The Civil Rights Movement Today in Rap Culture

In another episode of a white boy trying desperately to understand the nuances and complexities of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), I will try to connect the CRM to modern rap culture. Bear with me. (*Disclaimer: some of the content I go over is explicit, so just be warned).

Last year, Lil Wayne apologized to the family of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old, African American Chicago native who was brutally murdered by white aggressors in the South. Till's death helped to spark the CRM sixty years ago, and, when Lil Wayne compared his sex skills in the "Karate Chop" remix to Till's horrific death, an understandable uproar ensued.

Wayne, considered by many to be a paragon of the modern rap movement, was harshly criticized by political and social figures for appropriating Till's death into an accessory, a rap lyric that was as tawdry as it was unnecessary. You can be the judge: "Pop a lot of pain pills/Bout to rims on my skateboard/Beat that p**** up like Emmett Till/Yeah..."

Wayne is not the only famous rapper guilty of marginalizing the CRM. Kanye West, well known for his eccentric and narcissistic idiosyncrasies and lyrics also likened an integral part of the CRM to sex. In the song, "I'm in It," West croons, "Uh, black girl sippin' white wine/Put my fist in her like a civil rights sign..."

Unlike Wayne, though, West also boasts his pride in his African American lineage and in the (arguable) success of the CRM of the 60's. In the song, "New Slaves," West opens with the painfully accurate, "My momma was raised in the era when/Clean water was only served to the fairer skinned," and he goes on to say, "They'll [likely white people] confuse us with some b*******/Like the New World Order/Meanwhile the DEA/Teamed up with the CCA/They tryna lock n***** up/They tryna make new slaves."

These lyrics harken back to the often defamed and forgotten Civil Rights activist Malcolm X in his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet" (which everyone should definitely read). In it, Malcolm X warns his brethren about the white man bringing drugs to the black community, making blacks drug addicts, and then convicting the black man. (The DEA is the substance control agency.) The "New World Order" lyric is likely a reference to X's critique of the Double Victory that was fought for by black and white soldiers in the hopes of bringing in a new world of freedom and equality that was quickly abandoned after WWII was won.

Additionally, in "Blood on the Leaves," West laces in clips of a hymn, "Strange Fruit," (sung by Nina Simone) from the times of Jim Crow era that beckons, "Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees/... /black bodies swayin' in the summer breeze/blood on the leaves." These lyrics evoke the imagery of recurrent lynchings that were commonplace in the Jim Crow south.

So, in a way, we analyze ourselves to a contradiction. On one hand, we have rap artists boasting about their seemingly rambunctious and promiscuous lifestyles and comparing these lifestyles to the CRM. On the other hand, we have self-conscious rappers, using rap as a medium for expressing a thorough and deep understanding of black history and the CRM.

This may stem from the confusing nature of humanity in the face of brutality and subjugation. When a race or a people is taught to hate itself by everyone, they themselves begin to hate themselves and their history. Imagine being told in the home that you should be proud of who you are and then going to school and listening to white kids talk about how the shouldn't let "illegal immigrants" into the country and that anyone who isn't white is just automatically inferior. It's hard to be exposed to history and not feel a bit shameful for your people when you learn the worst about what has happened to them.

Perhaps this mixture of racial pride and degradation stems from an uncertainty of how these rappers feel about their histories. On one hand, they have been programed to hate themselves, and so they liken the martyrs of their people to sexual acts that are deemed disgusting by the modern media. On the other hand, they have been taught that they should be proud, and so they run circles around the white man in their rebellious prose and complex lyrics.

I will say that I don't fully understand the CRM, and this is just a theory. I will also apologize, because this is a really long blog post. I don't think I'll ever truly understand the manifestation of the CRM in modern culture in the same way I wouldn't expect someone to understand how the Holocaust has indirectly driven the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The nuances of an entire culture are too hard to capture in less than a novel or a lifetime.

BUT! That doesn't mean we shouldn't learn about them. We should learn about history because it opens the opportunity for discussion and maybe just a bit of understanding. There is always value in the prospect of understanding something, even if it's just a pixel of the entire picture.