"The Third World deserves freedom of speech just like everyone else. We want to fight the battle to say what we want, whether to be serious or just make fun of ourselves. Thats what 'Worldtown' is about, that's what 'Paper Planes' is about. It's what people in the third world live through." - M.I.A.

Unlike your humble author, M.I.A. has been busy lately.  After having a baby and gracefully getting through an interview with the man-child known as Bill Maher, the British-via-Ceylon hip hopper officially endorsed a British Euro Parliamentary candidate.  While the independent Jan Jananayagam promises to help get aid to the war torn Tamil people, M.I.A. offers all of Jananayagam’s supporters a free song to get them pumped for the election.

First, lets talk about Bill.  One would think that Mr. Maher would try to explore more deeply the topics that M.I.A. succinctly dished out to the ever-intelligent and ever-eloquent Tavis Smiley.  However, Bill did what he is best at and proved, once again, that he is one of the worst liberal talk show hosts out there.  After complaining about the general ignorance of the American public (although he made an exception for his viewers, his viewers were the exact same people that he was belittling), Bill revealed his own egotistical unawareness.  First, he made some vast generalizations about minority issues around the globe, clumping all minorities into the same boat and claiming that they all have similar problems.  This is the exact myth that scholars like Mohanty hope to rectify.  Bill hasn’t been keeping up with his reading.  Then he betrayed his lack of preparation for the interview by making the assumption that the Tamils have been the majority in Sri Lanka, and who are now being walked over by the minority Singhalese—a false statement that M.I.A. graciously corrected.  But enough about Bill…  The only redeeming aspect of the otherwise dumbfounding interview was the emotion that M.I.A. revealed as she discussed her family’s (as well as other families’) attempts to escape the long standing violence on the island.  But M.I.A. is not someone who simply gets emotional about the suffering of thousands—she gets political.

Following in the footsteps of other hip hoppers, most obviously the ubiquitous Will.i.am, M.I.A. voiced her support for a minority candidate who promises many changes.  Unlike Will.i.am, M.I.A. didn’t settle for re-using her candidates slogans or simply gathering Britain’s youngest and hottest celebrities to make a bland and stupefying music video (I do have to admit that Will.i.am’s video was at least pragmatic in that it got a lot of people pumped up for Obama, and it was a little bit touching).  Instead, M.I.A. has penned and recorded a completely new song, and if a rough draft of one of the song’s verses is reflective of the quality of the rest of the song, this new tune should fit in perfectly with her catalog.  Here’s the lyrics, which appeared within a poster for Jananayagam that was published on M.I.A.’s blog:

“so u wanna hear about my politics?
well i can show u things that can make u sick
theres a saterlite above me thats takin picks
the people from the east hav started sendin migs
and im sat in America doin twitts
and the armys lookin at me like im a bitch
but im thinking bout the babies lyin in the ditch
thinking if they had a kite fone u ll see the shit”

"This woman is a G" - M.I.A.

As usual, M.I.A. manages to dish out a variety of issues as she simultaneously manages to reveal the connections between these issues.  Instead of simply informing us of the political candidate she is in favor of, she decides to build a lyrical bridge between her current life and the life of her homeland.  She is disgusted by the amount of media attention that is focused on her (and other celebrities), and she is even more sickened by the lack of media attention that has been focused on the fatal violence that has rocked Sri Lanka.  Knowing that powerful nations and their media outlets are not going to challenge the Sri Lankan Army’s convenient ban on journalism, she hopes to become that “kite fone” in the sky, looking down on “babies lyin in the ditch.”  She also hopes to get a candidate elected who promises to send aid to those ditches.

