to the quick - X-Files

THE 90s MINSTRELS

By Kheven Lee LaGrone

A few years ago while I was driving to the store, I first heard a "gangsta" rap song on the radio. The song was Gangsta Gangsta, and the group called itself N. W. A. — Niggaz with Attitude. They bragged about serving jail time and a violent, anti-social lifestyle. I remember seeing gangsta rap posters of a black man staring menacingly with a firearm across his chest. In No Vaseline, Ice Cube, formerly with N. W. A., brags both about abusing women as well as men raped in jail "with no Vaseline."

Gangsta rap had become popular. Within two weeks of its release, and with no commercial radio play, N. W. A’s album NIGGAZ4LIFE, was the fastest-selling album in the country.*1* The liner notes of their 1996 N. W. A’s Greatest Hits CD reads:

. . . the group changed the face of hip-hop. While many might accuse them of being responsible for half the violent sentiments and misogyny expressed in rap nowadays, they liberated the art form by showing that a black artist could express any viewpoint, even if the government worked against it, and still reach the people in black and white communities around the world. If anything, songs like "Fuck Tha Police," and "Gangsta Gangsta" were the Hardcore Hip-Hop Nation’s Declaration of Independence and Bill of rights . . . at a time when young black urban males didn’t have a voice that could express their anger and frustration with a system that clearly didn’t give a damn about them.

Perhaps the music did give "voice" to the black urban male, and signal a new militant direction for rap; but for white suburbia, gangsta rap was entertainment, serving as the newest evolution in the minstrel or "blackface" tradition.

The "Nigger" as Commodity for Entertainment

Minstrelsy was the personification of white America’s notions of the "nigger." This personification became a commodity for entertainment. This personification and commodification is evident when Carl Wittke, a white historian, described his happy memories of the old-time minstrel show. He had an abiding interest in it and real love for the profession. In his 1930 book titled Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage, he writes:

The origin of American minstrelsy may be found in the singing and dancing of the slaves of the Southern plantations of ante-bellum days; at least this may be considered its prototype.*2*

It was the white minstrel’s notion of the Negro that was mocked, and thus personified, in the process of adapting what Wittke calls "the genuine darky" to the theatre.*3* He writes:

The stage Negro became quite a different person from the model on which he was formed. More specifically, the plantation type which got into minstrelsy apparently was calculated to give the impression that all Negroes were lazy, shiftless fellows . . . he dressed in gaudy colors and in a flashy style . . . the Negro’s alleged love for the grand manner led him to use words so long that he not only did not understand their meaning, but twisted the syllables in the most ludicrous fashion in his futile efforts to pronounce them . . . This, in the main, was the Negro of the joke-book tradition and more especially of the minstrel tradition, and undoubtedly he was a somewhat different individual from the one to be found in real life in the Southern states. But it was this type of darky that the white minstrels strove to imitate or, better stated perhaps, created and perpetuated.*4*

Hence, the white minstrel’s notion of the "genuine darky" or "nigger" was made into a commodity for the entertainment of a white (or mainstream) America. Scholar Michelle Hilmes explains how the actors in the minstrel show, usually from disparate European immigrant groups, helped forge a new nationality where "whiteness" became a badge of "true Americanism." The model or ideal American was hard working, industrious and thrifty. By stereotyping "darkies" or "niggers" as rowdy, stupid, infantile, lazy, dirty, undisciplined, drunken and sexually promiscuous, blacks could become a metaphor for the "other" or "un-American" person *5* The actors, by contrast, became white or true Americans.

The personification of white America’s notions of the "nigger" was eventually transplanted to the radio. By the second decade of the twentieth century, minstrels were popular on the radio.*6* In 1928, two white men created the radio series Amos ‘n Andy. They played the roles of black men with exaggerated and stereotypical dialects, and engaged in the antics and situations of the conventional minstrel show. The commodity proved successful, and the show was so popular, it became the longest running program in broadcast history. Media historian Donald Bogle writes:

Its impact was astonishing. During the fifteen minutes that the program aired . . . much of America seemed to come to a halt. It was said that bars, restaurants, department stores, sometimes even movie theaters just about closed up shop to wheel out radios for their customers to hear the show . . . Presidents such as Coolidge, later, Truman and Eisenhower, all boasted of loving the series.*7*

Almost from the beginning of Amos ‘n Andy’s broadcast, black Americans had mixed reactions to the program. The show had black listeners who not only were entertained, but found the performances "true-to-life."*8* Yet by fall 1931, the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the black community’s most influential publications, sponsored a petition to have the show banned. It said its readers had collected nearly 750,000 signatures*9* According to the September 3, 1931 Pittsburgh Courier, a black man killed a white man for calling him "Amos."*10*

In 1951, this commodity was brought to television. Amos ‘n Andy was the first television series with an all-black cast. Black America was divided over it. The NAACP condemned the show because it (and shows like Beulah) "depict[s] the Negro and other minority groups in a stereotyped and derogatory manner" and "definitely tend[s] to strengthen the conclusion among uninformed or prejudiced people that Negroes and other minorities are inferior, lazy, dumb an dishonest."*11* The NAACP appeared in federal court seeking an injunction against the show’s premiere. The Pittsburgh Courier defended the show.*12* Yet a large majority of African American adults surveyed enjoyed the show and disagreed that it reinforced stereotypes.*13* Actors in the show took pride in their roles. One of the performers, Bill Walker, said it was the only program "that shows Negroes in every walk of life—legitimately, not as . . characters to be laughed at."*14*

