Long before Don Imus put both feet in his mouth by making derogatory comments about the Rutgers University women s basketball team, writer and professor T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting feared hip-hop lingo s blistering effect on young black females. Author of the new book Pimps Up, Hos Down: Hip Hop s Hold on Young Black Women, Sharpley-Whiting will speak at UW-Madison today.
In this, her fourth book, she discusses her own experiences as a former model and member of the hip-hop generation of the late 1980s before launching into an examination of hip-hop and the sexes.
That s what I try to do with the book, push for a broader discussion beyond just the lyrics, she said. Because if the lyrics are representing reality in hip-hop music, what it means to me is that we ve got some jacked-up stuff going on that we need to deal with, beyond calling someone a bitch or a ho.
Sharpley-Whiting, 40, who earned her doctorate at Brown University, is professor of African-American and diaspora studies and French at Vanderbilt University. She s also part of a group of scholars who ve been conducting community dialogues on rap and gender ( ) throughout the country.
In a way, the media storm over Imus is wonderful that at least it s generating discussion in an unprecedented way, she explained.
I don t think we ve gotten to a point where we are willing as a culture, as a society, to really talk about how complicated, messy and contradictory gender relationships are in this country: what masculinity means, what it means to be a woman, how we circumscribe people s roles, how we narrow their options.
Since the Imus affair, some high-profile figures, including the iconic hip-hop producer Russell Simmons, have proposed banning three particular words from clean hip-hop music and the airwaves.
Sharpley-Whiting s reaction?
I think people are looking for easy answers, she said. The whole idea that we re going to clean up the lyrics - that s great, that s a step in the right direction. But some of what s being said can t be reduced to bitch, ho and (the n-word).
With some of the stuff that s being rapped about or talked about in hip-hop - and also in our larger culture - we don t necessarily have to use those words to convey that same sentiment, she said. In lyrics that allude to rape, for example, What are you saying about young women s lives? Obviously what is being discussed is not a healthy female sexuality.
And it s certainly not a healthy male sexuality, because it s rooted in bravado, braggadocio, and the conquest of women.
I think we ve been dealing with these issues for some time in our culture, she continued. If hip-hop went the way of the dinosaur, we d still be dealing with problematic gender relationships.
Sexual abuse would not decline all of a sudden.
As for Imus, He stepped into a landmine, and it blew up, she said. For something to be funny, usually you re going after someone of your own cohort group.
The problem was, he went after 17-, 18-year-old girls, talking about their sexuality, which he knows nothing about.
I also like to talk about the fact that sport is one of our favorite American pastimes, she said. It s one of the few arenas where we like to think we transcend our differences despite our race, religion, color, creed.
We can come together and root for the same team. So in some respects it s supposed to be a neutral space.
Imus, whose broadcasts drew 2 million listeners daily, got what he deserved - and so would a black commentator who said the same things on the air, Sharpley-Whiting said.
Still, she worries that the fallout could result in censorship that gets a little out of hand.
It s a slippery slope, so we have to be very careful about that, she said. But I think people have come to a point where at least we re trying to question, How much is too much?
What: T. Denean Sharpely-Whiting talks about her book Pimps Up, Hos Down: Hip Hop s Hold on Young
Black Women.
When: 3 p.
m. today.
News RSS