Last time out, I tried to tread a middle path between rejection of music that promotes violence and misogyny and outright censorship. Fortunately, local attempts to engage the latter option seem to have sputtered. The proposal before the Nevada Board of Regents to ban rap acts at on the state's campuses foundered on the rock of the First Amendment, at least. But we'll have to wait to learn if the Gaming Control Board's vague memo cautioning casinos about booking rappers has any practical effect.
In dealing with the concern that songs with violent themes might promote violence, I suggested that the pathologies rampant in some forms of rap are not evils in themselves but rather symptomatic of larger ills in the society. One, of course, is our society's general fetishizing of guns, expressed specifically in a small-time rapper's use of the automatic weapon, which he'd brandished on his CD cover, to kill a policeman. Another is the sorry history of race relations in this country, compounded by policies of urban development that have all but abandoned several generations of an underclass.
Along, then, comes Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson, whose op-ed piece in The New York Times the Sunday before last undermines at least one pillar of liberalism's cherished temple of givens. Noting the convergence of several recent studies that outline the dim prospects for African American men, Patterson spotted "another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it."
Patterson's concern is that the familiar socioeconomic explanations for the plight of black men in contemporary American society no longer hold water. He asserts that "countless studies" for decades have shown that poor schools alone do not account for illiteracy, and he notes that joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime." Patterson goes on to wonder why "so many young unemployed black men have children—several of them—which they have no resources or intention to support? And why, finally, do they murder each other at nine times the rate of white youths?"
Patterson points out that the prosperity of the 1990s created the jobs that other scholars had claimed were needed, but these jobs were taken by immigrants, including blacks from Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is important to note that Patterson is no racist, or even reactionary. He is of African-Caribbean descent, and much of his life's work as a scholar addresses the pernicious, lingering effects of slavery. Indeed, he argues, "It is impossible to understand the predatory sexuality and irresponsible fathering behavior of young black men without going back deep into their collective past."
But in the nasty present, Patterson finds that the homeboy pose of hip-hop culture is simply too gratifying:
I call this the Dionysian trap for young black men. The important thing to note about the subculture that ensnares them is that it is not disconnected from the mainstream culture. To the contrary, it has powerful support from some of America's largest corporations. Hip-hop, professional basketball and homeboy fashions are as American as cherry pie. Young white Americans are very much into these things, but selectively; they know when it is time to turn off Fifty Cent and get out the SAT prep book.
No, rap doesn't kill people. Its uglier elements might even, as its fans suggest, amount to nothing more than fictional entertainment. And at heart it expresses righteous anger and frustration. But Patterson wisely observes that its subculture "is not disconnected from the mainstream culture." In fact, it could be argued that it models the rampant id from the raw materials of a society that has long championed individual self-interest over community responsibility. The twin pathologies of liberal America—"let it all hang out" and "it's someone else's fault"—haven't helped, either.
Patterson does not discount either history or economics. Imagining the unfolding century six years ago in The New Republic, he claimed that the "social virus of race will have gone the way of smallpox," and foretold instead a multicultural society riven not by race but by class. Today, he calls for "a new, multidisciplinary approach toward understanding what makes young black men behave so self-destructively."
No doubt he's right, and he's the scholar. But I can't help thinking that the cultural dimensions of what he calls the "Dionysian trap" outline a crisis for the entire society. We have reason to worry about the domination of a pious minority, including those who would censor music and entertainment. Future historians might ruefully scrutinize a society that collapsed under the weight of its divinely appointed imperial ambitions. But they could just as well wonder about one that sold itself a culture of wanton self-destruction.
Chuck Twardy has written for newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. His website,
www.members.cox.net/theanteroom, has a forum.