Long time, no post. I’ve been absent awhile here and this next post is a slight cop out. The following is an essay I wrote for one of my English courses this past semester. I’ve adapted a few things so the essay fits the medium a little better. I also want to give a quick description of the novel I focus on in the essay – The Street by Ann Petry. The Street is a fictional novel set in the 1920s; it follows Lutie Johnson, a single black mother living in Harlem, and her struggles to make money and find a better life for herself and her child, Bub. She faces several barriers because of her race, her gender, and her oppressive poverty. It’s a great read. If you like Native Son you would probably like this novel as well. In the essay below I juxtapose the messages and images in The Street with the messages and images in contemporary gangster rap (rap from the late 80s to the present). I cite a few different books and lecture from another of my courses but I have a full bibliography at the end of the essay if you are interested.
The Street and Gangster Rap: Looking the Same Even After All These Years
While The Street by Ann Petry was published almost half a century before the popularization of gangster rap in America, the two present us with incredibly similar descriptions of life in the poor, black, urban community. Both present the same violence, poverty, fear and neglect and both illustrate the ways in which people try to momentarily escape that life. The fact that The Street and gangster rap can exist so far apart in time, with the civil rights era between them even, and still depict the same image of life illustrates the extreme failure of our society to deal with and correct racial disparities.
“Rap” and “hip hop” are terms often used interchangeably and to describe many different types of music so I think it is important before I begin to define what kind of music I am talking about when I say “gangster rap.” When I talk about “gangster rap,” I am focusing on rap with subject matter that focuses on depictions of life for the poor, black, marginalized people living in areas with heavy gang violence. Some of the examples I use will also depict the artist participating this gang violence. That does not mean the rapper himself is actually in a gang (though he likely is, or was in one), just that the artist depicts himself as participating in gang violence.
The Street and gangster rap provide very similar portrayals of violence. In The Street, gang violence makes an appearance when Lutie sees someone who had been cut with a knife. No one at the scene is surprised or shocked by the violence, rather it is taken as a mundane occurrence. Street violence is less prominent in The Street than the threat of violence against women. Lutie lives in constant fear of violence “She didn’t need to turn around, anyway; he was staring at her back, her legs, her thighs. She could feel his eyes traveling over – estimating her, summing her up, wondering about her…she was aware that the skin on her back was crawling with fear. Fear of what? She asked herself. Fear of him” (Petry 13). Lutie’s fear in this scene is oppressive, it permeates through the entire scene. She is trapped in this dark hallway and is fearful of this man who watches her much too intently. And this man she feels such strong fear of is her super, he lives in her building and has a key to her home which makes him that much more threatening. While in the car with Boots, a musician who wants Lutie to sing in his band, Lutie feels just as trapped and fearful,
“The soft, satisfied way he said the words made her sharply aware that there wasn’t a house in sight, there wasn’t a car passing along the road and hadn’t been since they parked…Her mind sought some plausible way of frustrating him without offending him. She couldn’t think of anything. He was holding her so tightly and his mouth was so insistent, so brutal, that she twisted out of his arms, not caring what he thought, intent only on escaping from his ruthless hands and mouth” (Petry 161).
Every man Lutie meets expresses desire for her – the Super, Boots, Junto (the owner of the local club) – and she lives fearful of the violence to which they may resort as a reaction to her refusal of them.
While in The Street we see Lutie’s ever-present fear of violence, in gangster rap we see the other side – the threat of violence against women from the male rappers. Depiction of violence against women are ubiquitous in gangster rap. Women are nearly exclusively referred to in derogatory terms like, “bitch,” “slut,” and “ho” and lyrics like “drivin down the street in my six four / jockin the bitches, slappin the hos” in Easy E’s “The Boyz in the Hood” are commonplace. Women are also depicted as hyper-sexualized as well. For example, Ice Cube is “It Was a Good Day” where he gets “a beep from Kim she can fuck all night” or in Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin but a ‘G’ Thang” where women are referred by their sexual organ alone, “Ain’t no pussy good enough to get burnt.” And most of us are familiar with the tradition in rap videos and concerts where very scantily clad women dance around the rapper. Of course there are many rap songs that combat the misogyny in rap culture, but the overwhelming trend and the stereotype of heavy misogyny and objectification of women associated with rap remains.
