Made in Whose Image?
by chris on Apr.17, 2012, under general
Three awesome quotes from chapter 3 – “Hip Hop is Hurting Black People” – of Hip Hop Wars:
White consumption of hip hop…didn’t just mean a bigger market for hip hop; it also pointed to the fact that what soon became the most profitable and desired images in hip hop reflected the ideas about black people most commonly held by its audiences.
The cycle looks like this: mainstream white consumers drive hyper-demand for these images (whites are raised on images of black thugs – images that appeal and seem authentic to whites), thereby fueling higher sales given the size of the white consumer market, which then encourages unscrupulous corporations to demand more of these images to make greater profits.
Black people didn’t look at a map and say, “hey, let’s migrate to the ghetto, that’s a good place to live.”
