Week 10 readings

bell hooks explains that black males feel as though they will have a better life if they do not work and just become hustlers of the street.  While I don't completely disagree with that, what she does not put in there is whether they were brought up this way or if they just assumed the role of a hustler from seeing maybe a make fatherly figure do it or just others on the streets doing it.  I wouldn't think that someone would think that would be the life to live without someone showing them that it was okay and a way to provide a good life for themselves or their family.  She states that most of them end up in prison and it's just a way to survive, become part of a gang, become a part of their culture.  Well what about the culture of working, how has the life they may have lived not want to make them want to better themselves.  I know they have the mentality of wanting their money now, setting their own hours, not having a dress code, etc., but why is it that even on television do we show that, "money is god, and the outlaw guy who breaks the rules prevails". (hooks 168).  I guess coming from a home that taught me morals and that you had to work to survive was the only way to be I feel like everyone should be that way, but everyone has someone who could have taught them that doing illegal things is not the way to go. 

A Passage from Hip Hop Reader pg. 119

In the section that talks about how 2 Live Crew is the first group to be prosecuted for their obscenity in a recorded musical because of their race is compared to some other artist and how they sexual explicit themselves  are not prosecuted.  It states that Madonna has masturbated, seduced a priest, and depicted group sex on stage and has never been prosecuted.  They are claiming the reason for this is strictly based on her race, she is white.  2 Live Crew is black so it makes them worthy of being prosecuted for their music.  I do not think it was based on race.  I just think that 2 Live Crew is exploiting women, and probably ninety five percent of the complaints that the county had came from women so the judicial system had to do something about it.  Madonna was a role model for other women, teenage girls still to this day dress like her for special occasions that require an eighties theme or for Halloween and men wouldn't complain about seeing something like that.  It's all about how it is done.  If a white group of rappers where to say the things in a music video like 2 Live Crew did, I wouldn't buy their music either.  The way the sing it and display women is just plain disgusting.  Madonna never said even an ounce of the words in her music as 2 Live Crew has.