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Sex & music has it gone too far? backlash over lyrics, violence and threat to young women grows
Ebony, Oct, 2002 by Lerone Jr. Bennett, Zondra Hughes
Chicago psychiatrist Carl Bell says some fans, depending on their personal histories, will take the music videos and the actions of some superstars for what it is--out-of-control behavior, but others will soak up the negativity like a sponge, believing that it is acceptable or even expected to disrespect Black women and participate in reckless sexual behavior. "If [the fan] has an intact family, a loving relationship with his parents ... and good problem-solving skills," Dr. Bell says, "then he can listen to some lyrics or see some bad behavior [and it won't affect him] because it's one negative backed up with about 15 positives." But if the fan is surrounded by 15 negatives and no positives, and if "all he sees are hustlers, pimps, prostitutes, then he's going to believe that this is how you treat women," says Dr. Bell.
All of us, Dr. Bell and others say, must re-evaluate our own responses and our own responsibility in creating the negativity that surrounds us and our children. Above all else, they say, we've got to stop glorifying and praising Black and White stars whose personas and mansions and bling-bling are based on music that enslaves and mystifies and destroys.
Fourth and finally, as so many people interviewed for this article said, Black women and Black mothers have got to do what Asian women and other women have done. THEY'VE GOT TO SAY THAT THERE'S NOT GOING TO BE ANY 'HO-MONGERING IN THIS HOUSE, THAT WE'RE NOT GOING TO STAND IDLY BY WHILE STRANGERS CALL OUR MOTHERS, SISTERS AND DAUGHTERS 'HO'S.
That's what the Asian community said when a Black superstar recorded a song that said, among other things, that Asian women not only get down, but they also change the linen. The outraged Asian community put the lyrics on the Internet and organized an international petition.
What happened?
You know what happened. The Black superstar apologized, and the lyrics disappeared from the air waves.
Dr. Julia Hare wants to know why the Black community has not demonstrated equal energy in response to Black superstars who say worse things about Black women 365/24/7.
"The young Black woman is under assault," she says. "We are the only women in the world who would allow this blasphemy; we glorify the music and in fact defend the artists for their poetic license and their right to do this to us. We should have been able to stop this, the way other ethnic communities stopped it, when it first got out of hand." She added:
"I don't hear these derogatory lyrics about Black women from other major groups of people. It is from Black men. What they fail to realize is when they put the Black woman down they are also talking about their own mothers."
And their own fathers.
And their own futures.
It is important, it is a matter of life and death, for all of us to understand that.
We also need a new understanding--in the media, in the entertainment industry, in our churches, schools and organizations--that popular songs are as important as civil rights bills and that a society that pays pipers to corrupt its young and to defame its women and mothers will soon discover that it has no civil rights to defend and no songs to sing.