Hip hop has always been a political force, but M.I.A.’s move is one of the “harder” (to use foreign policy lingo) demonstrations of hip hop’s power in recent memory—“harder” in the sense that it is being directed at one candidate and one specific issues.  This hard power mixed with the soft power, which is constituted in the many communities that hip hop helps to form and to connect all over the world, suggests that the music genre may become more of a political force than rock ‘n’ roll was in the post World War II era.  This is a pretty grand claim, which will take decades to judge.  Luckily, we can all watch the results of the European parliamentary elections tomorrow.  Even if Jananayagam loses, the song should leak sometime soon.  More to come…

“When these metaphors converge, we see “paper trail” as being a juxtaposition of money, fame, personal reflection, conflicting narratives, and consequences.  T.I.’s paper trail shares all the meanings of America’s paper trail.” — Part 3.1: Paper Trails

My dog hates paper trails

Like many Americans, T.I. seems to have embraced the multifaceted capitalist fantasy individualism.  The myth goes something like this: personal effort creates personal wealth, money grants one deserved power, and this power should be used to support the capitalist ideology that supposedly enabled this entire narrative of individual success.  The song “Whatever You Like” celebrates T.I’s ability to give his “chick whatever she wants,” as it simultaneously commands those “other broke n*ggas” to be quiet.  If we take this song literally, we would have to conclude that it indeed endorses the ideology that I outlined above.

However, the music video for “Whatever You Like” challenges this literal understanding of the song and encourages us to question our own understandings of socioeconomic ideologies (how money and society shape each other).

The video starts with a mashup of the capitalist fantasy and the sociological understanding of capitalism’s sturdy class structure.  After walking through the kitchen of a fast food chicken restaurant (complete with audible laments of a tiring, busy day), the camera reveals T.I. and his entourage asking a shocked female cashier for some hot wings.  Then the fantasy kicks in, as if it is meant to silence an exploration of the stark contrasts between the two characters’ sociological situation.  T.I. claims that the woman is too cute to be working at a chicken joint then drops his phone number, launching the woman and the audience into a “behind the scenes” look at–and participation in–T.I.’s extravagant lifestyle.  The images speak for themselves, but in a nutshell, T.I. takes pleasure in using his material wealth to lavish her with luxuries, erase her boyfriend, and revel in his own economic power.  This seems like a logical representation of the song.

However, the end of the video suggests otherwise.

The fantasy is revealed to indeed be purely fantasy when the woman’s boyfriend wakes her from a daydream just as T.I. is pulling out of the parking lot.  Instead of leaving his phone number, T.I. actually left a crumpled one hundred dollar bill.  A bit hung over from her daydream, the woman agrees to help her boyfriend braid his hair again, although we’re not sure if she’s going to do it for free or charge him.

T.I.P.'s tip

The video leaves it ambiguous as to whether T.I.’s fleeting presence encourages her to do it for free (and pass on T.I.’s generosity) or charge him (and play the role of the individual capitalist).  Like the citizens of America, the woman must decide between unselfishly contributing to the common wealth or embarking on an individualistic fantasy.

Or maybe the video suggests something in between… something more pragmatic… something, perhaps, more similar to Obama’s plans. (I’m not say’n that Obama’s plans are perfect.  They have many flaws, but they’re a step in the right direction)

T.I.’s presence in the video suggests a middle ground upon which individual success goes hand in hand with contributions to the general welfare of a community.  Although T.I. used fantasy to entertain the cashier, he also gave her something very real: a Benjamin, or should I say, a piece of paper worth one hundred dollars.  If this is representative of how T.I. tips all of his servers, we should be encouraged to see his actions as a form of community development rather than a moment of personal boasting or a simple “hand out.”  With the hope of a better life (one closer to T.I.’s) combined with a material investment in a life outside of a fast food joint (the C-note), the woman might now have both the psychological and material impetus to start her own hair saloon.  Maybe she will still charge her boyfriend, but maybe not as much as last time, and maybe one day she will be able to walk into a chicken joint and do for another what T.I. did for her.  This is the type of balance that Obama’s economic rhetoric and policy initiatives have been striking when they are at their best, and we would all do well to explore and support this balance in order to get out of the current crisis.

With some thoughtful participation in our political and economic institutions (both local and global), maybe more of us will be able to sort out our paper trails by the time T.I. is released from prison.

