Rosa Parks
Well, in keeping with my belated Veteran's Day entry, I thought I should have a very belated entry dedicated to Rosa Parks. Frankly, Ms. Parks has always been someone I greatly respected. She stood up for what was right even though it wasn't convenient. Her legacy is something that ought to be honored and upheld. Unfortunately, as Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson writes, the modern rap culture is steadily eroding what she fought for--oppurtunity for African-Americans to excell. He, of course, says it much more eloquently and pointedly than I can.
Mocking Parks's legacy
By Derrick Z. Jackson | October 26, 2005
ROSA PARKS did not defy a white bus driver in 1955 so teenagers in 2005 could attend school-night concerts by black performers filled with self-hate. As yesterday's newspapers mourned the death of the 92-year-old civil rights icon, thousands of youths in the Boston area counted down the hours to last night's Monster Jam at the TD Banknorth Garden.
In a 1992 interview on National Public Radio, Parks said: ''I would like to encourage young people especially to be aware of what our situation is and to be concerned about our past history and to know what we have suffered and to be willing and ready to prepare themselves through a better education and dedication to making conditions better for our people."
The lineup for Monster Jam makes a tragic mockery of Parks. There was Ludacris. His idea of education is a ''song" in which he and guest performers say the F-word 24 times, the N-word 17 times, the B-word 11 times, and do a whole lot of bragging about being ''a full-fledged killa, part-time MC, full-time drug dealer." In another cut, called ''Hoes In My Room," the explicit sexual lyrics are almost completely unprintable in a family newspaper, with 29 utterances of either the slang for whore or the B-word.
There was Tony Yayo, also toting guns on one cut that starts, ''Aww, N-, do you know what this is? One shot, one kill." In another cut, he brags, ''I got N-s in Queens that kill for Pamper money." There was Jermaine Dupri, whose respect for women can be summed up in one cut where the chorus shouts that rap stars have to ''keep these MF H-s on they knees," and, ''Hoes love me cause I keep it comin' strong and yo; I'm a pimp with mine every time, I don't give a F who she is. B- you can go. Get another cause they love us N-s in the fast life."
About the only artist who makes sense in the Monster Jam lineup does so in an ironic way. Damian Marley, one of the sons of the late reggae master Bob Marley, said in the piece ''Welcome to Jamrock":
''Come on let's face it, a ghetto education's basic, ''A most a the youths, them waste it; ''And when they waste it, that's when they take the guns and replace it, ''Then them don't stand a chance at all." It makes you wonder what chance black people stand when Parks and her supporters risked their lives, and 50 years later, the livelihoods of an ever-more vulgar generation of young entertainers is wrapped around blaxploitation, sexism, and homophobia. Just as appalling, these N-word and B-word entertainers are considered so normal in American culture that the Monster Jam was sponsored by Filene's department store, Dunkin' Donuts, X-Box video games, Nikon cameras, D'angelo's deli, Scion cars, and the National Guard and US Army.
Now, the National Guard and the US Army, we can understand. They are waiting for the young people in the audience who waste their education. They are waiting to give them the guns to replace it in places like Iraq.
Before age wore her down, Parks spent her latter years saying we need to ''motivate youth to reach their highest potential." With black children still suffering from horrible achievement gaps in school, with corresponding high dropout rates, we are nowhere near realizing that potential. A lot of it is due to the general disinvestment in urban public schools in the decades of white suburban flight. A lot of it is also due to too much television, too few parents in schools, and too much daydreaming about making it through sports and song.
In the rap and hip-hop world, many of the daydreams are a nightmare of stereotypes. Rosa Parks has died, and it is up to us how she will live on. She was the quiet woman who changed a nation. Her legacy is being undermined by voices much too empty and loud.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.