Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 67

Rap Music ResisKng Resistance

63

You're trying to make me you by seasoning...
It seems to me that in a school that's ebony
African history should be pumped up steadily
But its not
And this has got to stop!
As with the media, the idea of American education is largely
considered to be objective and rap is trying to show it is biased.
The call for the teaching of African-American heritage is also
part of rap's expression of black pride, an expression battling against
racist elements of a discourse which considers black culture inferior to
white culture. This discourse is experienced by black youth in ways
that range from receiving racial slurs if they are in the "wrong"
neighborhood to racial stereotypes they view in movies and
television. Rap is trying to inform African-American youth of their
rich and honorable heritage. More importantly, rap artists hope
that by instilling pride in their culture, young blacks will overcome
the desperate conditions which face them. Yet this overcoming for
the most part does not come form the changes in society's structure but
through individual effort and remaining faithful to the community.
This can be seen in these lyrics to a song by the Discmasters; "Black is
back/ And you should be happy to/ Live in an age/ Where you can
really get some/ Not like our ancestors/ Running from the gun," and
"'Cause we don't need any help to be strong/ We need to be proud/ We
need to keep moving on." While a later line states to "Vote as one in
each election," the overriding message is that unity, self-resp>ect and
pride, more than social structural change, is necessary to overcome the
problems which blacks face. Furthermore, the line, "You should be
happy to live in an age where you can really get some" implies the
belief that individuals are equally free to succeed under their current
social structure. In other words, economic individualism is an implicit
element of this song.
Individualism is an element of a traditional African-American
discourse battling against an element of the dominant racist discourse
which ran through American history: blacks were considered to not
have the intelligence or ability to succeed financially.^^ It was this
specific racist element that leaders such as Booker T. Washington
were trying to overcome. One might argue that there is difficulty in
holding a view that opposes both the racist vision of blacks and the