Joan Morgan, a “’hip hop feminist’” (Werner 322), has an explanation for this excessive violence, “’When brothers can talk so cavalierly about killing each other and then reveal that they have no expectation to see their twenty-first birthday, that is straight up depression masquerading as machismo’” (Werner 323). While some critique rap for glorifying violence, Morgan describes the depictions of violence as a coping mechanism. Morgan’s view is supported explicitly in some raps. For example, in Ice Cube’s “It was a Good Day,” (which I just mentioned for its hyper-sexual portrayal of a woman, Kim) the ultimate message is that he had a good day simply because no one shot him or arrested him. Ice Cube is having a good day because he is, “Thinking I will live, another twenty fo” and “Today I didn’t even have to use my A.K.” Violence is so commonplace in the lives of these men and others in their communities that living a single day is a celebration. In “Colors,” Ice T deals with the confusion and dissatisfaction he feels with the gang lifestyle. In the song he goes back and forth between declaring his acts of violence and questioning why he commits them “But I don’t wanna be down with this situation man / But I’m in here, if I had something betta to do I think I’d do it / but right now I’m just down here.” The constant fear of violence at the hands of other men in their neighborhood is likely part of what begets the depictions of violence against women. Although the feminist in me would really prefer if rap artists (and artists in general) would refrain from referring to women with derogatory terms and from depicting them as hyper-sexualized, I cannot deny that these depictions could very well be a symptom of something larger. Living in constant fear of violence and death and lacking the agency to change things makes a person feel powerless. Being scared and powerless will drive people to seek power elsewhere or over someone else. So power over and violence against women becomes a means to finding agency when it has been deprived elsewhere.
Neglect of the problems facing poor, black, urban communities and individuals is also present in both The Street and gangster rap. Lutie and Boots discuss making money and Boots insists that “’There’s plenty of money to be made in Harlem if you know how’” (Petry 154). Lutie disagrees with him, however, “She supposed there was if people were willing to earn it by doing something that kept them just two jumps ahead of the law. Otherwise they eked out a miserable existence” (Petry 154). Boots’s dismissal of people’s struggles to make money ignores the fact that some people are privileged over others and that much of the money is in illegal exploits. Shortly after, Lutie thinks,
“if the richest part of [the world] was to be fenced off so that people like herself could only look at it with no expectation of ever being able to get inside it, then it would be better to have been born blind so you couldn’t see it, born deaf so you couldn’t hear it, born with no sense of touch so you couldn’t feel it. Better still, born with no brain so that you would be completely unaware of anything, so that you would never know there were places that were filled with sunlight and good food and where children were safe” (Petry 155).
While Lutie and the others of 116th street suffer, they are forced to look at those who have more while constantly being reminded that they will never and can never have those simple and nice things like food and safety. Meanwhile, the gated communities allow those with money to avoid ever seeing those without. With the rich actively avoiding seeing the poor and middle-men like Boots insisting that the poor could make money if they tried, those poor residents of 116th street are neglected and refused assistance. They are left alone to trudge along and hope to last until the next day.
Gangster rap also depicts the neglect facing the poor black community by those who have more. In his song “Colors,” Ice T explains that although he does not necessarily like the excessive violence in his gang-member lifestyle, he is not free to escape it, “You’ll say stop it but I’ll say that I can’t / My gang’s my family it’s all that I have.” In “Colors” Ice T does explicitly express his anger and frustration with those who have more than he does, “I don’t know why I do it man, I just do it / I never had much of nuffin man / Look at you man, you’ve got everything going for yourself / and I ain’t got nuffin man, I’ve got nuffin / I’m living in the ghetto man / just look at me man, look at me.” Ice T’s repeated insistence to this person with “everything” that he himself has nothing and his repeated call for the other to look at him, just to look at him, express his feeling of neglect, of being forgotten and ignored. The repetition in the lines illustrates the frustration he feels and the lack of agency; he can do no more than repeat himself, than to ask to be looked at. In “Cell Therapy” by Goodie Mob, Cee Lo Green discusses the gate in his community and questions whether it was created to “keep crime out or to keep our ass in.” In “99 Problems” Jay Z criticizes rap critics who dismiss him as being only about “Money, cash, hos” by saying, “I’m from the hood stupid what type of facts are those / If you grew up with holes in your zapatos / You’d celebrate the minute you was having dough.” Jay Z calls attention to these critics who will quickly dismiss him as being shallow and lacking substance because they fail to consider who he is and how he has lived and thus why he might focus on themes of money and wealth. These rap critics ignore his past and so ignore the poverty from which he came and in which many still live. For both the residents of 116th street in The Street and those represented in gangster rap, their poverty and struggles are continually ignored by those with money and power.
