Dr. Boyce: Does Hip Hop Influence Young People? Just Ask Adolph Hitler or any Good Psychologist
by Dr. Boyce Watkins, KultureKritic.com
Today I did an appearance on Hot 97 in New York City with Lisa Evers, Dr. Christopher Emdin and a few other people. The conversation centered around whether hip hop has any impact on what our kids are doing with their lives. The question is simple for anyone who’s spent any time around teenagers and noticed how their manner of speech, dress and the like instantly shifts based on what their favorite hip hop artist is doing.
Some say that hip hop music is as harmless as a Robert Deniro gangster film or something that you see on TV. The problem with this analogy is that hip-hop is fueled by a type of authenticity that you don’t need in Hollywood. Deniro will gladly tell you “I’m not a real gangster, I just play one in the movies.” Lil Wayne can’t pretend to be a gangster; he’s expected to be a real one. This enhances hip-hop’s ability to promote an entire lifestyle that goes deeper than simply producing songs that you want to shake your b**t to. Every teenager wants to be cool, and an easy way to be cool is to emulate cool people. There is no one cooler in high school than your favorite hip-hop artist: If the rapper Drake and Barack Obama appeared at the same high school on the same day, the president would have no audience.
Someone during our Hot 97 conversation asked “given that most of the consumers of hip hop are white suburban kids, why are they not impacted by the images?” I’ve taught on majority white college campuses for the last 20 years, and I’ve noticed the fascination that many white students have with black men from “the hood.” It’s not that they want to be like them (they would never trade their suburban lifestyles for life in the hood), but they see them as cool, exotic African creatures that they will gladly pay money to see, but never bring home to daddy, recommend for a job or respect as an intelligent human being. To some extent, rappers are like musical call-girls…..a man might really enjoy his time with a prostitute and show loyal patronage for her services. But he never truly respects her as anything other than a way to fulfill a specific set of desires.
Non-black kids are simply being ENTERTAINED by images of blackness being presented by the hip hop artist. The white kids are not always interested in trying to be black, they just enjoy the excitement of hearing the stories and seeing the images (they want to know what it’s like to be a “n***a in Paris” and are fascinated by black men with big chains and tattoos). The black kids are the ones who look at the black artist and are tempted to say, “That’s the kind of person I am supposed to be” (even when their parents tell them otherwise). The image is one that is built off the authenticity granted by “the hood,” sold to white Americans and often emulated by black youth either seeking to themselves make money by selling their blackness to white people or to gain the same kind of hood respect that the artist gets for being the alpha male.
Some say that good parenting can easily overcome the impact of negative hip hop. That’s an insult to good parents everywhere whose kids are being heavily influenced by this music. Their child might not go out and kill anyone, but they certainly gain a distorted perception of alcohol/drug use, s****l decisions and the necessity to run to the club every weekend, with much of this influence coming from the cultural norms being created around them. I knew a teen who loved to listen to the Gucci Mane song “Wasted,” (which boasts about waking up with a liquor bottle in your hand) who then went to college and nearly died of alcohol poisoning before dropping out. It was by watching this child’s influences all through high school that I could clearly see that her perception of college life as a big party was heavily impacted by the music that she and her friends listened to.
The bottom line is that negative commercialized hip hop is not harmless. That’s like saying that Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf was just a harmless little book or that the Bible and gospel music have no impact on Christianity. There is a reason that whenever a country invades another one, one of the first things they do is destroy radio and TV stations. It’s because when you control the minds of a group of people, you are controlling the people themselves. When corporate behemoths are flooding urban airwaves with messages that serve as a blueprint for black male self-destruction, they are not creating an army of strong black fathers, husbands and scholars. Instead, they are creating an even larger army of pants-sagging, blunt-smoking, tattooed-up, uneducated, STD-infected, impoverished thugs who partner with an already oppressive system to destroy themselves and their families (don’t even pretend that you don’t know a brother who’s chosen this to be his identity, even when he had other options).
Yes, there is much accountability to spread around as politicians maintain inferior schools, fuel the prison industrial complex, turn a blind eye to rampant urban violence and ignore black unemployment (I write on these issues regularly). You can also hold that same system accountable for funding the music that encourages these men to give up on their lives and seek to either kill one another or kill themselves via s****l irresponsibility and drug/alcohol abuse.
But when the oppression gets this deep and insidious, it always takes two to tango. The system is the pimp and our community is the ho, and these relationships don’t work unless both parties are playing their role.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here. To check out Dr. Watkins in the Janks Morton Film, Hoodwinked, please visit this link.