“I work for myself and no one else cause I’m too smart too,

Put one of my partners right through culinary art school,

Now he my personal chef so that bread he get it,

Put them all in houses, cleaned up all of my friends credit.

And now they witness all the glitz and the glamor,

Catch us eating at straits Atlanta with women with table manners,

Order in Singapore and lobster,

Celebrating coming from nothing to winning Grammys and rappers winning Oscars.

And they say rappers shouldn’t act, naw suckers,

We see Samuel L. Jackson like: ‘What’s up mother fucker!’”

–Ludacris in “On Top of the World,” Paper Trail

...and everyone else

The Battle of the Budget Begins

A few weeks ago, President Obama discussed and answered questions about his budget proposal, arguing that it will move the economy towards recovery and growth.  The goals make sense: get people back to work and get the banks lending again.  Although most people understand that you have to spend a little money in order to make a little money, there are some politicians who want to play the “debt card.”  They claim that spending billions of tax dollars on things like public works and, yes, bank “bailouts” are unfair to both the taxpayer and the taxpayer’s children.  But who is this taxpayer?  Who in America doesn’t need banks, healthcare, and schools?  Generating a large national debt is most likely a sacrifice that we must make at this time, more so than at any other in recent history.  It will certainly anger our imaginary taxpayer—an individual so disconnected from the political and social fabric of American society that he or she seems to be living “offshore,” perhaps running a corrupt investment bank and hoping to avoid the end of Bush’s tax cuts—but it’s a sacrifice that we all make for the good of everyone.

We know the creators of this imaginary taxpayer will be theatrically angered by such progressive policies, but will President Obama’s economic plan anger hip hop too?  Mainstream hip hoppers definitely seem to live a life apart from mainstream society, in their private jets and yachts.  They might not enjoy handing over more of their hard-earned scrilla anymore than Dick Cheney would…

"(Ay, who I be?) Rubber band man, Wild as the Taliban, 9 in my right 45 in my other hand. (who I'm is?) Call me trouble man, always in trouble man, worth a couple hundred grand, Chevys all colors man"

Indeed, mainstream hip hop seems to be obsessed with the private accumulation of wealth.  50 Cent claims that he’s not investing any of his money in public companies, but instead going “straight to the bank” with his cheese (hopefully to an FDIC insured bank).  Lil’ Wayne needs a Win-Dixey grocery bag to carry around his pocket Benjamins.  Jay-Z loves to remind us of how he came from the bottom of the block to the top of the charts, accumulating as much lettuce as he could along the way.  Scrilla, cheddar, gouda, any type of cheese, Benjamins, lettuce, dough, stacks, cake.  For a music genre that is obsessed with being “real,” it is odd to see how much hip hop likes to see money in the abstract.  But maybe seeing money in the abstract (using mostly metaphors of food, oddly enough) is more reflective of recent financial reality than seeing it as some concrete material.  Most of the people who got us into our current financial crisis have had a similar conception of money.  Derivatives, speculation, loan swaps.  Somehow the people holding most of the money in the world, the policy makers who aided their disastrous financial “recipes,” and most of the uninformed public embraced abstract conceptions of money—readily edible representations of money that suggested that dollars were indeed like seeds and trees, like so many ingredients to be used to magically bake up a financially sound future.

Break that bread, chop that lettuce, bake that cake, cut that cheese

However, most of us are now changing our conceptions of money.  Instead of enjoying the careless comfort of edible metaphors, we are now seeing money as the most inedible of substances: paper.  Maybe it’s the paper that shows how much money is in your bank account or mutual fund.  Maybe it’s the electronic and tree-made paper that held information regarding ill-advised loan-swaps and uncontrolled speculative gambling.  Maybe it’s just the paper that we try to keep in our wallets in order to pay rent and buy food.  Regardless, we’re all confronting the paper trail that has been piling up around us over the past decade of deregulation, accelerating global trade, and two expensive wars.