In The Street, escape is found at the Junto, the local night club on 116th street. In the winter, the street is dirty and “desolate” and “people found a certain measure of escape from it by standing in front of Junto where the light streaming from the windows and the music from its jukebox created an oasis of warmth” (Petry 141). Similarly, in the summer the street is hot and suffocating and those “same people who found warmth standing in front of the Junto in winter continued to stand there in summer” (Petry 142). The men who escape the brutality of the weather from which their homes offer little shelter. The men who cannot find jobs show up early and more men join as the ones with work end their day. Standing outside the Junto is a shared ritual that allows these men to socialize and find comfort from the harshness of the street. Meanwhile, the women of the street similarly seek escape from their lives in the Junto. The young women of the street whose work days leave them “dirty, tired, depressed” (Petry 144) seek companionship at the Junto and some young women, like Lutie, “went to the Junto only because they were hungry for the sight and sound of other young people and because the creeping silence that could be heard under the blaring radios, under the drunken quarrels in the hall bedrooms, was no longer bearable” (Petry 144). In both cases, these young women are seeking escape from the loneliness and desolation of their lives on the street. Older women, “scowled ferociously…Some of the old women paused to mutter their hatred of it, to shake their fists in a sudden access of passion against it” (Petry 143). The older women abhor the Junto and there is a certain amount of solace and escapism that comes from passionately hating something. Actively hating something tangible is a distraction from thinking about the difficulties of your current situation, the causes of which can be more difficult to identify and explain.
Lutie individually finds escape through her singing. When Lutie first sings the blues with Boots’s band, she finds freedom in her singing, “Though she sang the words of the song, it was something entirely different that she was thinking and putting into the music: she was leaving the street…she was taking Bub away with her to a place where there were no Mrs. Hedges, no resigned and disillusioned little girls, no half-human creatures like the Super. She and Bub were getting out and away and they would never be back” (Petry 222). Lutie’s music serves as an escape for those listening as well. When she sings at the bar those around her fall silent in response to the story she infuses into the song. After singing her first song with Boots’s band, the bandmates, who originally figured Lutie was just Boots’s new girl and would not have talent, bow so low in respect for her talent that she can see their backs (Petry 222). In singing the blues, Lutie “had found the means of getting away from the street” (Petry 223).
Similar to the people of Petry’s 116th street seeking escape in a club, gangster rap as a genre is considered a practice of escapism. Gangster rap is an escape fantasy and an anger fantasy that helps voice and cope with the problems of being marginalized, poor, and black (Shasko 4/4/13). Gangster rap relies on the ideas of the Blues Impulse in which Lutie is participating. Rapper Jay Z’s “99 Problems,” for example, fits all three criteria of the blues impulse – “(1) fingering the jagged grain of your brutal experience, (2) finding a near-tragic near-comic voice to express that experience; and (3) reaffirming your existence” (Werner 69). In the song, Jay Z talks about his former poverty, his critics, a racist police officer, and being sent to jail because of someone “having no God damn sense.” Despite the overwhelming challenges faced in this song, Jay Z retains a comical tone through his repetition of the line, “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” Like Lutie’s music and spending time at the Junto, rap music is an escape. It is a way to illustrate a shared experience and through its fantasy find escape from that experience.
