Troubled Waters
A handful of young black teens, cobbling together their masculinity in the absence of positive male figures, wandering like nomads through an environment utterly saturated with virulent anti-black racism, gave birth to gangsta rap. What else could have manifest? The music was angry, composed by men who had every right to be furious regarding their treatment by society. And the music depicted black women as worthless receptacles (1) due to the erroneous binary doctrines discussed earlier that required the rejection of intimacy, (2) due to centuries of American-cultivated propaganda depicting black women as hypersexualized beasts of burden, and (3) due to America’s careful instruction that to be of worth, one must stand over another—preferably the descendants of slaves. These men—stripped of political, social, and economic power—had only one group left to subjugate: the women who shared their status.
The music, callous as the lyrics could be, was embraced for many reasons: the messages rode on beats and melodies many African Americans enjoyed during childhood; the music provided a coping mechanism for black and Latino youth experiencing economic devastation and/or enduring social indignities that stemmed from racism; it provided white teens of the middle and upper classes with an outlet to defy authority.
It was the final example to which music executives took notice. White children brought money. Money bolstered the longevity of gangsta rap and allowed the subgenre to dominate and warp all others. (Amusingly, it mimics the dominance of the superhero in comics. Perhaps that is why the two blend so effortlessly.) The elements of gangsta rap that mainstream white audiences found so titillating—the violence, the sexual exploitation of women, the criminal activity, the illusion of invincibility—was shoehorned into countless acts, whether the genuine result of the artist’s history or not.
As a black woman, it is disturbing to watch white men and women be given agency in the world we gave birth to with black men, to see these black men develop camaraderie—jovial basking in racist misogyny—with them while we are pigeonholed in the role of a subservient clown or whore. We’ve been reduced to less than three-fifths of a human—merely an ass and six bags of someone else’s hair—our faces not even deemed worthy of a camera’s lens or a “featured” role in a video. And when we speak up, when we dare to criticize the treatment we receive? We are ostracized as traitors, labeled “haters,” and demonized for attempting to diminish a rapper’s success–success often driven by our tears and our humiliation. The bodies of black women have been used as fuel. And no maudlin, mediocre sixteen bars about mothers and daughters each decade will mollify that. You need more people.
The commonality shared by black women and queer men of color is that hip hop has demanded our silence during our disrespect. It is almost Athenian in its outlook. So when Frank Ocean broke that silence and was not punished for it, I was intrigued. And then I realized the key difference in the role of queer men and straight black women in hip–hop. Negative depictions of queer men do not move units. Queer men are erroneously believed not to be able to move units at all. They are forced to be invisible as well as silent. Black women are to be seen—preferably stripped—and not heard.
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