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Racism in popular music
Gender roles in hip hop
Gender roles in hip hop
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Recommended: Racism in popular music
Within the song Pyramids by R&B artist Frank Ocean, we see two largely separate compositions lyrically and structurally merge into one cohesive piece. Initially, the song details the fictional demise of the black queen Cleopatra, who, under the guise of being stolen by a thief, had run away with the Biblical strongman Samson and was found to have had a sexual relationship with him. After this revelation, the song transitions into a ballad, the story now pertaining to the relationship between a pimp and a stripper, whom he also calls “Cleopatra.” The reverence with which Cleopatra had been referred with in the first section of the song is blatantly absent, as explicit sexual references are made about the stripper by the pimp. Indicating that “the Pyramid” is the name of the strip club in which the woman works, the song concludes with the repetition of the line “She’s working at the Pyramid tonight.” This essay will outline how the only way to properly observe the dualistic nature of the song Pyramids is to parallel it with the dualistic way in which Western society views and treats black women. Through an analysis of both black representation and the black experience within the public and private sphere, it will analyse the impacts of …show more content…
Harris-Perry also states as to how the defining of black women as being naturally unequal to whites was a crucial part of white society's identity. “In this sense, modernity offered no possibility of a more accurate recognition of black women. Observation of the primitive, subhuman other was central to defining the advanced, vilified citizen, and black women’s supposedly hyper sexual bodies were central exhibits to this
(pg. 75) Because of Baartman’s race, Europeans linked her to an animal who is apart of nature as opposed to a human being. Like wise, in Mastering the Female Pelvis, Sims and Harris depicted the slave women as inherently more durable than white women, they described the black women to be durable like a car, not in reference to a human being (272). Sims often argued that the slave women were able to endure excruciating pain because slavery “prepared” the women for the surgeries. In present day black women are still looked at as being strong women, but with that description comes negative. In society, people often think that black women can endure any and everything that causes pain, as Dr. Kuumba once stated in class that her doctor compared her to an animal after giving her a shot.
In the article “ From Fly to Bitches and Hoes” by Joan Morgan, she often speaks about the positive and negative ideas associated with hip-hop music. Black men display their manhood with full on violence, crime, hidden guilt, and secret escapes through drugs and alcohol. Joan Morgan’s article views the root causes of the advantage of misogyny in rap music lyrics. In the beginning of the incitement her desires shift to focus on from rap culture condemnation to a deeper analysis of the root causes. She shows the hidden causes of unpleasant sexism in rap music and argues that we need to look deeper into understanding misogyny. I agree with Joan Morgan with the stance that black men show their emotions in a different way that is seen a different perspective.
This book talks about the experiential aspects of the Pyramids Of Giza, discussing how the size of the buildings, as well as the spaces and materials used, make the pyramids feel very grand, reflecting the pharaoh’s power. (Fazio 2013) suggests that the pyramids were built to such grand proportions to emphasis the power of the pharaoh in society as well as his god like status.
In the Women’s Rights Convention of 1851, Truth repeatedly equates her worth to that of a man by her physical and intellectual abilities. Some of Truth’s statements at this convention include: “I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I can carry as much as any mean, and I can eat as much too”. These statements highlight the fact that women were thought to have less physical and intellectual ability than men, and as such were afforded fewer rights. By recurrently equating herself to men in all of these arenas, Truth displayed the commonalities between men and women. Furthermore, Truth’s views came from the stance of a former African American slave, who were not. In this speech, Truth paralleled herself, a black woman, to have the same abilities as a white man, thereby attempting to change her audience’s view of the current existing American capitalist patriarchal structure that put white men at the top and women of color at the bottom of the
Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs in the context of the writings of W.E.B. Du bois serves to demonstrate how slavery prompted the weary and self-denigrating attitudes of Negro Americans during the subsequent Reconstruction period. However, it is important to note that Harriet Jacobs does not embody the concept of double-consciousness because slavery effectively stripped away her sexuality and femininity, therefore reducing her to one identity--that of a
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
“I tried to demonstrate how both the cross cultural literature and the history of African American women gave the lie to the nation that gender inequality can be attributed to biological differences” (Mullings, page xvii)
Cox’s work is exactly the type of discussion that is needed to move the discourse on black women’s bodies from being regarded as part of a stereotype to being regarded as individuals with beautiful differences. This is not a ‘re-mirroring’ of the ‘un-mirrored,’ but rather a creation of a new image, void of previous misconceptions but filled with individuality. The stereotypes concerning black women’s bodies needs to be abolished, not reinvented like Hobson suggests in “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture.”
The most poignant finding is not that black and whites think differently about its meaning, but what emerged was the acknowledgement that Hip-Hop was created as a tool to voice the sentiments of the disenfranchised. This locates the birth of Hip-Hop in cradles of disenfranchisements, the hood. Hip-hop worked as a megaphone, a magnifying glass that candidly told whoever would listen about the hardships, injustice and racism faced by those living in American ghettos. It worked as a tool to tell the stories of the people living there in order to build empathetic conversatio...
...nd attractive. It creates a double consciousness that is difficult to reconcile. Carla Williams argues that “given the legacy of images created of black women… it is an especially complex task for contemporary black women to define their own image, one that necessarily both incorporates and subverts the stereotypes, myths, facts and fantasies that have preceded them. (Wallace-Sanders et.al, 196) The root of the problem lies within our society. While very culpable, mainstream music and advertisements are not the only promoters of female objectification; the key is unwinding the inner tensions between these two groups. There is a need for the promotion of female solidarity, regardless of their skin color. We need to rid society of the evil of racism—only then will conceptions surrounding African Americans parallel and be as positive as those surrounding white women.
Although the institutionalization of the fields of Black and Women’s Studies were still years away, the aforementioned black women, along with many others, were essential to the development of the epistemological and theoretical concepts that would later become the foundation. We can clearly see gaps in the literature in the area of Black Women’s Studies, as the writers discuss these women from the standpoint of either the Africana or Feminist Tradition. Some make mention of the intersection of racial and gendered oppression, but only in passing
...e and gender, were by default always arguing for universal equality. In no instance could black women argue specifically for their rights and freedom, without necessarily raising up the all blacks and females. As the famous phrase declares, black women were “lifting as they climb” (Brown, 44). In their fight for enfranchisement, they were advocating for universal suffrage; in their movement to end lynching, they were urging, “that every human being should have a fair trial;” in the demand for fair, living wages, they were insisting that all people should have the capacity to live honestly and adequately from their pay (Brown, 34). Black women, not only assumed a peculiar position in society, where they had to band together to fight for their own rights, but also they were in a powerful situation, which granted them the capacity to fight for everyone’s rights.
Richardson, Elaine. "'She was Workin Like Foreal': Critical Literacy and Discourse Practices of African American Females in the Age of Hip Hop." Discourse & Society 18.6 (2007): 789-809. ProQuest. Web. 2 May 2014.
Will sexism ever come to an end in today’s society? Are women going to let men step all over them? Jennifer Mclune discusses in her article, Hip-Hops Betrayal on Black Women, how black male singers objectify and degrade black females in the music industry. The purpose of this article is to show how black women are being deceived in the hip hop industry and being used as sex symbols instead of showing them for their true colors. Mclune (2015) voices her strong argument in attracting her audience by using ethos, tones, and the use of word choices.
The pyramids of Egypt are fascinating, however, they remain to be a mystery. The well-built architecture is located in Giza, Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile River. The pyramids of Egypt are the oldest and only surviving member of ancient wonders. It is also the pride and one of the most important factors in Egyptian culture.