Stanley Crouch?: Vulgarity, Hip-Hop and Racism!

» free_your_mind - Vulgarity, Hip-Hop and Racism!

A little note on netiquette made me think twice about what form to put this in. I shall be using no curse-words, and I shall not call you a racist.

But I really had to laugh after reading your note about Stanley Crouch. Judged from what you wrote, it may be hard for some people to tell that you are white and he is black. An additional irony is added by the fact that Stanley Crouch has written so widely, "independently" (a trait you seem to value in the rest of your writing) and intelligently on race relations. Honestly. Aren't you afraid of being perceived as the great white spokesman for the natives?

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Perhaps it's a bit vulgar of me to make your race a subject in itself, but your rather narrow views seems to imply that it is impossible for a black person to reject Hip-Hop. It's after all an art form that is perceived to speak on behalf of blacks, especially the black poor, black youth or angry and betrayed youth in general. So anyone who dares criticize it must by implication be a racist?

I guess that you by now find your pants further down than what has ever been fashionable for urban youth. But let me take one thing at a time.

You have a love for getting to the bottom of things (I noted your exploration if the word "cynic"). Well, what is "vulgar"? Partly it's a matter of opinion. Rules for use of language are often vague, and the nature of use of language is ambigual. But that's also the flexibility and power of this sort of communication, as distinct from what computers are capable of doing. That is, 1/0, yes/no and either/or.

In the same fashion (as the stupid computer) your applied logic is short circuit. You miss every possible human nuance in order to put Stanley Crouch in a clear, unambiguous category. Either black Hip-Hop lover or white racist. The choice was easy, but the result was wrong (too bad), given your poor software.

Do you think there is any use of the word "vulgar" in the definitions below that applies to your use of the word "racist"?

Personally I don't like the use of the word "vulgar" because it often gives the feeling of "looking down one's nose" at the other. But according to Webster's dictionary, Crouch's use (even though I don't approve of it's appliance) is justified just as much as your own connotations:

Vulgar

Middle English, from Latin vulgaris of the mob, vulgar, from volgus, vulgus mob, common people

1a: generally used, applied, or accepted
b: understood in or having the ordinary sense
2 : vernacular
3a: of or relating to the common people : plebeian
b: generally current : public
c: of the usual, typical, or ordinary kind
4a: lacking in cultivation, perception, or taste : coarse
b: morally crude, undeveloped, or unregenerate : gross
c: ostentatious or excessive in expenditure or display : pretentious
5a: offensive in language : earthy
b: lewdly or profanely indecent synonym see common, coarse

You even give him right in saying that the use of gold chains are "maybe excessive (4c)". That is for many the real meaning of vulgar. I note that you don't like Elvis (also a racist, essentially). His Graceland would for many be the epitome of vulgarity. Historically showing off riches became unfashionable for snobs when common people got access to what had before been too expensive for them. The symbolic economy of outward signs are constantly changing (devalued), and if you want to stand out from the rest, maybe a gold chain will give you status in the ghetto, but from others it will only draw contempt.

Maybe the straight and "Eurocentric" Crouch don't like deadlocks and hats worn the "wrong" way - for various reasons they have just become emblems of a cultural expressions he's not so sympathetic to - but he does not say that it's vulgar. That was your own assumptions drawn from your over all perception of him as an enemy - not only of your precious music - but of the black people you so zealously defends. Stanley Crouch is to you the epitome of the racist Eurocentric, who rejects all forms of cultures that don't descends from the great Mayflower WASPs, the "purest descendants of the European high culture". But it becomes utterly pathetic when "the wrong wearing of hats" should pompously represent the civilization of Europe threatened by the most vulgar distortion of order.
It sounds like a parody of Nazi cultural policy during the second world war.

Multiculturalism may be some sort of controversy in the US, but of much greater importance is your own heroic battle of hats. Together with black urban youth you can form a political coalition of agricultural workers to stand up against the oppressive wearing of John Deer caps over "cornrows" in the mid-Western farmland. If necessary, claim your own territory where brothers can cruise freely around in harvesters with huge sound systems. And no LeAnn Rimes, please.

You'd be surprised to learn that Stanley Crouch is actually capable of creating his own "beats", having been a jazz drummer, and a "lyricist" of some sort as well. Although it "wouldn't be Hip-Hop", there is definitely some "soul" to it. He is a untiring advocate of black Americans contribution to American - as well as world culture, and constantly reminds us that blacks (like MLK and countless black musicians) have contributed greatly to expanding the American aesthetic and democratic vision.

But he also finds it appropriate (like you do below) to criticize what he finds corrupted:

Hell yeah I said white people are stupid; I'm white too. I speak from personal experience of living in a college dorm where I *know* lily-white motherf*ckers who go to the record store looking for the most hardcore profane sexist album out because they're "Bout It Bout It" or they get a cheap thrill. They don't care about hip-hop; they just want their fix.

According to the rather "vulgar" (your meaning) prose above there are lots of things in Hip-Hop to point fingers at, and you are best at pointing fingers at whites for their making the demand for the "worst" (and hence stereotypical) forms of Hop-Hop, and in fact I agree with you here. There is little difference between gangsta and Marilyn Manson. You often criticize the industry and blame them for the corruption that follows in it's path (just like Crouch talks about those who fatten their pockets at the expense of others), and predictably embraces the independent/underground concept and more "intelligent" groups like Public Enemy.