The Street was first published in 1946 and gangster rap became popularized in America in the late 80s and continues to be popular today and the two are giving us the same story 40 years apart. This story of violence and neglect and sorrow for the poor African-American is an old one. It started well before Petry and has continued up to the present day. I highlighted similarities in the representations of life in The Street and in gangster rap, a pre-civil rights era work and a post-civil rights era art form, to illustrate the lack of change and the severe neglect of that lack of change. With the civil rights era long passed and with the election of Barack Obama, there is a tendency believe that racism is dead, that it is not a problem in modern society. The truth is, that although explicit and public racism will get an individual in minor trouble, racial prejudices and oppression still permeate our lives. Just a few weeks ago, Oklahoma State Representative Dennis Johnson used the phrase “Jew me down on a price” in a debate and it was quickly forgotten after a short apology. Even more recently, advertisers at Mountain Dew decided it would be completely fine to run an ad featuring an obviously assaulted white woman trying to pick out her attacker from a lineup of all black men. Mountain Dew quickly pulled the ad following massive backlash but regardless, somehow this ad managed to go from pitch, to filming, to release without anyone thinking, “This is pretty racist. Maybe we should do something else.” Following the Boston bombing, the suspension of constitutional rights for some people based on their race or religion was actively supported by some such as Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Paula Deen is currently under fire for allegation of racism against the staff of her restaurant but there are thousands of people who are outraged that such allegations would cause such a disturbance to her career. Because ensuring a welcoming and safe workplace for people of all races is less important than getting our supply of deep-fried everything. The worst part of all this is that I could continue this list for pages and pages examples of prominent figures and companies doing something racist and having it hardly affect them and/or having the public on the side of racism. If a prominent public figure says something racist, we ask for an apology and move on and that is appallingly too lenient. Perhaps more abhorrent is the deeply rooted institutionalized racism that often goes ignored. Michelle Alexander recently released The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness in which she argues that despite assertions that we live in an age of colorblindness, with the implementation of the “War on Drugs,”
“Mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow. In my experience, people who have been incarcerated rarely have difficulty identifying the parallels between these systems of social control. Once they are released, they are often denied the right to vote, excluded from juries, and relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated existence. Through a web of laws, regulations, and informal rules, all of which are powerfully reinforced by social stigma, they are confined to the margins of mainstream society and denied access to the mainstream economy. They are legally denied the ability to obtain employment, housing, and public benefits – much as African Americans were once forced into a segregated second-class citizenship in the Jim Crow era” (Alexander 4).
Clearly, race is still a major issue in our country, so why is the issue ignored? For years people like Petry, Jay Z, Michelle Alexander, M.K. Asante, Ice T and hundreds or thousands of others have been telling us that it is bad for poor urban communities and especially for people of color. For years people have been telling us racism is alive and well and we need to do something about it. So why have we not done something? What are we doing to help? What am I doing to help? And I can’t answer that. We are talking about racism, we are calling attention to it when we see it. Michelle Alexander and others show us how laws and institutions perpetuate practices of criminalizing race. But we have been talking for a long time.
I leave you here with both of us feeling fairly unsatisfied with the ending. I wish that was not the case. I wish that I could end this paper with something tangible, with something satisfying but I cannot. I can only leave off with the resounding “why” that I struggle with every day. Why, after all this time, do people retain these racist ideas and prejudices? Why do they not know better? Why do institutions and laws that attack certain races and classes but poorly veil themselves as unbiased get passed and upheld? Why is it so common to hear a story about a group of college kids having a racist themed party (such as the sorority at Penn State with an appalling Mexican themed party in which they wore fake mustaches, sombreros and ponchos and held signs saying “will mow lawn for weed + beer” or one Duke fraternity’s Asian themed party)? Why is racism in our state’s politicians and leaders so prevalent and not shocking? Why do I feel like there is nothing I can do about it other than point it out? Going through life saying, “Hey look! Racism!” is not an effective means of creating change. But I’m not sure what else to do at this point in my life. Unfortunately I cannot answer my own questions and have to end this essay with all of us feeling confused and dissatisfied. Maybe if we keep asking the questions one day we will find answers.
Bibliography
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Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Print.
“Dr. Dre Snoop Dogg – Ain’t Nothing But A G Thang.” YouTube. YouTube, 19 Nov. 2008. Web. 17 May 2013.
“Duke Frat Bros in Trouble for Racist Asia Rager.” Jezebel. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2013.
“Eazy-E – Boyz In Da Hood.” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Feb. 2008. Web. 17 May 2013.
“Goodie Mob – Cell Therapy.” YouTube. YouTube, 20 Aug. 2007. Web. 17 May 2013.
“Ice Cube – It Was A Good Day (HD).” YouTube. YouTube, 11 June 2009. Web. 17 May 2013.
“Ice T – Colors.” YouTube. YouTube, 01 Aug. 2007. Web. 17 May 2013.
Johnson, Luke. “Dennis Johnson, Oklahoma GOP Lawmaker, Apologizes To ‘The Jews’ For ‘Jew Me Down’ Comment.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 18 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 May 2013.
“Penn State Sorority Girls Dress Up As Mexicans Who Will ‘Mow Lawn for Weed and Beer'” Jezebel. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2013.
Petry, Ann. The Street. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. Print.
Planas, Roque. “Ann Coulter: Bombing Suspect’s Wife Should Be Jailed For Wearing Hijab.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 May 2013.
“This Stupid Mountain Dew Commercial Is Causing a Racial Uproar [UPDATED].” Jezebel. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2013.
Werner, Craig Hansen. A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America. New York: Plume, 1998. Print.
Things and Stuff 