Re: Gangster rap - I used to feel the same way, until I started hearing some of the stuff that never made it on the radio. The message I think (hope?) many people are referring to is the message of anti-racism and anti-classism, which is certainly a positive one. However, there is a lot of rap that manages to combine anti-racism with misogyny, and it's hard to choose which message to focus on. The people who just like the mainstream music and videos with scantily clad subservient women are pretty worrisome, and when you consider that rap consists of mostly lyrics and rhythm, it's harder for the average mainstream rap fan to claim they listen to rap for the music than, say, a heavy metal fan. (I love old-school metal, but I also realize that the lyrics are very male supremacy-oriented, and I also hardly listen to lyrics unless they're really fucking well done
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A lot of my feelings against gangster rap are a product of where I live. I hear black kids & Mexican kids constantly complaining about racism, and I'll tell you, 95% of that sounds a lot like parroting. Parroting what their parents have bitched about at home, things that their parents and grandparents may have experienced, but not the kids themselves. See, this isn't exactly Whitebread Suburban America. This is the Inland Empire, where the dominant ethnic group is Latino, followed pretty closely by blacks. I have a hard time believing these 16 year-old kids who complain about whitey as though they are as oppressed as their ancestors who may or may not have actually been persecuted by white people
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You do certainly have some valid points here. Many black people do have prejudice against white people, and it is often something they learn from their parents and grandparents, who have lived through the Civil Rights Movement and the Jim Crow era. Though their elders may have more reasons not to trust white people, younger people face more subtle discrimination than their parents and grandparents did. You probably don't see as much of it in your neighborhood for the reasons you mentioned above, but it's very possible that when these people leave the neighborhood for one that is predominantly white, they have a dramatically different experience. For example, they might see people murmur and shoot sidelong glances, edge away nervously, or sneer. A cashier might not even bother to be polite with them, or a security guard in a store might tail them for no apparent reason. They might walk into a high-end restaurant and be told that there are no tables available even as a group of white people walk in and are immediately seated without a
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