A helpful understanding why the marriage rates in Black Americans have become so low and out-of web-lock births are so highfrom PBS's Independent Lens Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes

While media images might be written off as “only pictures” or “fantasy representation,” they remain a very real part of American culture, with real-life implications for viewers and consumers. Writer and actor Sarah Jones explains, “The image of scantily-clad women is supposed to affirm some image of masculinity, the man as a mack.... But in actuality, what they show themselves to be is incredibly insecure. And the idea is, these men are so important and so powerful, and these women conversely are so dime a dozen… that they don't matter, they're just eye candy, they're worthless.”
For women of color, misogyny and (mis)representation is two-fold, playing on stereotypes of both gender and race. Scholar Jelani Cobb blames sexist music videos for taking “a view of women of color that’s not radically different from the views of 19th-century white slaveholders.” Communities of color must also begin to value fighting misogyny and violence against women as a crucial issue and one that is inseparable from racism and other power imbalances. As writer and teacher Michael Dyson says, “If we have a glorified sense of our own victimization as black and brown men, what we must not miss and what we often do is to understand that black and brown women themselves are so victimized, not only by a white patriarchy, but by black male supremacy and by the violence of masculinity that's directed toward them.”

I did view several segments of this documentary last night. The film maker, Byron Hurt took on the corporations that market Hip Hop, not to just inner city blacks but also upper middle class whites. He interview aspiring Hip Hop artists, and on the spot they could express in rap the real struggles that occur within the black community, but that doesn't sell. Over 20 years ago, there was a Hip-Hop video, titled Self Destruction forewarning how Hip Hop culture that was suppose to unify Black Americans against violence and misogyny, instead it is marketed to exploit all the problems.

It's time to stand together in a unityCause if not then we're soon to beSelf-destroyed, unemployedThe rap race will be lost without a traceOr a clue but what to doIs stop the violence and kick the scienceDown the road that we call eternityWhere knowledge is formed and you'll learn to beSelf-sufficient, independentTo teach to each is what rap intendedBut society wants to invadeSo do not walk this path they laid.It's... self desctruction

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