stop snitchin on c00per 36o - blame music for murder again!

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Dear Stop Snitchin,

There's an elephant in the room: so many black men and women are incarcerated in this country, many innocently or for trivial offenses, that it's not overstating the problem to say that the US criminal justice system has committed genocide on generations of American black people. Of course the black community's response in the face of so many lost ones is going to be a "no snitchin" rule. Don't blame music for murder. Let's look at the roots of this problem.

― Maria :D, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 02:34 (eighteen years ago)

Did anybody else see this? Russel Simmons nailed it and spoke so movingly, actually.

― Maria :D, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 02:58 (eighteen years ago)

link

― elan, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:38 (eighteen years ago)

watching it right now.

there is a decent article in last month's Atlantic about it .

― g®▲Ðұ, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 03:41 (eighteen years ago)

I dunno, the Stop Snitching stuff is some pretty problematic shit, but I can agree that it's weird to see people keep being so shocked and appalled that OMG communities with long histories of repressive policing might retain kind of an adversarial stance toward law enforcement. (And sure, there's also maybe something to be said about police using informants to keep up a level of broad, repressive policing no middle-class community would stand for, but that doesn't make Stop Snitching stuff still really bullshitty.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 05:02 (eighteen years ago)

Kelefa Sanneh in today's NY Times
A different sort of criticism was voiced in this Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes”: Anderson Cooper was the host of a segment arguing that hip-hop culture had popularized an anti-snitching ethos that was undermining the police and allowing criminals to operate with relative impunity. The rapper Cam’ron, who was shot in 2005, cheerfully told Mr. Cooper that cooperating with police would hurt his professional reputation and run counter to “the way I was raised.” Asked what he would do if he were living next door to a serial killer, Cam’ron merely shrugged and said he would move. The segment said remarkably little about the fear and anger that might help create such an anti-police culture. Even if Cam’ron is just doing what sells, the question remains: Why is this what sells?

None of these complaints are new exactly. Few rappers have used the words “ho” and “bitch” as enthusiastically — or as effectively — as Snoop Dogg, who has spent 15 years transforming himself into cuddly pop star from a menacing rapper, while remaining as foul-mouthed as ever. And rappers’ hostility toward the police has been a flashpoint since the late 1980s, when the members of N.W.A. stated their position more pithily than this newspaper will allow.

Nowadays, as all but the most intemperate foes of hip-hop readily admit, this is not a debate about freedom of speech; most people agree that rappers have the right to say just about anything. This is, rather, a debate about hip-hop’s vexed position in the American mainstream. On “Oprah,” Diane Weathers, the former editor in chief of Essence magazine, said, “I think Snoop should lose his contract — I don’t think he should be on the Jay Leno show.”

On “60 Minutes,” Mr. Cooper kept reminding viewers that hip-hop was “promoted by major corporations,” and he mentioned anti-snitching imagery on album covers. What he showed, though, was a picture taken from a mixtape, not a major label release.

That’s a small quibble, perhaps, but a telling one. In the wake of Mr. Imus’s firing, some commentators talked about a double standard in the media, though “double” seemed like an understatement. Like MySpace users and politicians and reality-television stars and, yes, talk-radio hosts, rappers are trying to negotiate a culture in which the boundaries of public and private space keep changing, along with the multiplying standards that govern them. This means that mainstream culture is becoming less prim (or more crude, if you prefer), and it’s getting harder to keep the sordid stuff on the margins.

This also means that just about nothing flies under the radar: a tossed-off comment on the radio can get you fired, just as a fairly obscure mixtape can find its way onto “60 Minutes” as an exemplar of mainstream hip-hop culture.