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i feel old school hip hop ONLY had a positive msg.
a few new NAS great songs,too and i love him,and i hate new hip hop wayne fell off, BIG TIME, and most rap artist talk about dating white women,like it is the BEST thing in life,since slice fresh bread and butter.Come on now. Date who your wanting to but what is the message EXACTLY in this.Stop putting down your own blk girls to date white! i am from Sicilian Father,and mother blk,they both still married,i m very pretty,and i date who i want,but do not have to brag about it,to put OTHER people in the racial bkgd.of mine down. i think rapper like that today got DEEP emotional probs.and i want OLD SCHOOL WITH A MSG.and great videos back,not the same TRASH in videos weed bragging ,drug chick,then date or have s*x wit her,what the h**l is that.GLAD most of my younger
niece,nephew 17 and 22 prefer NO new school hip hop.
they are smart that is why.because it is TRASH period,and i cant wait till it GO away.
from geena romano
staten isld.ny
Racist caucasians have created a stock pile of dangerous weapons with the intent of killing you know who! The only response from AA’s to this serious threat is to continue buying more gold teeth, tattoos, hair extensions, alcohol, tobacco products, crack and other BS. Caucasians created a fake god- a white man to whom black ppl pray to each day and night. The book associated with this fake god- the Bible instructs black ppl to “Love thy enemy” and “Slaves obey your Masters”. Black people, your enemy is planning to wage an all-out war against you and your response is to- Love and Pray for them. Black ppl, please realize you must overcome your fear of cacasians which is responsible for your paralysis to this eminent violence. The time has come for black ppl to stop being slave minded drones to this wicked nation and fake religion.
We need to talk! Don’t be like other prominent blacks that are scared because I’m an atheist. We speak the same language when it comes to hip hop. Please check out my blogs at http://www.thepeoplesmic.blogspot.com.
Best message heard in long time in young black America. Every point is true.
I highly disagree on this one. To say we are influence by the way you described it, means that young black children can not think for themselves. I grew up with hip hop, rap, urban music or whatever you want to call it. Along with my friends and we had an unwritten concept. I call it “knowing when to turn it on and when to turn it off”. The true key to getting our youth back in the right frame of mind is to have REAL PARENTS in there lives. Parenting is much more than roof over there heads and food on there tables. This would make a good televised debate, but we know this kind of debate would never make it on tv.
Hip Hop has been used as a programmable tool that has been eased into the media gradually, then full force when it reached its height in popularity. Just think, if you were of European extraction, in charge of the future, and want your people to rule, how would you design things to assure that your people are the most revered, feared and superior to all other people? If you have foresight, you would create a design that would cover over 100 years. Every part of the populace that you would want to control would have to be programmed a certain way. The biggest attack would be on your greatest perceived enemy. Black men are the greatest perceived enemy because only they can destroy you from within simply by producing people of color to outnumber you. Your white women are putty in their hands, so she has abandoned you. So you start the destruction through media, then through music by allowing only degrading and demoralizing lyrics in the most popular (that you have made the most popular by promoting vulnerable and willing artists (for the bling bling) to spread the theme you control. More on this in my latest book coming soon. Jeanette Davis-Adeshote’
Good one DrBoyce!
I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything Dr. Watkins or anyone else says. That is what makes a discussion board a discussion board. I will throw in my two cents as a seventy-five year old man who grew up during the ROCK AND ROLL era, which coincided with the cold war, two undeclared HOT wars , the s****l revolution, the civill rights struggles, with champions like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , Malcome X, and Whitney Houston. No, rock and roll didn’t ruin us, as many of our elders said it would. It liberated us and allowed us to enjoy one of the most successful economic periods in American history.
BUT .. we had family. Mothers, who even if single, were backed up by grandparents with a solid set of morality. We took pride in the way we looked, the way we looked and smelled.
If a person, even in the HOOD, went around looking poor, you could bet your last dollar, they WERE poor. If they referred to themselves as nigaz, you can bet they were n*****s with a tied tongue.
I don’t know what knocked us off track. I am not going to pretend I know. I wish I did. I only hope, with all my heart, that we find our way back.
Ver nice perspective sir.
A philosopher and activist, I forget who and I paraphrase, once said you write societies laws and I write their music and I will change society faster and more effectively than you.
