Is the Social Justice (SJ) movement racist? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m trying to puzzle it out. My gut instinct tells me that, yes, the SJ movement is racist. However, I need to qualify what I mean by ‘racist’. I don’t think the SJ movement is overtly racist. I don’t even think that it’s consciously racist. However, I do think there are racist assumptions built into it. To my mind, nowhere is this more evident than in the intersection between rape culture and popular music.
I’m willing to bet that of all the people reading this post, a significant percentage, upon reading the words “‘rape culture’ and popular music” immediately thought of Robin Thicke. If I’d started this thread a few years ago, those same people might have thought of Eminem. Now, I’m not defending either of them. They’re both misogynistic to the bone. But there are plenty of other artists who are equally misogynistic, and equally enthusiastic about rape, who don’t receive a fraction of the negative attention that the SJ movement directs towards Thicke and Eminem. Why is that? I don’t like to say it, but it seems to me that the only salient difference between the musicians that the SJ movement targets as examples of rape culture in action, and the equally misogynistic musicians that the SJ movement ignores, is race. Put bluntly, if you’re a black artist, the SJ movement gives you much more leeway to rhapsodise about rape and woman beating.
Let me give you some examples.
“Nigga, I’m taking yo lover, I mean I’m raping yo lover. Leave her taste in my rubber” - Lil Wayne, Young Playa.
“Tired of my face telling lies gettin’ niggas wives tied up and raped” - Rick Ross, Gunplay.
“Tryin’ to send the bitch back to her maker. And if you got a daughter older then 15, I’mma rape her. Take her on the living room floor, right there in front of you. Then ask you seriously, whatchu wanna do?” - DMX, X is Coming.
“Look she tired of the same old basic, let’s face it. This is how she wants to be laced, I’m raping it” - Ghostface Killa, Killa Lipstick.
“We gonna take this, Point Blank range in your Range Rover. Pistol with the kids and rape your stray ho” - Ja Rule, We Don’t Give A Fuck.
These are all mainstream hip-hop artists, and the important thing to understand here is that I could go on like this all the live long day! Given the sheer extent to which mainstream hip-hop is contaminated by rape endorsing and woman hating lyrics like those above, it baffles me that the genre as a whole doesn’t come under the same sort of scrutiny from the SJ movement as artists like Robin Thicke. Bizarrely, this unwritten rule seems to hold true within individual songs. After all, ‘Blurred Lines’ sent the SJ movement into a collective conniption for what seemed like an eternity, but almost all their outrage was directed toward Thicke himself. Why didn’t Pharrell and T.I. get the same treatment? The three of them wrote it together (well, Marvin Gaye helped, but never mind that). Why did Thicke bear the brunt?
There are only two explanations I can think of, and neither of them are good. The first is that the SJ movement deliberately steers criticism away from black artists for fear of being called racist. The second (and I think this is the more likely one) is that many of the people in the SJ movement suffer from the racism of low expectations. When it comes to addressing rampant misogyny from black artists their attitude seems to be, if only subconsciously, “Meh, they’re black. What do you expect?” In other words, misogyny and rape-fantasy lyrics from black artists don’t shock them as much, because they just don’t surprise them as much.
That’s my theory, anyway. I admit I don’t like holding this theory. As someone who believes in social justice it makes me uncomfortable. I just can’t think of another explanation.