Dr. King and Hip-Hop

Living in the South, race is always a touchy subject. I mean, it's a touchy subject everywhere, but I'm living in a state where there are white people who still believe that they are superior to everyone else because of their pasty complexions. Drive through a rural town, and you'll see the Confederate flag more often than the stars and stripes. Others take the "I had nothing to do with all this but I still feel kind of guilty about it and I'm going to try to be as politically correct as possible" approach to the whole issue of race. Still others just poke fun at the whole awkward situation.

I've never seen myself as a racist. I tend to be of the opinion that I'm no better than the next person, and my skin tone really has nothing to do with the matter. Still, like every other person on the planet, I have the tendency to be attracted towards people that look like me, speak like me, and have the same interests as me. I see it as less of a race issue and more of a culture issue.

That being said, I had the opportunity last Monday--Martin Luther King, Jr. Day--to step completely out of my happy-white-middle-class-suburban comfort zone. My mom is the director of an after school program for inner city kids, and I have taken to accompanying them on a lot of their field trips. So, instead of sleeping in on the day off like most Americans, I rolled out of bed and went to see a documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, that was playing at my school with a few of the older kids from my mom's program.

I was uneasy at first. My mother and I were the only white people in the entire lecture hall, and I wasn't sure how the other audience members would feel about our presence there. I'm definitely not used to being in the minority. But once the lights went down, that didn't really matter. We were all just people, watching a documentary.

The documentary itself was extremely interesting. It was a (sometimes harsh) critique of gender roles in the hip-hop culture by Byron Hurt--a filmmaker who knows what he's talking about. And believe me, he picked a daring subject. To look at a culture you like and are a part of and say "Hey, something isn't right" in the way he does is inspiring.

Following the documentary was a panel discussion that revolved around the question "What would Dr. King think about today's hip-hop culture?" Basically, it was decided that today's hip-hop culture, with its love of greed and violence, and with its objectification of women, defies the cause for which Dr. King died. A culture that scorns education and glorifies violence is no where near King's Dream. The audience discussed solutions for these problems with the panels, while I observed.

As I left I found myself wondering, what can I do to help this cause? The easy way out would be to shrug my shoulders and say "It's not my problem. I don't even listen to rap music." And I don't feel like I could go into a culture that is not my own and say "Hey, you guys ought to fix this." I came to the ultimate conclusion to help by working with my mom's program. By encouraging these kids to open their minds to knowledge and understanding, maybe they can find a path in the world that is truly meaningful.

Violence and Television...Go Figure

I watch way too much television. There's just something comfortable about eating dinner, settling in on the couch, and flipping channels until I go to sleep. I'm one of those people who is almost impossible to watch TV with. I can't stand commercials; I tend to watch several different shows at once, changing the channel during every commercial break. Annoying, I know.

But during my endless weekend channel surfing, I came across an observation. At one point in time, almost every single channel (I don't have cable, so there are only seven) was playing a crime or law related show. CSI, LA Law, Law and Order, Medium, Numbers, Without a Trace...some of these even have their own spin-offs in different cities, like CSI:Miami and CSI: New York, or they explore the different facets of a police department like Law and Order: CI or SVU. Obviously, being the couch potato that I am, I've watched all of these shows at least once and come to the conclusion that they're all pretty much the same. Sure there are different characters and arching story lines, but the general setup--somebody died, let's figure out who did it--tends to stay the same.

Often the plots of these shows are "ripped from the headlines" as the commericals dramatically announce. They parallel real current events, but change them just enough so that they won't get sued.

My question is this: Why are we, Americans especially, so fascinated by crime? Why do we enjoy watching people get shot, bludgeoned to death, drowned, suffocated... Why do we enjoy seeing their bodies picked apart as some ridiculously gorgeous scientist searches for forensic evidence? Well, maybe we don't enjoy it, but we can't stop watching it.

And it's not just television. Most bookstores and libraries have "true crime" sections, filled with books on various murders and violent crimes. In some ways, I think that books are more affective than television in conveying the horror of murder. I've seen dead bodies so many times on television that I've grown numb to them, but after reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, I dread being at home by myself.

Maybe it's because watching crazy people makes us feel more normal. We can see a serial killer shoot five people and think, Wow. I'd never do that. And then there's just that weird thing that humans do...you see a car wreck, and you slow down to look at the battered cars and people or ambulances beside them. You hear a siren in your neighborhood and you go to watch the fire.

As humans, we're obsessed with tragedy. I was in the sixth grade when 9/11 occurred, and I remember sitting in my second period class at school, watching the towers fall over and over as they replayed it on the news. At one point someone gasped, and we realized that there were people actually jumping from the building to escape the fire. We were captivated. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I watched the news almost nonstop, unable to believe that something like that could be happening in a city that I had visited and fallen in love with.

When you think about it, the television networks really know what they're doing. If everyone is obsessed with violence and the tragedy that it brings, it makes sense to make as many shows about these things as people will watch, and then some.

Something bad happens, and we can't help looking. Someone gets shot on TV, and we just can't stop watching.

So, i'm just testing this out.