"Stacks on deck," better get some "Petron on ice"

The confusion of the paper trail might have helped cause the problem, but unraveling the paper trail will inevitably be a part of the solution.  In order to get out of this economic crisis, we’re gonna have to read through the paper, understand it, and write policies that prevent us from authoring another crisis.  Although T.I.’s latest album Paper Trail most obviously is a self-reflective work that showcases T.I. pondering the motivations, causes, and effects of his illegal gun purchases, it also has some lessons for how America can remedy the consequences of its own paper trail.

In the context of T.I.’s album, the metaphor “paper trail” has many meanings.  It refers to the stacks of paper upon which he penned his lyrics while under house-arrest.  It refers to the consequences of all the paper, or money, that he gained and spent under the eyes of the public.  It refers to the lack of paper documents that made T.I.’s weapons purchase illegal.  It refers to the court documents that coldly silenced the context that surrounded T.I.’s crime, arrest, and trial.  It refers to the document that proclaimed T.I. should be put in jail for a year and a day.  It refers to how all these forms of “paper,” or lack thereof, have constituted T.I.’s identity, as suggested by the album’s cover art.  When these metaphors converge, we see “paper trail” as being a juxtaposition of money, fame, personal reflection, conflicting narratives, and consequences.  T.I.’s paper trail shares all the meanings of America’s paper trail.  Let’s continue along this thread tomorrow. (Part 3.2 Here)

If I had to parallel M.I.A.’s artistic assault on Western representations of ghettoized “third world” women and men with the work of one academic thinker and activist, I would have to pick Chandra Talpade Mohanty.

Her landmark essay, “Under Western Eyes,” takes its title from Joseph Conrad’s 1911 eponymous novel, which articulated the shortcomings and downright failures of revolutionary social movements.  Both similar and different than Conrad’s novel, Mohanty criticizes the eurocentrism of revolutionary Western feminist discourse but also offers new strategies toward the recognition and re-representation of global, historically-specific feminisms.  Her article, like M.I.A.’s music, attempts to articulate multiple and divergent feminisms from across the “third world,” eventually proving that it is both futile and counterproductive to impose any sense of unity on the experiences and actions of women across the globe.

Mohanty argues that Western feminist discourse tends to suggest that there is one “monolithic ‘third world woman’,” and that this “third world woman” exists in a binary relationship with the “First World Woman.”  The use of this Cold War era discursive binary not only essentializes women and feminist movements around the globe, but also erroneously supports the notion that there is one unified Western feminist movement.  While scholars like Hazel Carby and bell hooks deconstructed this notion of a monolithic Western feminism from the perspectives of people of color in American and British contexts, Mohanty deconstructed the notion of a monolithic Third World Woman from the perspectives of women and cultures throughout the globe, constituting her representation of each from within their own particular social, historic, and political contexts.  She foreshadowed and perhaps shaped the work of global hip hop artists who, like M.I.A., would create albums that hit similar notes.

Mohanty’s article also points toward the future of global feminisms, insisting that a fresh look at the specific contexts of women from across the globe will not only eliminate both sides of the debilitating First World/Third World binary, but also allow for much needed global coalitions to grow—coalitions that take into consideration the disparate situations of women on every continent.  Perhaps similar themes will emerge on M.I.A.’s next record.  So what exactly are these notes and themes that can be heard both in textbooks and on stereos?  I’ll give it a go…

First, Mohanty explains the sticky aspects of recent Western feminist discourse, drawing attention to its participation in the construction of “the cultural discourse of what is called the ‘third world’.”  She argues that Western feminists participated in the structural domination of the third world through their “suppression … of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question,” or through their ignorance of the specific contexts of supposedly third world women.  Instead of investigating these specific contexts, Western scholars and feminists tended to impose their own concerns and contexts upon women of the third world, doing exactly the kind of thing that got M.I.A. angry in her interview with Pitchfork Media.  However, whereas Western feminists were careful to describe their grievances and agency (or power to change their situations), they often imposed similar grievances on third world women but failed to ascribe any agency to these women.  In other words, Western feminists used third world women as back-up singers who quietly echoed the lead singers.  Mohanty argues that this process of essentialization was tantamount to colonization, in that it participated in the silencing and oppression of women throughout the globe and simultaneously bolstered the power of Western men and women.  This “ethnocentric universalism,” according to Mohanty, was the product of the analytic assumptions and methodologies of Western feminism.