I got a few (overstatement) rap albums myself, collected over a span of 10 years or so:

Straight out the Jungle - Jungle Brothers
On Top of the World - Eightball & MJG
The Main Ingredient - Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
Like Water for Chocolate - Common

Some of these are musically very fascinating, and I have as a Norwegian spent some time figuring out what these people are saying. Some of it is excellent, some is just OK, and some is pure BS. I do not have to be a black Muslim or support panther type politics to find rap musically attractive, but I consider a group like Public Enemy very weak musically. It seems their 'politics' has made them icons in the white rock press, where the level of rage and "resistance" has been the most common apologetics of youth culture. Hence the common use of pop as an abusive word. But who's to say when a group becomes commercial? Vulgar (common) use of the word means Mariah Carey is commercial and not Rage Against the Machine. Rock press use the same amount of space to display the fakery and makeups of Mariah Carey as they spend in listing up the political credentials of the entire family of Rage Against The Machine. Those who ever found meaning in Gill Scott-Hernon's famous phrase "the revolution will not be televised" may find the videos of Public Enemy extremely ironic. There is no revolution going on out there, but it's surely being televised. In Y2K you are quite naive if you don't understand that "radical messages" has become a commodity in itself, and for Public Enemy politics became a way of setting them apart from other groups.

Of course I find Public Enemy sometimes more intelligent than those who's merit can only be measured by the amount off shock they effect on Tipper Gore (and for that matter myself). But it's also a matter of degree. OK, maybe they have done some good. Maybe they have made some ignorant kid more 'conscious', but it's a long way to go from typical 'student' rabble-rousing extremist politics to some serious investment in making real change. The worshiping of Malcolm X (as Jesse Jacksons credibility was fading) is symptomatic of the crisis in black politics, a crisis of purpose (note that). As a black leader the dead Malcolm X is perfect, he can do nothing wrong. It's like the lover you never had. Besides "Revolution" has become a "kitschy" an empty word. Sentimental cliched proclamations like "Power To the People" are not rooted in real agendas, but adheres to the entertaining industry's deafening monotony. The effect of so-called "radical messages" in Hip-Hop and rock are utterly trivializing when they "pop" up everywhere (I hear about victims of torture in Chile as I sit eating at Pizza Hut), and ultimately leads to indifference and apathy.

Another, but much greater black leader is also dead, and Public Enemy indeed had "their own way" of honoring his memory. "By The Time I Get to Arizona" was called a "disservice" by the local NAACP, and an insult of the legacy of Dr. King. They complained that Public Enemy's "revenge fantasy" made millions in free publicity at the expense of their cause. This was definitely not in the spirit of MLK.

I'm countin' down to the day deservin'
Fittin' for a king

Fitting for King? To European rock fans with absolutely no knowledge of various strains of black political ideologies, they all seems equally meaningful, and since they are all black, there's no need to find some cohesive meaning of it all. Public Enemy portraits themselves as the real representatives of black people, who they seem to have an intuitive understanding with. Equally they profess to have immediate access to the thoughts of all the dead black heros, whereas they actually act to the contrary of their philosophies.

Perhaps some kid might get "awaken", and then move into dealing with a serious political agenda (and for me that might be much more radical than what America has to offer at elections currently) but he will ultimately render Public Enemy's "politics" as pretty superficial. Kid's stuff. Pop.

When you use the words "racist rhetoric", i think you should understood by now that even if Crouch were white it represent a very shallow rhetoric on your behalf if not racist by implication. You can yourself, by being sympathetic to Hip-Hop as a phenomenon, take great liberties in dismissing what you find offending, vulgar or stupid in 2 Live Crew's music. But if Stanley Crouch in general terms complains that Hip-Hop has a negative ideological influence on black youth, then his utterances is "racist rhetoric".

Is the airing of such views by nature racist? How do they sound when coming from a black Baptist minister, or a taxi driver:

I once got a lift as a tourist in New Your with a man who's look (at least his cap) might associate him with Hip-Hop. He was listening to some sport program over the radio, and I found him not very talkative, but rather the type with an attitude. But as we drove on I tried to get some information from him for my co-passangers who was urging me on from the back seat, because they wanted to go to some stupid musical. The man appeared to be "the sweetest thing", and we talked about a lot of things, but to my disbelief he was not very merciful upon rap artists, who he dismissed as "mere criminals" with no talent. I found myself in the odd situation of being the one who should defend Hip-Hop. There were at least some virtuous DJs, i objected, that recycled good jazz, soul and funk and so on. Was he just (quotation marks are humble designations of my unfamiliarity with urban lingo) a 'playa hater'?

Stanley Crouch's comments about slavery, Hip-Hop and asbestos, as cultural malpractices we all have to overcome becomes utterly bizarre by the way they are put in the mouth of a white (racist) man, and I won't go on and punish you for the same "grammatical" error once again, but it is at this point that you are at your most self-righteous and hysterical. You have caught a "real racist", no doubt about that, and your screaming for everyone to come and spot him.

Maybe he's subconsciously suggesting that slavery somehow polluted the "pure white America" the same way chemicals pollute our lungs and our air. This man's thinly veiled racism is what's REALLY vulgar.

Crouch's greatest sin is his eccentric and deliberate use of the words "American" as well as "Negro". Being an African American (Negro is incorrect) he is not supposed to think of himself as an American. For many Hip-Hop fans and so-called Afrocentrists a remote Africa is a much more viable source of identity. In that respect, according to Stanley Crouch, they have much more in common with German national romantics of the 19th century than Africans, by seeking their identity in cultural exclusiveness.

For Crouch the American identity is a "mulatto culture", and at your best (or worst) you are probably a representative of such. No identity of race or culture gives free access to pride and glory (as KKK losers or Nation of Islam would like to think), and at this time I'd like to put you to shame (not as an American but) at your own expense.

But to your innocence you can of course always claim to have been badly influenced by the demagogy of Chuck D.

Go check yourself...

JC

Jens Chr. Blom, Oslo, Norway

-- posted by free_your_mind