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Maya Angelou, Black Women and Hip Hop: “How Have We Come So Late and Lonely to This Place”
Disagreeing with Russell Simmons’ comment that “comparing Don Imus’ language with hip hop artists’ artistic expression is misguided and inaccurate,” Maya Angelou on the CBS Evening News just said:
It’s all the same. All vulgarity is vulgarity. If you mean to demean a person, to make her or him less than whole — anyone could say it, you could say it from a robot — it means that this person is not worthy of my concern. But at last we’re going to have a dialogue, I’m telling you. Nelly, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg — all of those men, who are very intelligent — and I include Dave Chappelle — for the first time we are going to sit down and see how have we come so late and lonely to this place. I would ask the hip hoppers, if you wanted to say something and see how powerful you are, use Ms. Laura Bush and call her one of those “b-” words — and see how long you will live. There wouldn’t be enough rope to hang your butts. No. But black women, because we are last on the totem pole, everyone has a chance to take a chance on us. Well, not now.
Part of me wants to praise Angelou for asserting, as so few commentators have this past week, that race and gender cannot be separated in our discussion of Imus or hip hop lyrics — and that the whole controversy is really about cultural power, not about simply giving offense or being racially insensitive.
But part of me want to take issue with Angelou’s blanket characterization of “hip hoppers” — of her (and the mainstream media’s) lack of recognition of the diversity of hip hop. In the last week, I keep waiting to hear the voice of someone like Chuck D or Mos Def, public hip hop figures who defy the stereotypes and are not afraid to get political, to reclaim the genre and say that it’s not about hip hop — it’s about the popularizing of a very specific misogynistic, self-indulgent strain of hip hop. And that popularizing is something for which many people — not simply the artists themselves — should feel guilty. It’s about our collective silence about demeaning representations of women throughout our culture — not just in music but in everything from advertising to television.
I also want to point to someone like Boots Riley of The Coup who isn’t afraid of describing the Bushes in an unsavory light (check out the opening line of “Head (Of State)“). He and other hip hop artists are continually taking political risks in their music — and know the consequences.
In the end, though, I think Angelou leaves room in her comments for a truer hip hop. In fact, I believe, in her own way, she is calling for it.
Posted at 6:04 PM | Permalink | | 
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April 15, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Blacks CANNOT blame CORPORATE AMERICA!! Corporate America does NOT go to these filthy low-life black men (or the correct word is really BOYS) and force them to sprew THEIR FILTH!! As a black woman, I’m willing to join and participate in any meaningful organization to stop the filthy black rappers and hip hop singers who sell millions of CDs, videos etc. that contain far WORST DEPLORABLE FILTH than the comments of Don Imus!! Blacks should PROTEST RAP and HIP-HOP music and they should PROTEST DISGUSTING BLACK COMICS such as Whoopie Goldberg, Dave Chappell and many others.
Blacks should be unrelentless in their efforts to stop the vile degrading and demeaning of our young women, not to mention the impact of other people’s view of us. Black people make me horribly sick when they don’t take the necessary actions or raise a LOUD VOICE to stop these filthy black BOYS from making millions of dollars by WHORING and HOing down the black woman.
This should start a much needed UNITY of INTELLIGENT BLACK MEN and WOMEN to stand up for their mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, granddaughters etc. Here is an excerpt from Russell Simmons, a multi-millionaire who makes his money pimping off demeaning black women.
1. “Some defenders of rap music and hip-hop culture, such as the pioneering mogul Russell Simmons, deny any connection between Imus and hip-hop. They describe rap lyrics as reflections of the violent, drug-plagued, hopeless environments that many rappers come from. Instead of criticizing rappers, defenders say, critics should improve their reality. Simmons go on to say: “Comparing Don Imus’s language with hip-hop artists’ poetic expression is misguided and inaccurate and feeds into a mindset that can be a catalyst for unwarranted, rampant censorship,” Simmons said.
The TRUTH IS: Russell Simmons, Robert Johnson (founder of BET), Snoop Dog, JAY Z, 50 Cents, etc. are the MOST VILE, FOUL, and CRASS human beings that breathe!! Since when should black men who don’t want to rise above their “enviornment” in a dignified manner, believe that:
1. It’s OK to demean and whore your women to make money, so they can enjoy a comfortable life.
2. If they can’t make money by whoring their women, then (according to Russell Simmons)they want other people to help them out of their “hopeless” environment.
Many of the troubles in black communities are created by black people themselves. NOBODY owes these filthy black thugs a GOD-DAMN THING!! Certainly NOT BLACK WOMEN! Of every racial or ethnic group of people in AMERICA today, NO other men or BOYS of any race will demean and WHORE their own women around the world like a filthy, crass black male would. I HOPE AND PRAY that those BLACK THUGS will get to read this post.
April 15, 2007 at 11:15 pm
It’s funny how quick we’re blaming each other instead of just pointing the finger at the person who spit the “vulgarity”. And as for hip hop making it “cool” to bash the black woman; I cant sit back and just point the finger at hip hop, its a backlash of generations being at the bottom which gives us this mentality. Is it true that we as black men collectively treat our own woman poorly? No, but the music that seems so popular created by blacks in the current era depicts us as doing so. Whatever happened to people using common sense? not everything you hear and see on the airwaves are the direct reflection of our people. Hip hop nowadays is more a hustle than a reflection, anyone can see that. As for Mr Imus; he should of kept his comment to himself.
April 22, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I hate that Don Imus ever opened his mouth. I was glad that Maya Angelou spoke up on the subject, and wrote a blog about it, too. If you’d like to read it, it is: http://www.rantingwomen.com/real-women-do-talk-politics-share-your-views/maya-angelou-on-don-imus-affair/
Thanks for your thoughts on it. I tend to agree with her, though. I didn’t think she “sold out,” she’s just a realist about censorship.
Anne
May 15, 2007 at 3:50 pm
They do that because it sells and for no other reason, if people would stop buying it they would stop saying. The artist that don’t do any such thing are cast out because no one buys their albums or goes to their shows which is why everyone is doing it. Although I feel its wrong, It doesn’t affect anyone I know because A)they don’t buy what they don’t like and B)They are sure of themselves and they don’t mind hearing H and B because they know they aren’t. As a fellow rapper that doesn’t use such vulgarity I know exactly what I’m talking about with sales, a little experiment taught me all about that, and you should also blame the women in those videos for accepting that.
October 19, 2009 at 10:23 am
I think that this is a great poem, i really love maya angelou and she is a magnificant woman who speaks the truth. i admire what she does.
April 13, 2010 at 4:54 pm
It is America’s fault Pauline. What was once a hip-hop culture is now a hip-hop industry. And what better way to coerce young black men to do what they wouldn’t normally do than to pay them large amounts of money to do it. The black race has never had this problem in any other genre of music until the hip-hop industry came alone and now black women are made to feel like slaves all over again (Good for nothing but sex. My sister; you stay in the dark for as long as you want to but we live in America; a coountry that is known for pushing their immoral values on to other cultures. Look in the bible and you will see that many of the traits that America contains are all traits of Satan himself. So rather than trying to take up for corporate America, who is not trying to take up for you, understand truth.