The first assumption is the belief that all women have similar concerns, regardless of their class, race, culture, age, and gender ideology system in which they live.  In other words, all women share a similar oppressor and oppression.  Thus, when Western feminists talked about third world women, they were quick to see them as exploited, powerless, and victimized.  Third world women were held up as evidence of the assertion that women were indeed universally oppressed by men, and that they needed to be liberated by the revolutionary ideas of Western feminism.  Although the apparent oppressor might have had many different names in Western feminist discourse (colonialists, the Arab family structure, Islamic codes), these oppressors were represented as being fairly homogeneous and reflective of the white upper-class Anglo-American men who were considered to be the central oppressors of white middle/upper-class Anglo-American women.  Most western feminists and scholars looked into the faces of women across the globe and only saw images of themselves.  Mohanty argues that the solution to this misrepresentation of third world women is a re-theorizing and re-interpretation, from within the specific context of each situation, of the oppression and resistance of women.  Only after Westerm feminists and scholars understand the specific oppressors, oppressions, and power that shapes the specific situation of a group of women can they offer assistance or form coalitions for global change.

Secondly, Mohanty takes issue with the methodology of Western feminist scholarship, criticizing the tools that Western feminists used to establish and prove their erroneous generalizations about third world women.  First, Western feminists tended to find one symbol, such as the veil, and quickly interpret it to be a sign of oppression.  Without paying attention to the specific historical and cultural values attributed to the veil within diverse communities (often separated by thousands of miles), they simply used the large number of veil-wearers to prove the “fact” that millions of women were oppressed my Muslim men.  Similar to this misleading “arithmetic method,” concepts such as labor, family, marriage, and patriarchy were often seen through a Western lens.  Although some descriptions of third world situations might have been accurate, the analysis was often eurocentric.  Once again, they were seeing themselves in the eyes of millions of women across the globe.  Because these throngs of women were seen as having little power over their situations, they were discursively excluded by Western feminists from their own attempts at “liberation” and deemed incapable of writing their own counter-histories.  Obviously, women like M.I.A. were and are doing just the opposite, talking back to Western generalizations and ideologies with a sense of purpose and power.

But members of the media and music industry would not easily let go of their preconceived notions of M.I.A.  As she was being nominated for both a Grammy and an Oscar for “Paper Planes,” M.I.A. started to be labeled a terrorist due to her Tamil ethnicity.  This brings up the other stereotype of third world women.  If they’re not being shown as completely powerless and victimized, then they’re probably being falsely exposed as being full of irrational hatred and violence—in other words, a “terrorist.”  Speaking back to those who called her a terrorist, M.I.A. has been using her fame not only to challenge representations of Tamils and call attention to the possibility of genocide in Sri Lanka, but also to challenge the discourse on terrorism.  She touches on these issue with great intelligence and clarity in a recent interview with Tavis Smiley.  Check it out, and in a few days we’ll turn our discussion back to M.I.A., the situation in Sri Lanka, and terrorism.

Bun B

In 2007, a group of fiscally wise hip hop artists, including Slim Thug and Bun B, toured the nation.  Rather than performing their latest hit songs, they spit some financial advice to young African-American and Hispanic fans.  Tales of personal economic woe, illustrated by anecdotes concerning unwise purchases and the pain of debt, brought a much needed sense of humanity to their lessons on financial responsibility.  While these artists encouraged their audience to develop a critical financial literacy, they also turned their critical eyes upon themselves, discussing how some hip hop artists–at least on the surface–seem to endorse a fiscally irresponsible lifestyle.

Previously, in 2005, rapper Eminem and hip hop mogul Russell Simmons launched the first “Hip Hop Summit on Financial Empowerment National Tour,” which featured financial expert Suze Orman and the Vice President of Crystler Financial, William F. Jones, Jr.  Like the 2007 tour, its precursor featured politically conscious hip hop artists like Reverend Run of Run DMC, Common, and MC Serch.

Simmons, financial philanthropist?

However, the history of the convergence of hip hop and finance is not solely made up of green and glowing moments.

Simmons made his first foray into the world of global finances in 2003, joining CIncinnati-based debt-and-loan-buyer Unifund Corporation in order to launch a debit/credit-card operation.  This new card would be

Note the Haliburton-esque font

offered to people who could not obtain credit-cards and/or loans from most money-lending institutions because of their poor credit scores.  Hoping to give the debit-cards to over 48 million consumers, of whom were mostly disadvantaged Hispanics and African-Americans, Simmons and Unifund launched the “Visa Rush Card,” which would cost $19.95, plus $1.00 per transaction.

I guess debt is gendered. Click on a card.

“Everything that we do comes from hip-hop culture, which is the expression of people who are struggling,” he said in an interview, speaking with the distinctive cadence of a man who sees poetry woven into daily life. “I’m doing something the banks should have done. The banks looked at the people in the face and did not see enough money in their eyes to pay attention to them.”

– An Ad for the Rush Card, quoting Russell Simmons

Although the “prepaid” card’s advertisements highlight how the card can be used to limit spending, the card not only comes with a variety of service fees, but also pulls users’ into greater debt by hiding its high overdraft and late fees. For a relatively small sample of the complaints of unhappy customers, just take a look at this Rush Card message board.

“RUSH CARD IS FULL OF (BULL s***). RUSSELL SIMMONS OLD WRINKLE UP a** NEED TO BE A SHAME OF HIS SELF. TALKIN ABOUT HE IS TRYING TO HELP OUT. ALL THEY DOING IS TAKING AN DOLLAR EVERY TRANSACTION, THAT IS MADE FROM THAT ACCT AND $1.95 FOR WITHDRAWL FEE ON TOP OF THE BANK FEE’S. IT IS AN BIG SCAM. IN THE OPERATOR DON’T KNOW WHAT THE f*** THEY ARE TAKING ABOUT. THEY DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH AND HAVE THE NERVE TO HANG UP YOU, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE TAKING ABOUT.”

– Lynett, from Florida, on August 20, 2008

“IF U VALUE YOUR MONEY “DON’T” f*** WITH THE RUSHCARD..AUGUST 1, THE WHOLE NETWORK WENT DOWN AND EVERY TIME I USED MY RUSHCARD IT DECLINED ME….BUT IT STILL TOOK THE CASH OUT OF MY BALANCE…AND EVERYTIME…I TRYED TO CALL CUSTOMER SERVICE “ALL CIRCUITS ARE BUSY NOW” FROM FRIDAY MORNING UP UNTIL 10 PM……THEY R REALLY TERRIBLE…………RUSSELL SIMMONS SHOULD NOT MAKE US PAY HIS ALAMONY AND CHILD SUPPORT 2 THAT ASAIN BROAD…………”

– Scottie, from Georgia, on August 2, 2008

While the many credit card users who could not make good on their spending played a role in generating the current financial crisis, corporations and moguls like Unifund and Simmons also set the stage for the fallout by offering a “safe” means of spending money and—to make matters worse—dragging their most disadvantaged customers down the abyss of debt with them. Simmons’s intentions might have been good, but his credit card—and the institutions that offered, bought, and sold sub-prime loans, opted to put profit over people, and short-term earnings over long-term success. Although Simmons might have wanted to help out fellow African-Americans–and fellow African-Americans and Hispanics might have wanted to help out Simmons, Simmons, however inadvertently, assumed the role of the oppressor, not the redeemer.  He did not consider how institutions like Unifund, which exploit economically disadvantaged folk by offering them loans with excessive interest rates, bolster the structurally racist economy of the U.S. and, perhaps, the globe.