You can scoff at Mr. Simmons’s modest proposal, but at the very least, he deserves credit for advancing a workable one, and for endorsing the kind of soft censorship that many of hip-hop’s detractors are too squeamish to mention. Consumers have learned to live with all sorts of semi-voluntary censorship, including the film rating system, the F.C.C.’s regulation of broadcast media and the self-regulation of basic cable networks. Hip-hop fans, in particular, have come to expect that many of their favorite songs will reach radio in expurgated form with curses, epithets, drug references and mentions of violence deleted. Those major corporations that Mr. Cooper mentioned aren’t very good at promoting so-called positivity or wholesome community-mindedness. But give them some words to snip and they’ll diligently (if grudgingly) snip away.

― Maria :D, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 10:36 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, I think he's missing a really crucial distinction! There's a reason the giant corporate labels are resistant to regulating the content of this stuff, and I suspect it's that they don't necessarily have a ton of faith in their musical product -- or they have as much faith in the product "trangression" as in the music that delivers it. Bleeping the foul bits for radio doesn't really affect their ability to sell "transgression" to mainstream America; if anything, it highlights it!

And I know I always always say this, but I get incredibly uncomfortable about how hip-hop gets used as a lens -- as the only lens -- through which to view black culture, because it means young white people's spending money is basically creating a vision of blackness for their parents to be appalled by. One thing that's become increasingly clear to me over the past couple decades is that America is very interested in watching black people be transgressively tough, violent, flashy, and raunchy, and quite often bored by (or unable to identify with) black people being normal, pious, or wholesome. And it weirds me out a lot of them construct their ideas of blackness not from the people they actually know, at school or at work or down the street, but from the images of transgression they're helping to buy into the mainstream media. There seems to be a whole lot of cognitive dissonance surrounding it all, too. Imus is a bad example here, because people liked Imus for reasons beyond racial insults, and I doubt many of his fans would say his problem comment was a great thing to have done. But stuff like Snoop on Leno (or M Savage on radio) is a very different matter: the guy is around because people like what he does, in some part specifically because of the stuff he'll get criticized for. I know these are different segments of society we're talking about -- the ones who like and the ones who criticize -- but the point is that mainstream America is taking these guys as they are, encouraging the very behavior it turns arounds and acts appalled by.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:04 (eighteen years ago)

Nabisco OTM, OTM and OTM.

BTW, I find the Stop Snitchin' shirts a bit problematic too - the fact is they represent, at least in part, an intimidation tactic by organized crime.

Yes, this tactic works partly because people in poor black communities already don't trust the police and the justice system, but drug gangs hardly have poor black communities' best political interests at heart. Stuff like this doesn't really help the innocent victims of the system and it tightens the grip of gangs on black ghettos.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:16 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, it's like 98% bullshit, and it's only people paternalistic concern and sanctimony that justify ever pointing out the other 2%.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

One thing that's become increasingly clear to me over the past couple decades is that America is very interested in watching black people be transgressively tough, violent, flashy, and raunchy, and quite often bored by (or unable to identify with) black people being normal, pious, or wholesome.

This is the America that just put up a black dude for president over every other leading candidate in one of those CNN "if the election were held today" polls, right? Oh, wait. He's a godless tobacco fiend. Raunchy. Playing it up.

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

Why don't you quit using "America" when you mean "my stereotype of middle-income white people who don't live in the city"

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:26 (eighteen years ago)

but the point is that mainstream America is taking these guys as they are, encouraging the very behavior it turns arounds and acts appalled by.

You + Hurting?

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

Oh come on Tom, didn't you listen to/read any non-left commentary during the Imus scandal?

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:43 (eighteen years ago)

no I was too busy over here reading kingfish's links

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:47 (eighteen years ago)

Tom, I'm not sure how to hack my way into those responses, because I'm not sure they have a ton to do with what I mean. I don't think you can put this stuff on my holding stereotypes -- I mean, are you gonna say it's untrue that the market buys up a whole lot of the kind of stuff I mean? Or that a lot of young suburban people grow up with a vision of blackness (especially black masculinity) that's derived disproportionately from things like hip-hop videos? I'm not pretending there aren't vast exceptions to my statement up there (and I'm not pretending black audiences aren't doing the exact same thing in lots of cases), but I don't think that keeps this from being a little bit of a worrisome dynamic. If a whole lot of people of my generation bought Doggystyle because they were attracted to or amused by its content, and then walk around with ideas of what black people are like derived in some part from Doggystyle, there's a level on which they're kind of self-selecting their perceptions of a group of people via what they wanted from that group of people, and that's a little ... weird.

