Gender and the Hip-Hop Culture

While workng at City Year I was asked by theCity Year team at Ben Franklin High School if I would, along with 20 others, help facilitate workshops for their legacy project they were doing for 9th and 10th graders. The team planned a day revolving around hip-hop and gender and how hip-hop has created a culture that is not only violent, but self destructing. I felt a little uneasy about this task that was asked of me because I know very little about the hip hop culture but at the same time I really wanted to be a part of this experience because I had a feeling it was going to be an eye opener for me.

So, I arrived at Ben Franklin a ago not really sure what I was getting myself it to. When the students arrived at school that day (mind you this was about 400 freshmen and sophomores) they were brought to the auditorium and seperated, girls on one side and boys on the other. They then watched a documentary called: Hip-Hop, Beyond the Beats and Rhyms. This video was extremely intense and at times very uncomfortable to sit through. The video looked at how hip-hop started as something powerful and somethin beautiful and has transformed into one that talks about killing, sex, hoes and bitches, degrades women, degrades the African American culture, money, drugs, gangs. The documentary explains what it is like to be a man in the industry and how women are less than objects, they are just sex and they are less than a dime a dozen and how it is important for men to be dominant, and abusive over women becuase it gives them power. The music videos that are being produced are very scadelous and sometimes border on pornography and makes beautiful women look like whores. The violence this music promotes is, in my opinion, extremely frightening, young boys are dying each and everyday from gun violence and yet we as a culture find is perfectly acceptable for artists to produce music and play it on the radio that talks about murder, rape, vengence. What is wrong with our cultuer?! What is most sickening is that this music is generating millions upon millions in sales.

After we watched the documentary the boys and girls were still split up but were put into much smaller discussion groups and I ran a discussion group with 7 girls about the video. During our discussion we talked about the documentary and about their personal expereinces with this topic. I was completely shocked. While each of the girls strongly denied that they dress provocitively they also found it completely acceptable that the music the listend to degraded women, promoted violence, and promoted the male gender as the dominant gender. They explained to me, while the would rather have different lyrics, it was just the way life in the "hood" is and that I would never understand. And you know, maybe I would never understand the type of lives that they have had but I do understand when a culture is systematically putting women down and I do understand when a culture forces its young boys to become a macho man. In Mexico the term for this phenomenon is machismo, and here it is simple the young boys do not want to be coined a "bitch ass nigger" (plese excuse my language, I do not speak like this ever). The young girls at Ben Franklin High School told me, "that if girls in the music videos want to dress like hoes (again excuse my language) then they deserve to be treated the way they do by men, it does not concern me and I do not have to take care of their problems." Can you believe that these girls have never had anyone tell them to stand up for their gender to stand up for what they believe is right all they know is that is the way life is. I asked them about the boys and how they felt that young men are being treated and the only response was "they got to be tough or they will get shot." Philadelphia is a city with an astronomical murder rate, we are well past a murder a day and one has to wonder what is going wront but then you have young teens tell you statements like this and it all begins to come together. With the music they listen to that promots shooting up niggers (again please excuse my language), to slapping around their bitches,money, greed, sex, it is no wonder why they young men of Philadelphia are dying. The music is such a big part of the culture and all it does is promote hate. With all of this I asked the girls if they would ever stop listening to this type of music because of what the lyrics said and they said no because it has a good beat and it is not my fault that the music videos look like that.

I left Ben Franklin High School feel so unbelieveably. Sad because the young girls do not have someone telling them that what is being said and done to their gender is unacceptable, is degrading, and no one not should ever be treated like that and that they think it is fine because they live in the "hood" and it is just the way life is. It is not the way life is because women are being sexually exploited and young men are dying each day in the city of "bortherly love and sisterly affection". How many have to die and have to suffer before the young people of Philadelphia wake up and realizt that if they stop buying the music and if they stop watching the videos they might actually save a life and start rebuilding a city that so desperately needs it?