In the wake of the trial of Michael Dunn, NPR conducted a conversation with Jamelle Bouie, Gene Demby, and Ta-Nehisi Coates to discuss the verdict, hip-hop, Stand Your Ground Laws, and a host of issues relating to being black in America.
It’s a long conversation, and very much worth your time.
One issue that I thought was especially relevant to our work at The Stake has to do with Mr. Coates assertion that hip-hop is no more violent than American popular culture at large, a sentiment that I would agree with, yet hip-hop stands as separate among violent entertainments. Coates contends that American video games, movies, and comic-books are just as violent and potentially encouraging of violence as hip-hop music, but that only hip-hop is indicative of “thug culture” in the US.
Says Coates:
My favorite comic-book character when I was a kid was Wolverine. The body-count in a single comic-book could be ridiculous. Was I engaging in thug, in murderous art? Well, yes, kind of. But why hip-hop? No one was afraid I was going to go out and kill a bunch of people.
Says Bouie:
No one would go into a comic-book shop and see a bunch of kids trading Wolverine and Deadpool comics and say “those are a bunch of potential murderers.” We would all treat them as distinct individuals. As well you should. And that’s just a testament to racism. Dunn, Zimmerman, each of these people did not look at Trayvon or Jordan as distinct individuals. They were thugs, non-descript mass of black threat. Which is, I wouldn’t say in their defense, but in the broad context that’s just how we have portrayed black men for a hundred years.
The culture we consume has consequences, whether or not we are cognizant of those consequences. The notion that hip-hop creates a violent culture to be feared, and that white popular entertainment (comics, in this example) does not, is a fiction laid bare by exactly those cases which Coates and Bouie are discussing.
But it is a fiction built upon a history and a culture that has embraced racism, and which sees black teenage males not as persons distinct as individuals, but as threats to be feared and subject to violence.
