Gangsta rappers refer to women as ho's and bitches often belittling black women to show how much they aren't needed in society. Dyson
Unfortunately there are a great deal of troublesome images that are being shown about women in the African American community that has absorbed into their psychological mind. When you turn on the television or go to the movies, pay attention to the roles that African-American women play. Think about how often you see an African-American woman being portrayed on the screen as brave, intelligent, and strong or playing a leadership role? As an African American woman I am dissatisfied with the media’s portrayal of us. I feel that this trend must be stopped and the only way is for us to boycott the media, stop buying music that depicts us as anything less than what we are.
That's exactly what Madonna attempts to do when she appropriates and commodifies aspects of black culture. Needless to say this kind of fascination is a threat. It endangers. Perhaps that is why so many of the grown black women I spoke with about Madonna had no interest in her as a cultural icon and said things like, "The bitch can't even sing." It was only among young black females that I could find die-hard Madonna fans.
Let me be clear -- I'm on the front lines of any effort to get the men in hip-hop to rethink their pornographic uses of women's bodies and performance of lyrics that more often than not express, at best, a deep ambivalence about and fear of women (perfectly captured 14 years ago with the Bell Biv Devoe quip "never trust a big butt and a smile") and, at worst, outright hatred. But as we make demands of these artists, it's important that we understand the demands of the peculiar space they occupy within pop culture. Without doubt, the performance of black masculinity continues to be hip-hop's dominant creative force. Yet over the last decade or so sales figures have consistently shown that young white men are the primary consumers of the various performances of black masculinity and the pornographic images
Ethos can be seen in the first paragraph when she uses terminology like, “our love jones for hip-hop”, ”homeboy’s clearly got it like that” and “gangsta leans”(602). This use of slang clearly suggests the audience she is trying to connect with is the black community. It also feels like she is showing them that she speaks their language to put them at ease as well as to ask them to not tune her out. Even when Morgan does use logical appeals her overreliance on emotional appeals weaken her logic. This is evident when she describes a US Census Bureau comparison about two parent black homes from 1960 to the present(602); however, she immediately precedes and therefore undermines it with an appeal to Pathos when she says, “The stats usher in this reality like taps before the death march” (602).
The unique history of African-Americans subconsciously affects what black men and women consider attractive. If this wasn’t true, black women wouldn’t go to such extremes as to put chemical relaxers in their hair to make it straight. Assata Shakur describes the process of straightening her hair as, “burnt ears, a smokey straightening, and the stink of your own hair burning” (174). She hadn’t understood why she and generations before her had gone through the trouble. The women, who wear natural looks such as afros, dreadlocks, and braids, are a rare find.
And, in most cases they are seen as property and mere objects to men. The article “Where My Girls At? : Negotiating Black Womanhood in Music Videos” by Rana Emerson focuses on the present-day issue that many black woman are facing in the music industry. Her center of attention was to prove and “identify how music videos exhibit and reproduce the stereotypical notions of black womanhood faced by you black females,” and in addition she “discusses the ways that black woman performers use music videos” for sexist philosophy. Emerson proves her argument by composing her own study with the use of theoretical sampling.
Macklemore starts his argument relating gay rights to the civil rights at (2:28) where he purposefully puts clips of a significant black women in history, the American flag flowing in the wind, a burning cross, a clip from war, and a young African American holding a sign stating “we believe in the supreme court”. These clips are playing to the lyrics “A culture founded from oppression, yet we don't have acceptance for 'em, call each other faggots behind the keys of a message board, a word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores it, gay is synonymous with the lesser, it's the same hate that's caused wars from religion, gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment, the same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins, it's human rights for everybody, there is no difference!” The significances of the American flag going with the lyrics is there to show that the USA was founded when trying to free itself from the religion and government pressure in England. In addition he uses the African American female, the burning of the cross, war image, and the young girl
From reading this story, I sensed a major theme of representing one’s self as an individual opposed to giving into what society wants you to do. This idea is obvious in the personality of the narrator along with the stripper who attends the battle royal. She is too a victim of lacking an identity to voice her own opinion. Ellison’s in-depth descriptions of his characters make this story a really genuine source of understanding one minority’s struggles through a time of discrimination and failure to establish identity. Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist in "Battle Royal" is a young African American struggling to find his place in society in the early twentieth century American South.
For over a century, women have been speaking about the double enslavement of black women and how not only are they handicapped on account of their sex, but they are mocked almost everywhere because of their race as well. In “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology,” Deborah King illustrates how the dual discriminations of racism and sexism remain pervasive, and how class inequality compounds those oppressions. In the case of Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, this triple jeopardy of race, gender, and class ultimately leave her feeling socially powerless in society. Pecola must suffer all the burdens of prejudice of having dark skin, as well as bear the additional burden of having to cope with white and black men because of her sex. The beauty standards of white Western culture, the sexual abuse of Pecola by her father, and Pecola’s low economic status have multiplicative effects on Pecola and all aid in her progressive alienation from society as well as her fall towards insanity.