SEXISM AND HIP-HOP, THE CONTINUING DISCUSSION

not really helping either
I meant to post this a few weeks back but hadn't have the time. I originally read this interview with Lauren Harkrader (aka Duke's DJ Chela) on hiphopmusic.com, but unfortunately, the story is no longer available at its original source (however, Google cache is the best, true that).

Harkrader makes some excellent - or at the very least, provocative - points about the perpetuation of misogyny in hip-hop. Good food for thought. Here's a few of the more compelling parts of the interview:

HARKRADER: Society is misogynistic, American society is patriarchal and so on, so it already sets things up. But a lot of the commercial music takes that to a higher level and really endorses it, or normalizes it, makes it something acceptable. Young, impressionable people are going to buy into that. And the whole cycle perpetuates.

THE N&O: This is something that has been an issue in all kinds of music, not just hip-hop. Do you think there's something different about hip-hop?

HARKRADER: I would definitely compare where hip-hop is right now to the big-hair rock phase of the '80s, when the men were just very hypersexual and very destructive. And it's a completely different arena and different form, but it's that same thread of just-over-the-top behavior.

But hip-hop, in terms of the social political landscape that it comes from, is always going to be different. At the same time, it's pop music, and a lot of young white kids are buying into it for a lot of different reasons. Young white kids want to rebel, and they see this struggle of people -- it's a different struggle than their own -- and they want to adopt that and buy into that, but it's a very superficial presentation of that. It's like they are buying into the ignorance that's being marketed that comes out of exploitation and prejudice.

So it's this crazy cycle, and it's also a tragic cycle, I would say, because at the end of the day, who gets affected? I would say these young women having babies at 15 or 16 years old and young men and women that feel that gang life is the best way they can assert their power and be powerful people and be leaders.

THE N&O: Is the subject of hip-hop and how it represents women something that you hear discussed much among women?

HARKRADER: Sadly, not as much as I feel like I would expect. I went to school at Oberlin College, and that environment was very much questioning everything. But when I came back to Durham, I definitely just saw a resignation in women and a lack of perspicuity, really looking at the issue as to why it is.

Women are the main consumers, so it's up to us. We could boycott the hip-hop music we don't agree with or that we feel disrespects us, and we could make our own music. There are so many different things we could do, so I think that we definitely need to have more conversations that bring us together because there are so many things that can divide us.

You would think women would stick together more, and the truth is, we really don't. A lot of women have internalized the sexism and oppression that exists and look at other women as a threat and don't want to work together with other women.

--O.W.