Morning Joe Finds the Real Racists in Oklahoma: Rap Musicians
Perhaps, like many people of many races, some of the language used in some rap makes you uncomfortable. But perhaps you would nevertheless be categorically more uncomfortable with a bus full of white fraternity members chanting in favor of segregation and the extralegal murder of black people for their race.
Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of Morning Joe, is not.
On Wednesday, she, Joe Scarborough, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol embarked on a discussion of the controversy at the University of Oklahoma's chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which my colleague Terrance Ross explains here. And despite the fact that members of the fraternity—whose house has been closed, and two of whose members were expelled—were singing things like "There will never be a nigger in SAE!/You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me," Brzezinski et al., have identified the Real Racists in this case.
They are, of course, black rappers.
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In particular, she singled out Waka Flocka Flame, a goofball Atlanta MC, who canceled a planned show at the school, saying he was "disgusted and disappointed" in SAE's actions. That was too much for Brzezinski, who noted Flame's employment of the n-word in lyrics.
This ought to seem obvious, but apparently it needs to be said.
"He shouldn't be disgusted with them, he should be disgusted with himself," she said.
(This is likely not the crowd you would choose for a nuanced discussion of hip-hop. The conversation was a straight-up early 1990s throwback, replete with derisive confusion about whether MCs "rap" or "sing," discussion of "gangsta rap," and Tipper Gore namedrops.)
Despite a few recent, disturbing cases where rappers were prosecuted on the basis of their rhymes, one might have expected that society generally understands that there's a distinction between what Waka Flocka Flame says in songs—artistic expression in service of creating a feel or mood—and approving discussion of lynching, but apparently it needs to be noted. If you need a refresher on what exactly lynching entails, you can look at some horrifying images here.
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There is some nuance to add to the discussion, and poor Willie Geist tried—mostly without luck—to do so. "I'd love to never hear that word again ... but there is a distinction between a bunch of white kids chanting about hanging someone from a tree ... and this is a term that you hear in hip-hop that African American guys sometimes in certain contexts call each other," he said, carefully.
Geist raises two important points, one about the use of the slur in rap, and one about the use of the term in general. On the first, it's useful—as so often—to return to the social critic and thinker Chris Rock.
Can white people use the word, he asks? And his answer is, "not really." A good test case and possible exception is rap:
What are the rules when a Dr. Dre song comes on the radio or plays at a club? What is the procedure that goes into effect? 'Cause sometimes I'm with my white friends and a Dr. Dre song will come on, and there's a lot of "nigga"s in a Dr. Dre song. And they want to enjoy it, but they can't really enjoy it around me. They start taking out the "nigga"s, or mumbling the "nigga"s, and it's just a sad sight to see. I know when I'm not there, they lean into that shit. "He's not here! Turn it up!"
Rock's rule is that if you're white you can use the word, but only if it's in the song. (White folks: You may want to use greater discretion if you're not in fact a friend of Chris Rock's. Kristol suggested, in the course of the Morning Joe discussion, that the Oklahoma students were simply repeating what they'd heard, but the Rock Rule doesn't even come into play, since what they were heard chanting is not in fact a rap lyric.)
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Geist raised a second and more important point, which is that the context in which the word is used, and the person who does the using, makes a serious difference in the power and connotation of a word. Again, this ought to seem obvious, but apparently it needs to be said. My colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates used an analogy to explain it in 2013:
My father’s name is William Paul Coates. I, like my six brothers and sisters, have always addressed him as Dad. Strangers often call him Mr. Coates. His friends call him Paul. If a stranger or one of my father’s friends called him Dad, my father might have a conversation. When I was a child, relatives of my paternal grandmother would call my father Billy. Were I to ever call my father Billy, we would probably have a different conversation.
It's the context that matters, Coates wrote, leading him to conclude that "when [black NBA player] Matt Barnes used the word 'niggas' he was being inappropriate. When [white NFL players] Richie Incognito and Riley Cooper used 'nigger,' they were being violent and offensive."
Of course, the SAE case is even more cut and dried than that. This wasn't just about deciding when casual use of a term was unacceptable. It wasn't even just an awful use of the slur. This was about hanging black people.
And yet here, prominent national news commentators allowed themselves to be distracted from an obviously malicious, hurtful, and dangerous instance of racism by comparing it—suggesting it was equivalent, even, before backing away from the precipice—to a rap lyric. As long as a common response to white racism is to police black culture and seek the Real Racists on a hip-hop stage, it will be impossible to have any serious reckoning with white racism.
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This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/03/mika-brzezinski-is-not-a-good-rap-critic-or-social-analyst/387451/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo
