Rap = Violence...Please!

We’ve all heard the argument before; rap music is evil, it’s turning the black young inner city youth into animals, they all want to kill each other and aim to imitate what they hear from rap music. Really, are the youth that stupid?

I think not.

For one, commercial rap music is increasingly bought by white, middle-class youth and secondly, most of the youth do not even listen to the type of music these critics blame for the violence.

Yes kids are easily influenced from an early age, they do imitate what they see, hear etc but the youth are also conscious beings who know exactly what they are doing when they are doing it. Why would they hide from the police if they didn’t know they were committing a crime? Let the youth take most if not all of the responsibility for their actions instead of placing the blame on someone or something else who more than likely, has nothing to do with the youths. The things that sway our views and attitudes to life rely mainly on the people WE interact with on a daily basis and/or the situations we put ourselves in and our responses to these situations. I listen to rap music, I live in a notorious area in south London yet I do not feel the need to pull a gun on anyone, I do not sell drugs nor do I take them. OK, OK, you can say it’s because I’m a woman so I’m less likely too but believe it or not, more women are increasingly turning to gang violence (don’t mess with us, seriously).

By the age of 16 or even as young as 12 you should know right from wrong. Of course we hear the odd news about an 8 year old murdering his or her brother because s/he was ‘imitating Chucky’, however I would blame the guardian for allowing someone so young to watch such a film in the first place. In saying that though, I can understand that it is not always easy to monitor your child 24/7. I remember watching ‘Chucky’, it really did nothing for me and certainly didn’t encourage me to commit an act of violence.

I believe the drive for violence comes from other factors such as the child’s parents or who they choose to hang out with as much as the child’s own mind. I admit, parents only have a limited amount of control over their kids, especially in the adolescent stage. This is because kids around the age of 16 want to go out and be with their friends and while they are at school, parents are not around or they cant be around because they’re working, all this limits control levels. However, I also believe that it is up to the parents to attempt to know what type of friends their kids are hanging with and then to take appropriate action as my parents did/do with us. It’s hard but possible. Blaming outside influences such as the government, teachers, rap music, violent TV is not the solution. Who else can I blame for my actions but myself? Rarely do any of these mediums actually tell any of these kids to commit a particular crime.

Money is the root of most of these industries. They will continue to sport violence on TV/cinema because it’s what we want to see and what we want to see we will pay for. It’s like a cycle. Would tobacco companies continue making cigarettes if no one smoked them? The industry responds to the demands of the consumer so I suppose I can say we are as much to blame. If we watch violence, how can we expect the youth not to watch them? If we listen to violence, more times than not, the kids will too. So who’s to blame?

To hold rap responsible for violence is extremely unfair. For one, there are many different forms of rap, take the difference between 50 Cent and Kanye West for an easy example. In addition, an image on the news showing dead people and men with guns in Iraq is just as violent if not worse because it’s real.

To quote a comment: “Frankly if you're going to shoot someone in order to gain respect, then that's not because you've been watching rap videos, it's because you're a idiot.”

Ya get me tho!

Is Feminism A Good Thing?

Well we all know there are two sides to every story, I don’t particularly believe this is true but what the hell do I know. With the question regarding feminism and whether it’s a good thing, well….I’m not so sure it is.

There are many branches to the feminist theory but I won’t bore you with all of them simply because I don’t know them myself but let’s just say that they strive to achieve some sort of equality between men and women in the work place and possibly life in general. Yea, that sounds about right. If a man and a woman are doing the same role they should be rewarded equally don’t you think?

As for life in general, well, how does one ‘equally’ bear and raise a child? When I go to the supermarket I see a lot of women with push chairs and toddlers shopping. I see some men but not half as many men as women. Now personally, I believe that woman and child have that ‘special’ maternal bond, this may be because the child has lived inside his/her mother for 9 months. He/she has become accustomed to the mothers movements and habits, the sound of her voice way before it has entered the real world. For men, you can only start this bond after the child has been born or maybe you can speak to the child while it’s in the womb to give yourself a head start. Women play a bigger part in raising their child. It’s just natural I would assume. They also play a large role in the running of the house domestically. When I was younger I was the one who done the majority of the house work and cooking (after my mother of course). I had an older brother who helped sometimes but the responsibility was mainly on me. I use to ask why I was the one who had to do the housework to which my mum would reply ‘because you’re a girl’ or ‘it’s training for the future’. What?...Training?! As far as I was concerned I went to school just like my brother, I had a part time job like him AND I still had to do housework? Gimme a break will ya, I still got homework to do! It didn’t seem fair to me at all. Later on I realised that even though women and men work to keep the house in order financially, women were responsible for the house domestically and this included looking after the children. So were the ways of my family and many others I presume.

Furthermore if a woman is playing a large part in raising her child and looking after the house, this means that work takes second place. Employees are aware of this and are sometimes quite reluctant to employ young women or (especially) women with kids whereas men, much more than women, are less likely to have this problem and are therefore unlikely to be penalised for this. From a business point of view, men are in this sense much more reliable candidates than women. I am more than aware that some men also face this burden, especially if for some particular reason; the mother is not around to look after her child. But let’s face it, these cases are considerably less for men than they are for women. It makes me consider whether liberal feminism is worth the time and effort. Can there ever really be equality in the work place/political environment when the duties the majority of men and women have, differ so much? It seems to me that women generally make the bigger sacrifices when it comes to family and because of this, are some how excluded or discriminated against.

So if I was to break all this down I would say; women and men work equally (women with generally less pay than men don’t forget) but women have the added duty of looking after the home while men have the added duty of…???

Just saying it how I see it.