Anyway, sorry if you feel like I'm using too wide of a brush to describe that phenomenon, but I do feel like it exists, and terms like "mainstream America" are about as precise as you can get on a message board without going past even MY normal post length.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:49 (eighteen years ago)

I also think stereotypes of the thug black man and the "good" black man can coexist.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:52 (eighteen years ago)

I mean, I want to be clear that I'm not like bagging on "mainstream America" or trying to call people racist or tar everyone with one brush -- I think over the past decade there's been a HUGE upswing in Americans getting into middle-class black entertainment, and I'm totally pleased when I see that big sections of the country are going to see Barbershop movies and stuff. But there's still an element where mainstream audiences seem to use black pop culture as a conduit for "transgressive" material, as has been the case for plenty longer than I've been alive.

xpost - those stereotypes can even be dependent on one another!

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:54 (eighteen years ago)

Tom, don't you think that Obama's popularity is just as influenced by popular racial stereotypes, i.e. the "magical negro" stereotype?

― elmo argonaut, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:58 (eighteen years ago)

I have never heard of that stereotype.

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:59 (eighteen years ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro

― elmo argonaut, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

Who snitched on Anderson being a never nude?

― Nicole, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

well what do you know. . .

Don't think that describes Obama at all even though a columnist and fatass conservative talk show host says it does.

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:03 (eighteen years ago)

Rush Limbaugh in relishing an excuse to say "negro" over and over again non-shockah.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)

It's tough to say whether the "magical negro" thing factors that heavily into peoples' image of Obama because it's so typical for a presidential candidate to seem two-dimensional and to try to appear perfect.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:11 (eighteen years ago)

I'm not sure Obama's a great case for talking about this stuff, but he just seems like part of the ever-growing ranks of black people that most folks don't feel a need to view through the lens of being black. And in his case there's really no reason you would.

Which actually has to do with another thing I want to clarify: when I talked about viewing "blackness" through a pop-culture lens and not a friends-and-neighbors lens, obviously part of this has to do with considering friends and neighbors as kinda "assimilated" out of blackness, maybe even "exceptions." Which is a great thing when it means they get treated like anyone else -- that's the whole goal -- but a little weird if it allows people to retain ideas about blackness based on a subset of impressions. Anyway, I think my only root point here was that I worry about people (black and white) forming a lot of pop-culture TV/film/music impressions about what black communities are like from hip-hop and comedy, and not as much from, say, all the other programming on BET (haha whether it's gospel music or Tyler Perry interviews or even just Girlfriends re-runs).

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:16 (eighteen years ago)

I prefer to get my impressions about black people from 90s WB sitcoms

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

(impressions of)

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

Wait a minute, was there not a WB sitcom called something like "Brothas in Outer Space"? I keep looking for a jpg but can't find it.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_The_WB

I searched quick and didn't see anything. Are you thinking of Brother from Another Planet?

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:31 (eighteen years ago)

UPN, not WB!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeboys_in_Outer_Space

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:32 (eighteen years ago)

nabisco my ire is directed at your inability to communicate that distinction between you personally worrying about various people forming stereotypes in their mind based on certain forms of MSM/entertainment vice other, perhaps more reasonable and less "exciting" MSM/entertainment and that actually being the case with an unnamed, vague mass of humanity presumably full of "those people"

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)

and frankly I'm sure this has been said before but if you could get ~~lily-white urban gentrifiers~~ bohemians with office jobs from coming along right behind you and just blurting "OTM OTM" with no other supporting commentary or analysis whatsoever I bet a lot of people wouldn't get so teed off

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, that's it! (xpost) - I get confused with the whole UPN/WB/CW thing.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

(Additional clarification, cause now I'm paranoid about being misunderstood: I'm not saying this other black pop culture is like any less market-mediated or a super-realistic depiction of what black communities are like. But it seems a little closer to depicting the ideals and norms of everyday black people than some of what the market is interested in, or at least like an appropriate balance to it.)