Structurally racist economy?  Yes. If Simmons and Unifund truly wanted to help people, they could have gone to the root of the problem: the barriers that prevent–and continue to prevent–disadvantaged folk from gaining assets, wealth, and a home (that is, a home that increases in value rather than decreases).  Instead, they exacerbated and reproduced the problem.

So what’s the radical solution?  Well, many people have come up with some ideas, and we’ll talk about those on Friday.

Please share any experiences that you might have had with the “Rush Card” or similar operations.  And if anyone has been to one of these hip hop financial summits, please discuss the affect that they have had on your financial decisions.

Hip Hop's Invitation Goes Missing

In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Powell discusses the ways that the hip hop community has contributed to Obama’s nomination. He discusses how while some hip hoppers have damaged Obama’s campaign by producing misogynistic and vituperative songs about McCain and the Republican party, other hip hoppas, such as Jay Z, Nas, and Russell Simmons, have successfully promoted not only Obama’s campaign, but also the vote.

Although Powell’s article avoids essentializing hip hop, I find it troubling that we only investigate the political side of hip hop when an African-American is running for president. Hip hop has always been political, and, throughout the life-span of hip hop, many politically conscious hip hoppas have dramatically changed the political discourse of their communities as well as our national political discourse. This, however, gets little attention from the mainstream media. Thus, we still have people who believe fully in the stereotypes of hip hop.

Some of the bloggers that responded to Powell’s piece prove that sterotypes of hip hop, like sterotypes of black folk, are still a long way from dieing out.

One blogger writes:

In the mind of this misguided critic of hip hop, all “rappers” don’t really care about politics and political issues such as poverty, discrimination, the economy, race relations, and America’s treatment of people living around the globe; instead, this blogger argues that hip hoppers are actually incapable of thinking about anything other than money, violence, etc.

Even some bloggers that defend “rappers” still can’t get away from embracing stereotypes about hip hop. In response to “Blueblood,” one blogger writes:

I guess it’s very difficult for people to see hip hop in 3 dimensions. In the minds of many listeners, hip hoppas are either truly violent and hateful or they’re just greedy, trying to make a buck off of images of violence and hate.

One reason for this, like I discussed earlier, is the media’s portrayal of hip hop. Although the controversy surrounding Ludacris’s song “Politics” brought widespread negative attention to hip hop, the community activism and political progressivism of hip hop tends to go unreported; in fact, it is silenced.

I guess the mainstream media thinks that positive images of hip hop just don’t sell. I guess they think that no one would tune into a news piece that shows how hip hoppas are helping inner city kids get through school, helping to keep violence off the streets, and helping to educate people about the choices that they have this upcoming November. But, like I said, these images don’t sell…

Now who’s being greedy?

While the DNC wants hip hop to back its candidate, I’m pretty sure that the DNC won’t do much to re-pay hip hop for its decades of political struggle after Obama wins the election. Indeed, mainstream politics has rarely thanked hip hop for any of the positive ideas that hip hop has brought into American political discourse.

Before we continue with our discussion of Kanye West’s song, I think it would be best to take what we’ve learned and try to apply it to a new context. I suggest reading the previous two posts first, in case you haven’t. Regardless, we can sum up West’s message using one of the lines from the remix of Diamonds from Sierra Leone:

“Though it’s thousands of miles away / Sierra Leone connect to what we go through today.”

The World Is Not Flat

Now, let’s replace “Sierra Leone” with the Middle East and Islamist terrorism. And let’s replace “what we go through today” with “the history of the United States of America.”

So we get an idea that goes something like this: Though it’s thousands of miles away, the Middle East and it’s history is strongly connected to the history of the U.S., and vice versa.

But like some bling bling rappers who, unlike Kanye West, don’t think about where their diamonds come from, many U.S. politicans, pundits, and citizens do not try to connect their own lives or histories with the lives and histories of those people whom they see as “others,” or those people whom they perceive to be inferior, irrational, or otherwise opposite to themselves.