I only disagree with the conclusion that this music does not effect white youth. As a prosecutor for over 22 years I prosecuted many young white youth, ususally poor or working class who had picked up the same values. Most, and I stress most, middle and upper middle class white youth may throw off this indoctrination, but as any true of any other corrupting influence, it has no boundaries.
There is nothing supernatural about white culture. As humans they are also subject to the sin nature of man. I have dealt with thousands of s****l obsessed, drug addicted, alpha orientated, etc. young white males and some white females destroying their lives behind destructive programming.
The best weigh in
The indoctrination process starts at birth.We are in a position where every aspect of our lives is monitored and directed, in a society designed to keep us oppressed.I pray that we as a people wake up and truly see what has happened and what is happening now to us as a nation.We are on the verge of a therm o nuclear war,and the media,along with every other form of information source we have are being inundated with information about bread and circuses.Not only are our young people being manipulated,but
99% of the population.
I agree images can affect a persons mind especially at a young age. The current music and TV are just tools to dull the mind.
Calling Dr. Boyce!! Fact check for Dr. Boyce! This is an important point simply because the Republicans have been studying and testing American mass mind control via the main stream media for decades. Here is my correction. Adolph Hitler did write his famous book Mein Kampf, but he was NOT the architect of mass mind control propaganda which eventually delivered virtually all Germans into his hands. The man actually responsible for the birth and success of Hitler’s propaganda throughout prewar Germany was Joseph Goebbels.
Goebbels was elected to the Reichstag (Germany’s Parliament) in 1928. By Exploiting mob emotions and employing modern methods of self-designed propaganda Goebbels helped facilitate Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. When Hitler seized power, he appointed Goebbels Reich minister for propaganda and national enlightenment. In this position Goebbels used all media of education and communication to further n**i propagandistic aims, instilling in Germans the concept of their leader (Hitler) as a veritable (Wagnerian) god of their destiny as the rulers of the world. In 1938 Goebbels became a member of the Hitler cabinet council. Goebbels placed his undeniable intelligence and his brilliant insight into mass psychology entirely at the service of his party.
Goebbels also authored many German publications which cast his success in the mass application of propaganda in psychological scientific terms. Goebbels is best known for his invention of the technique of mechanizing the “Big Lie”. Goebbels’s explanation of the “big Lie” was as follows: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Do you note any similarities between the tactics of right wing Republicans including their right wing billionaire plutocratic cabal financiers and the principles stated in Joseph Goebbels’s explanation of the “big lie” above?
I agree with Parvenu on the Republican tactics being similar to to Goebbels in n**i Germany. Hitler and Goebbels installed the Third Reich and these right wingers are trying to establish the Fourth.
Many of the rappers know what their music is doing. We have to understand that the destruction of our people is coming from more than one direction. You don’t have to believe, as long as the majority of us continue to act like fools.
Some of the rappers might know what their music is doing but I don’t think they all do. Those who know and don’t care are the dangerous ones. They are sprewing their self hatred in vile, vehement ways and it leeches on to other angry minds, who spread the disease-like mentality to vulnerable young people across the globe.
All that maybe true about hip hop– and the German propergandist ( whoever the genius was- as far as his leadership); and on and on. We all know of the problems–what are the solutions– well let’s see if the African American-black man and Woman- rich and poor come together in the OLD NEGRO SPIRIT- N with all our MIGHT do something that will so the world that we aren’t as DOCILE as we are perceived as being—-LETS—-
Boycott Christmas 2012
Nice
As an independent this is in response to all replies who want to boil all analysis down to Democrats are Good and Republicans are Bad Scenarios. This rap music is an economic-cultural force that would prevail in this culture no matter which party is in power.
The government is not the God that can solve all of our problems and neither the Democrats nor Republicans are the chief priests. Some African American problems have to be approached from the bottom up. Very few can be solved from the top down, least of all by the government.
Good parenting is not enough. I come from very good parents, but some of my relatives went gangs ta and others lead sane lives even though we grew up in the same environment. The culture has an impact on children. Otherwise, acculturation would be impossible. A civilized culture must civilize the barbarians born into it. Successful cultures accomplish this.
Unfortunately we live in a culture which encourages a significant number of some subcultures, us, to remain barbarians.
I submit that the powerful worldly forces at work at this time can only be approached from a spiritual level. The once strong influence of the African American Church in our community has been neglected and dismissed and marginalized. If a significant number of African Americans could rediscover their church roots and introduce their children to church schooling these forces could act as a retardant to the efforts to encourage our youth to glamorize a criminal and self-destructive life style.