Tom, again, sorry if it seemed too broad to you! But obviously when using terms like "mainstream America" or "the public" I'm just talking about a sense of general demographics and culture -- I said up above that I realize these are different segments doing different things. And I'm not just talking about me worrying about something that may or may not exist: I do think that dynamic exists with a, like, statistically significant proportion of Americans. Not like I can name them, though, so sorry if you feel like I'm generalizing too much.

Also I respect your OTM backlash but it's not like I post shit on some smug assumption that I have a posse behind me, I can't help it if someone agrees with me.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:42 (eighteen years ago)

And it's not like I'm just high-fiving Nabisco without having thought about this stuff quite a lot and thinking that what he's saying is pretty close to what I think.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)

I went to sugar hill this weekend and had a good time. That is all

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)

The plot centered around an odd couple-type pairing who flew around the universe in a winged car, piloted by a talking computer named Loquatia.

Ha, that's not bad!

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:47 (eighteen years ago)

nabisco, where does the success of Everybody Hates Chris fit into this? it seems to me like it fits into the "black culture not viewed through the lens of hip-hop" alternative views thing, but you specifically lumped comedy in with hip-hop, and Chris Rock has always been kinda 'edgy'...

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:53 (eighteen years ago)

I kind of think the comment about white kids' spending money funding an image of black culture for their parents to be appalled by is really aimed at a specific soccer mom suburban demographic and overstates the visibility of hip-hop music/cultural themes in the mainstream by quite a bit. I think LeBron James probably has a much higher Q-rating than any rapper save Jay-Z and possibly 50 Cent, and I KNOW Tiger Woods does - but the business model of sports doesn't welcome the same kind of "all publicity is good publicity" mindset and as such they make boring, limited character studies. All the same, to assume that a large number of American adults accustomed to the news cycles still find the theatrics of hip-hop artists on national television opaque seems to be defeatist and a result of equating our national IQ levels with the lowest common denominators that the reactionary press tries to appeal to.

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:00 (eighteen years ago)

I mean let's be honest most people watching that ep of 60 minutes have already forgotten who Cam'ron is.

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:04 (eighteen years ago)

(though that's part of the problem perhaps ..."she must be one of those RAP GUYS girlfriends")

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:06 (eighteen years ago)

Cam'ron's beefing with fifty. he's a punk.

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:10 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Tom, I think that "platonic rap" angle (as ILM called it) is kind of in my thinking here -- e.g., Imus-defense backlash being all about "rappers," and my being pretty confident that a lot of the people mouthing that would have trouble naming a specific current artist, song, or album they meant. And then those generalized ideas start moving into other formats (film more than TV). Athletes are kind of a weird example, actually, because don't you feel like some people get from black athletes, and project onto black athletes, some of the same images and expectations that come from lots of hip-hop? (Anyway, perhaps you're right, and I should try not to underestimate people, but one runs into so much problematic stuff in this vein that it's hard for me not to see it as a somewhat widespread societal issue.)

Re: Everybody Hates Chris, well, I said "comedy" because I was making a BET joke, so referring mostly to that Comicview style of sand-up. Chris Rock may strike people as "edgy" just based on cursing or something, but his standup has always been totally normal and mainstream -- often even moralistic -- in its judgments and ideals, maybe even especially in his racial humor! And the show's pretty stridently wholesome. Kinda pairs up with the Bernie Mac sitcom on that front.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:45 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, I think Chris Rock is still a step forward precisely because he's able to combine *edgy* and *wholesome*

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

I think athletes are projecting the hip-hop asthetic themselves more and more. See the athletes who give rapping a try or form music labels.

