The AJC’s Cynthia Tucker goes Bill Cosby
October 17, 2007 at 10:46 am by Scott Freeman in News, Randomly NotedCynthia Tucker has the reputation for taking unpopular stances. She was among the first to call out former Mayor Bill Campbell. She took on Cynthia McKinney and the King family. Which is part of the reason she has received a Pulitzer Prize for her commentary (and a CL “Best of Atlanta” award).
In today’s AJC, Tucker delivers a strongly worded blast at the “thug” culture inspired by rap music, which she says is destroying black Americans:
But the violence isn’t just playacting; it’s not just teenagers trying on a rebellious facade. Young adults — many of them men, most of them black — get arrested. They go to prison. They die on the streets.
There is now a cottage industry dedicated to defending rap music, a group of enablers who glorify hard-core rap as a legitimate art form reflecting the bitter real-life experiences of ghetto inhabitants. But I have no patience for the academic exegeses. This so-called music and the lifestyle it glorifies is a malignancy destroying black America. What does it take for mothers and fathers, ministers and teachers, music executives and TV moguls to turn it off?
It’s a brave stance for Tucker — to take on rap music in the rap capital of the world — but it’s also a finger in the dike. The hard truth is that it’s all about the Benjamins. When the public stops buying it, people will stop selling it.
In the meantime, many of the stars of rap self-fulfill their own prophecies through arrests, violence and death: T.I., the Black Mafia Family, Foxy Brown, Tupac, the Notorious B.I.G., and the list goes on and on.
The question I don’t know the answer to is this: Is rap music that glorifies “thug” culture the symptom or the disease? Is it a reflection of today’s society, or does it define our society? Or is it a little of both?
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