For example, George W. Bush, like many conservatives (other than Ron Paul) and liberals (other than Ralph Nader), has made the claim that terrorists are simply “evil-doers.” He, like many others, does not stop to think about how the history of U.S. foreign policy has shaped the circumstances in the Middle East–circumstances that have contributed to the rise of extremism and extremists, like bin Laden. I’m not saying that bin Laden isn’t a terrible person; I’m just saying that, whether we like it or not, the U.S. has played a major role in creating bin Laden as well as the “evil” that he represents in so many Americans’ minds. I’ll explain more in a bit.

But first, let’s not just pick on Dubya. Let’s turn our critical eye towards Thomas L.

He's Not Being Ironic; He Believes It

Friedman, a modestly liberal New York Times editorial commentator and the author of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. Like Mr. Bush, Friedman pays little attention to the history of the 20th and 19th centuries.

But how can you write a “brief history” of the 21st century without considering the past centuries? This disregard for history is apparent in both his book and many of his op ed articles.

In one op ed piece, Friedman declares that Islamist terrorism is a “Muslim Problem” which requires a “Muslim Solution.” In more recent piece, he argues that “the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious.” So, he’s basically saying that the Arab-Muslim world is solely responsible for Islamist terrorism and the regions lack of status as a “modern” nation.

Kanye West might say, “wait a minute, let’s think about how the troubles in the Middle East connect to American lives and American history.”

1.) The U.S. sent massive amounts of material and financial support to the mujahideen during the Cold War’s battles over Afghanistan. And guess who was there for the free training and subsequent legendary status? Bin Laden, of course. To say the least, U.S. vs. Soviet fighting effectively tore the country apart.

Rumsfeld and Hussein December, 1983

2.) The U.S. has a long history of supporting undemocratic, violent, and repressive dictators, who tend to prevent Western forms of “modernity” from reaching the masses. Read the history of Saudi Arabia (whom we depend on for oil) and Iraq (whom we previously depended on to keep the Iranians in a constant state of destructive war; read the history of the Iraq-Iranian War). And let’s not forget about U.S.’s alliances with multiple Pakistani dictators throughout the Cold War. And while were at it, let’s wave farewell to Bush-backed Musharraf.

3.) And let’s not forget about the U.S.’s longstanding support of Israel, which has proven itself to be not only a good customer of the arms industry, but also a good card to play for politicians who desire support from Israeli sympathizers and anti-Muslim hawks. Too bad there aren’t many powerful Palestinian sympathizers in the U.S.; things might have been vastly different if there was a large constituency of Palestinians living in the U.S.

Didn't Jesus Say Something About Leading By Example?

But, in my opinion, it’s not even the U.S.’s support for Israel (by “support” I mean supplying Israel with vast military power and condoning its nuclear arsenal) that has provided the “sea” of anti-American sentiment for bin Laden and company to “swim” in. Instead, it’s mainly the fact that many Middle Eastern countries have had to accommodate and confront the consequences of the vast Palestinian diaspora population. The U.S. supported Israel, but did not even think about the regional instability that that support would generate. Bin Laden, however, is one of the products of that regional instability.

So, terrorism is not just a Muslim problem, and it’s not simply the fault of the U.S.’s involvement in the Middle East. Instead, like the blood diamond industry, it is a global problem, which will require global solutions.

If Kanye West can connect Chi-Town (Illinois) to Freetown (capital of Sierra Leone), then I think we all can try to connect Washington to Kabul, New York to Riyadh, and Los Angels to Tel Aviv, even though these cities are separated by thousands of miles.

While some of the lobes in Thomas Friedman’s brain might be flat, the world is certainly not a flat place. As a result, there are no easy answers to the question of how we (wherever we are) influence the lives of people around the world; and we, in turn, can’t really be sure about how they influence us.

But the least we can do is to think globally and locally, and to act locally and globally. In this day and age, we can’t afford to do any less.

Links:

This is a great article (albeit 3 years old) on the subject of Friedman’s Muslim Problem, which was written by one of my favorite history professors. Check it out.