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:48 (eighteen years ago)

(I've never seen the show so I'm only basing that on the stand-up). I mean America, part of it anyway, seems to be willing to accept that the same black character can be angry, *crazy*, insightful, witty, and ultimately moral and good, which is pretty complex and 3-dimensional.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:51 (eighteen years ago)

just like ancient rome, americans are more concerned about their entertainment than their politics.

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:53 (eighteen years ago)

is there like actually a new problem with law enforcement in black communities? is there some study or something "snitchin drops 96% in two years, urban police in crisis" or is this just more "news entertainment" from the assholes at cnn / msnbc / foxnews??

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think anything has changed in terms of the relationship between law enforcment and (a segment of) the black community. It's just rappers like Young Jeezy have helped bring the 'no snitching' thing to the attention of the "general public"

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:00 (eighteen years ago)

dudes Shaquille O'Neal wants to be a cop when he grows up.

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

yes, b/c he realized he was shitty rapper.

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

Kazzam

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/games/coverg/40/605140.jpg

― kingfish, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:06 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, Hurting, Everybody Hates Chris is kind of a wholesome family-oriented Wonder Years type thing in which a child plays the old-mannish Al Bundy / Larry David role of being constantly thwarted, bewildered, and put-upon. (Per the title -- it's a pretty great angle.) Totally wholesome, right down to the occasional parent/child heart-to-heart at the end of the episode. Also there's loads of Chris Rock in the way lots of neighborhood figures are played for humor, right up to the guy who robs little-Chris. (Hahaha and, on-topic, little-Chris can't decide whether to snitch or not, and when he does, the guy rolls off in a police car shouting "I'm gonna get you! I'm gonna get Y-O-O!")

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

I mean, Rock's M.O. has always been to treat urban black crime or underachievement problems mostly as lame, disappointing, and laughable.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:23 (eighteen years ago)

two months pass...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/nyregion/09taj.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Impossible to know whether the "Stop Snitchin'" campaign is partly to blame, but sad regardless.

I noticed Funkmaster Flex has started to come out against the anti-snitch movement on Hot 97, which I think is laudable.

― Hurting 2, Monday, 9 July 2007 13:31 (eighteen years ago)

"Leaders of Sex Money Murder had a news conference of their own to insist they had nothing to do with the shooting."

Well, I'm convinced!

― Oilyrags, Monday, 9 July 2007 14:03 (eighteen years ago)

It's interesting that the whole "stop snitchin'" movement has taken off to the degree that noone outside of Baltimore seems to know that it all started here (not that that's anything to be proud of). The guy who made the original <i>Stop Snitchin'</i> DVD, Skinny Suge, got sentenced to 15 years a few months ago. Meanwhile, Bloods are taking over the whole fucking city (there was never really a gang culture here, not even among the drug trade, until a few years ago) and the stop snitchin' legacy is still going strong.

― Alex in Baltimore, Monday, 9 July 2007 14:22 (eighteen years ago)

"A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid." - Richie from Scott Seward's favorite movie Over The Edge(1979)

― scott seward, Monday, 9 July 2007 14:41 (eighteen years ago)

"Don't be a narc!" was like the worst thing you could throw at someone when i was a kid. discounting the whole bloody drug gang/mafioso code of silence thing, one of the only things i like about this country is the inbred fear and distrust of government/police. well, that and the pie.

― scott seward, Monday, 9 July 2007 15:33 (eighteen years ago)

Baseball?

― Ms Misery, Monday, 9 July 2007 15:34 (eighteen years ago)

So much good stuff in this thread.

― Eazy, Monday, 9 July 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Bush.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

GWB - "Stop snitching bitches!"

― Oilyrags, Monday, 9 July 2007 15:58 (eighteen years ago)

four months pass...

Keeping Witnesses Off Stand to Keep Them Safe

― Eazy, Monday, 19 November 2007 23:08 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

wtf, Star Tribune?

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/family/40297912.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

― thunda lightning (clotpoll), Thursday, 26 February 2009 13:04 (sixteen years ago)

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