Black Hip Hoppers to White Men, "You're the niggers now"

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070429/UPDATE/704290343/1020

Quote:

"Sexism is too convenient within the black community for black men,"
said David Ikard, an assistant professor at the University of
Tennessee. "This issue of Imus came up and I asked the black men in my
hip-hop course what were their stakes in it. They were like, 'Well, we
don't really have any stakes in it. It seems trivial.'"

Apparently they think they don't have stakes in it because as black
men they aren't held to the same standards as white men. It's time
they wake up.

Smitty

Panel discusses how hip-hop portrays women in wake of Imus scandal

Carla K. Johson / Associated Press Writer


CHICAGO -- A panel discussion titled "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?" drew
more than 400 people Saturday -- a sign that the furor that erupted
over Don Imus' comments isn't over yet.

As Imus struggled in vain to keep his radio-host job earlier this
month, he claimed that rappers routinely "defame and demean black
women" and call them "worse names than I ever did." That led to some
music-industry navel-gazing, but too little action, some panelists at
the University of Chicago said.

Some criticized music executives failing to make a strong statement
against violent and demeaning language in mainstream rap music when
they met earlier this month in New York.

Others blasted hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons for not doing enough when
he called this week for the recording and broadcast industries to ban
three words -- "bitch," "ho" and "***" -- from all so-called clean
versions of rap songs.

"How is no one saying to Russell, 'Yo, we already bleep out those
words'?" said Joan Morgan, an author and commentator on hip-hop and
feminism.

Others at the event said hip-hop shouldn't be made a scapegoat for
what's wrong in America.

"We allow this language to go on," said Amina Norman-Hawkins, a
Chicago hip-hop emcee and executive director of the Chicago Hip-Hop
Initiative. "As a community, we aren't responsible for our children.
So we don't teach our little boys how to grow up to be men and respect
women. We allow them to learn from the street what's acceptable."

Some said Imus' April 12 firing by CBS Radio over a slur he used to
describe Rutgers University's women's basketball team has provided a
new opportunity to galvanize public opinion on the issue.

"Sexism is too convenient within the black community for black men,"
said David Ikard, an assistant professor at the University of
Tennessee. "This issue of Imus came up and I asked the black men in my
hip-hop course what were their stakes in it. They were like, 'Well, we
don't really have any stakes in it. It seems trivial.'"

He called on black men to do more to speak up for black women.

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