret that whites originally created the stereotype of the dangerous black criminal to justify their own crimes relating to slavery.

Kidnapping men, women and children from their homeland, selling them at auction, breaking apart families, abusing and torturing human beings, publicly murdering them and generally subjecting them to the immense physical, mental, emotional and spiritual suffering that slavery represented—all to increase one’s own wealth—is the work of imperialistic sociopaths, the world’s true criminals.

But not only did whites commit the original crime of slavery, they further compounded it by accusing blacks of being the criminal savages in an effort to lessen the worth of black life and absolve themselves of guilt.

Desperate to diminish the magnitude of their crimes, whites invented false stereotypes about blacks that became accepted by many as “truth.” The black thug stereotype could just as easily be called the white innocence stereotype—somebody had to be guilty, and it sure wasn’t going to be white people.

I am constantly being told to play Reggae, Hip Hop, or Delta Blues. Whatever, I create is black music because God blessed me as a black man and he makes no mistakes.

leopennant.com

Leo Pennant

Monday, 6 April 2015

Saturday, 4 April 2015

Rap music was designed to perpetuate racist African-American stereotypes