Whoa! You better go ahead Dr. Boyce! It’s Tight! but it’s Right Ppl.
another great, Pultizer deserving article. This is very tremendous. I see in the article a portrait almost of my own brother. He definitely thinks that he is supposed to be a great rapper, that it’s his destiny, and that nothing else will do. He too leads a destructive lifestyle of drugs, clubs, disrespect of women, etc. As a young boy who idolized Jay-Z and Eminen, this is how he was postured and conditioned. I will say, he had no father or positive role models. There was no one to show him how to be a man. So he picked it up from tv-rap videos. He had no sense of self-worth and it is my guess that when he saw the supposedly glory and glitz of rappers, and how much they were admired and worshipped, he figured he too could gain his self-worth by becoming like them. I said all of that to say this: that hiphop, with all of negativity, definitely plays on the psyche of our children and influences their behaviors, perceptions, attitudes, morals, etc.
I am so glad that FINALLY someone with a high degree of intelligence can put it out there the way it truly is. It’s the truth!
I hate it with a passion. No meaning, no music to groove to just a bunch of each ones – perception which is so IDIOTIC! Bring back R&B – Tony Braxton, Luther, O’Jays, Anita baker styles…Now if you want something CLOe to rap then bring back George Clinton style…MY GOD git rid of this RAp Sh*t! I will not never support it. Now CHingy had one song out that I loved to groove to when I was partying in the world but other than that Kanye, Combs and all the rest can lay it down as far as I am concern!
Boyce is right but as usual you will always find the mentally enslaved making up lying excuses to say that he is wrong.Right on on this one Brother Boyce.
Boyce is right but as usual you will always find the mentally enslaved making up lying excuses to say that he is wrong.Right on on this one Brother Boyce.
Parvenu re your fact check re Boyce,the fact is that Hitler coined the “Big Lie’ expression in his dictation of his 1925 Mein Kampf/My Struggle book when he was in prison re using a a lie so “colossal” that people would not believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Hitler said the Jews used this ‘big lie’ technique to unjustly blame Erich Ludendorff the German military leader for the loss of their World War 1.Joseph Goebbels,Hitler’s propaganda minister adapted it 16 years later in an article dated 12 January 1941 which was published in Die Zeit ohne Beispiel when he wrote:”The English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence.Rather,it dependson a remarkably stupid thick-headedness.The English follow the principle that when one lies,one should lie big,and stick to it.They keep up their lies,even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
Mandingo, if you read my comment for Dr. Boyce you will find that I stated that Joseph Goebbels MECHANIZED the “Big Lie” for Adolph Hitler. Further you will note that my historical recollection covered the years 1928 through 1938. This decade covered the the most intensive application of Goebbels’ mechanized version of his design for the most effective propaganda DELIVERY SYSTEM for the German people. By the end of this decade Germany had been changed from a passive peace loving nation to a highly mechanized military machine well on its way to taking over all of Europe.
I find it useless to quote anything cited by Hitler’s propaganda as to the origin of the “Big Lie” as Goebbels’ propaganda machine was particularily directed against the Jews and as such cannot be a trusted source of any credible allegations made against the Jews.
After Goebbels was appointeed to the position of Reichsminister for Propaganda and National Enlightenment by Hitler, he was given complete control over radio, press, cinema, and theater. Later on Goebbles regimented all of German culture. Goebbels then used control over all of these communication channels to instill in the German population the concept of Adolph Hitler as a vertiable god; along with Hitler’s divine role in securing the destiny of Germany as the “Rulers of the World”.
Finally Hitler may have coined the phrase the “Big Lie” but it was Joseph Goebbels alone who mentally conditioned Germany to unconditionally lovingly accept Adolph Hitler as their leader. Goebbels was also responsible for the wide spread publication of formularized n**i Eugenics and other racist theories applicable to the “New Order” and to the purification of the “Aryan race”.
Dr. Boyce is Right—-Hip Hop is just a group of rebellious,thoughtless young people with no sense of how thier mindless “MONEY DRIVEN” music would effect the young people of today ——- WHEN they reach the age of ‘Maturity” they may still make excuses for it or maybe admit its IMPACT”—–in the meantime—-”LETS GET POSITIVE” hopefully we can get back to some kind of “TOGETHERNESS”—and make “GREAT MUSIC” that will UPLIFt and INSPIRE——(There may have been some that was inspirational—but it was already lumped in one bag) and noobdy wanted to filter thru it.—– PEACE!!!!!