A Response to “Notes on a Dying Culture”
by James Ford III | special NewBlackMan
Whitney Houston’s unexpected passing shocked me. I mourn for her and her loved ones who feel her recent passing more profoundly than I ever will. I thought Bob Davis’s recent post would help me consider the impact of this loss. Sadly, his post repeats the same Civil Rights vs Hip-Hop generation storyline. As a member of the generation he criticizes, I see his post as an invitation for further discussion.
Davis says the culture of the American Civil Rights Movement was “rejected…by its own children” and two camps sprung up: one upholds the Civil Rights Movement’s values and another doesn’t. The latter group may erase black culture altogether. This decline storyline sabotages communal self-reflection, which is only effective when every generation is accountable for its strengths and weaknesses. I learned this from listening to hip-hop, in the rawness of the Rza’s beats, the low-end of 808s, Big Crit’s bluesy production and lyricism or Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Sometimes, rawness refers to uniqueness; it’s not wrong, just different. At other times, rawness points directly to what is detrimental and must be overcome. How does this relate to Davis’s post? Davis doesn’t want to deal with all that is raw withinthe Civil Rights Movement and those who witnessed it. He scapegoats hip-hop to avoid facing this issue.
First, Davis doesn’t identify the “values” of the Civil Rights Movement or the hip-hop generation. He says “sacrifice today, so that future generations can be better off” is the “simple notion” for the Civil Rights movement. But in Why We Can’t Wait, King treats the Civil Rights Movement as the culmination of political currents, perspectives, and movements in the US and around the world, rather than a single notion. Everyone across the political spectrum uses the “we sacrifice for future generations” slogan because it grants immediate legitimacy. Ironically, it is even used to support agendas that directly hurt the youth. This is great for political power plays, but not critical self-evaluation. In sum, Davis is unclear about the value differences between generations, so how can he be so sure the younger have betrayed the older?
Davis doesn’t consider that some in the older generation have betrayed—or, at least, are highly inconsiderate of—the younger. Was Jesse Jackson an “elder statesmen” fatigued from guiding rebellious youth when he said he’d castrate President Obama? Was Ice Cube betraying the values of the Civil Rights Movement when he, a rapper, said Jackson’s words were deplorable, considering the history of lynching in the US? My point is that, in Davis’s account, there’s no room for Jesse Jackson to make such a terrible, selfish decision or for Ice Cube to be appropriately critical of it. He makes criticism a one-way street, when it should always go both ways.
But there’s more. Was Kanye betraying Civil Rights Movement values when he publicly critiqued racism and Hurricane Katrina? Or when David Banner volunteered along the Gulf Coast? Was Mos Def betraying the tradition of Civil Rights Movement public protest when he was arrested outside the Video Music Awards for his impromptu performance of “Katrina Clap,” his song critiquing the Bush Administration? On another note, what about Common’s recent performance in the White House or Lupe Fiasco’s critiques of Obama in “Words I Never Said”? On yet another note, there’s Pharoahe Monch’s album W.A.R. (We Are Renegades), an epic album placing black culture amongst the anti-war movements. I mean, Monch has a song called “Let My People Go” on the album. What more can he do to draw on Civil Rights culture? We can’t understand the continuities and discontinuities between these eras with Davis’s antagonistic perspective. More importantly, why don’t these examples of hip-hop and politics show up on his radar?
Perhaps he misses them because they don’t fit his image of black “culture on display.” Davis says America first saw it with Aretha Franklin’s performance at King’s funeral. Davis sees glimpses of it in R Kelly’s and Alicia Keyes’s “killer performances” at Whitney Houston’s funeral. I wholeheartedly oppose the idea that R Kelly, of all people, can reinstitute any morality. Kelly counts on people conflating the beauty of his performance with moral virtue so he can get away with abuse. It’s hard for me not to ignore the misogyny that links Jesse Jackson to R Kelly, Davis’s potential “elder statesmen” to come. I wonder, can spectacle truly make up for everything? Is the Civil Rights Movement all spectacle? Connect his focus on Kelly’s performance to his emphasis on witnesses of the Civil Rights Movement and to televised events, and it seems that spectacle is what counts most in Davis’s post. It’s not a difference in cultural values. It’s a difference in spectacles…King’s or Houston’s funerals vs XXL magazine.
But maybe that’s it. The best (or even just decent) hip-hop interrogates and displays the shortcomings of seeing the Civil Rights Movement as spectacle. Hip-hop discusses King’s activism, speeches, relationship to Malcolm, and assassination—the latter being the element that no spectacle can or should be able to supplant. Hip-hop also focuses intently on the complexities of the drug abuse that troubled Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Gil Scott Heron and, yes, Whitney Houston. Noting this does not condemn these brilliant artists. It condemns a world that pushed them to despair and profited from their momentary escapes from pain. But it also means that in the 80s and 90s, when Davis blames hip-hop for rejecting the Civil Rights Movement, the hip-hop generation could see the pain and frustration of their parents and other community members who witnessed the Civil Rights Movement. Why wouldn’t this encourage the younger to seek alternatives to what didn’t work out in the previous generation? Indeed, hip-hop culture inherited some of its deepest issues from its immediate predecessors, who witnessed the Civil Rights Movement. But few will admit this because it shatters the image of the Civil Rights Movement that has replaced the complexity of what actually happened, good and bad.
Whitney Houston did amazing things. Her angelic voice literally unified a nation with the 1991 Superbowl. In her recent interviews she gave all the right answers about overcoming drug abuse. She knew the exact scriptures to quote when Oprah asked if she finally believed in herself. Millions of fans loved this. But none of us saw she was still doubting herself, still hurting, still feeling anxious about the future. Admitting this should not take away one iota from her artistry, because these are troubles we all face to some degree. But it should challenge us to consider the relationship between spectacle and substance, which is not always easily understood. Hip-hop is just one of the artforms in black culture that participates in and questions the spectacles in American popular culture. I’d like to think that if she answered interviewers differently and acknowledged she was still struggling, that we would have listened. Then again, I fear that we, whatever our generation, have been so caught up in the spectacle that we call “Whitney Houston” that we might have missed her calls for help. This, and not hip-hop, is the sign of a dying culture.
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James Ford is Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. He is currently working on two book projects. The first book, Thinking through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, History, and Politicsexplores the insights that Black Radical writers from the first Great Depression can teach about the current depression. The second book, Hip-Hop’s Late Style: Liner Notes to An Aesthetic Theory, uses aesthetic philosophy to consider what post-Golden Era hip-hop can teach us about living after America’s Golden Era has ended.