CBS, the white television station, did not want the black performers of Amos ‘n Andys to interpret their roles, but to deliver performances as close as possible to those of the white originators. Alvin Childress, who played Amos, was even "blacked up" so he would look darker. The white originators came to the set to give the black performers directions. This "coaching" led to friction. The black performers have been quoted as saying: "I ought to know how Negroes talk. After all, I’ve been on all my life" and that the situation was "a white man teaching a Negro how to act like a white man acting like a Negro."*15*

Minstrelsy or Militancy (New Notions of the "Nigger")

The 60s and 70s seeded another evolution in minstrelsy. Martin Luther King Jr. and his message of non-violence fell to the assassin’s bullet, and a new militancy arose. The Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and the Black Power Movement received national media attention. This attention helped change white America’s notions of black Americans. Especially prominent in the media were images of vocal and angry militant black men, poised for violence.

Also, today’s gangsta rappers were born in this period of increased black militancy, and those values inform the genre. Ice-T got his name from pimp memoirist Iceberg Slim.*16* Ice Cube has quoted Malcolm X.*17*

Yet there are parallels between the minstrelsy and gangsta rap. Both genres depict a black culture separate from a white American mainstream. In the minstrelsy tradition Carl Wittke fondly remembers, the stage Negro "turned out to be an expert wielder of the razor, a weapon which he always had ready for use on such special occasions as crap games, of which the stage negro was passionately fond." In gangsta rap, the protagonists wield Uzis and AK’s. Crap games have metamorphosed into drug deals, but the conventions are still recognizable.

Amos ‘n Andy’s radio audience knew the pair were black, because they spoke what any listener reared on minstrel shows, blackface vaudeville comedy, or Uncle Remus stories would instantly recognize as "Negro dialect."*18* The speech of gangsta rappers also establishes a recognizable dialect. Words like "is" and "the" become "iz" and "tha." They identify themselves as "nigga" and not "nigger." Like the gaudy minstrels Wittke remembers, some gangsta rappers sport flashy jewelry and clothes (i.e., the covers of Master P’s MP Da Last Don and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told). Hilmes writes that minstrels projected blacks as the rowdy, stupid, undisciplined, drunken and sexually promiscuous un-American. Much of gangsta rap is about sex, drugs/drinking, money and violence. In Dr. Dre’s Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat he raps that "I never hesitate to put a nigger on his back." In Geto Boyz Gangster of Love, a woman "deserves" to be raped because she is good looking.

Another parallel between minstrelsy and gangsta rap is that their primary market was not black America, but white America. According to scholar David Samuels, in the summer 1991, the entertainment industry’s receipts proved that gangsta rap’s primary market was not the inner city as might be supposed, but white suburbia. Much of gangsta rap’s "nigga" image was created to entertain white suburbia. He writes:

The more rappers were packaged as violent black criminals, the bigger their white audiences became . . . Rap’s appeal to whites rested in its evocation of an age-old image of blackness: A foreign, sexually charged, and criminal underworld against which the norms of white society are defined, and, by extension, through which they may be defined.*19*

Like earlier minstrel tradition, gangsta rap personifies the white American notion of the "nigger." Once personified, the "nigger" schema is once again ripe for commodification.

The Los Angeles Times credits Andre Young (a.k.a. Dr. Dre) as the architect of gangsta rap. He defends such commodification:

America loves violence. America is obsessed with murder. I think murder sells a lot more than sex. They say sex sells. I think murder sells. . . You don’t hardly ever hear anybody hollering about Oliver Stone or Martin Scorsese or Clint Eastwood and all the violence in their work . . . To me, the records and the videos we make are just pure entertainment."*20*

Dr. Dre has been extremely successful in providing this entertainment to America. He produced N. W. A.’s ELIF4ZAGGIN album, about which a Newsweek reviewer wrote that, "beneath the misogyny and carnage, the rappers’ tough-guy posturing seems more corny than scary."*21* Not only is the "nigger" personified, it is self-titled.

In addition to his own highly lucrative solo projects, Dr. Dre produced his one-time-protégé’s album — Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle. On the record, Snoop raps about womanizing and "rollin’ down the street, smokin’ endos, sippin’ on gin ‘n juice."*22* He identifies himself and other men in his community as "nigga." He calls women "bitches" and "ho’s." Like EFIL4ZAGGIN before, Doggystyle was a commercial blockbuster. It sold 803,000 copies in its first week. Snoop’s 1994 U. S. sales "outpaced those of such pop icons as Madonna and Prince."*23*

Notions of An African Savage, Slavery and Gangsta Rap

White American notions of an African Savage was often used to defend slavery. In his speech to the U. S. Senate in 1837, statesman John C. Calhoun said:

Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. It came among us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions, reviled as they have been, to its present comparatively civilized condition. This, with the rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to the contrary.*24*

Yet this notion of a savage Africa was also made into an commodity for entertainment. Tales of a savage and cannibalistic "Dark Continent" entertained white America and Europe for generations. In the 1850s, the British were fascinated with stories about the "penetration" of Africa. By 1884, the British saw Africa as a center of evil, a part of the world possessed by a demonic "darkness" or barbarism.*25* And early American Tarzan films continued to portray Africa as a land of "primitives" and "savages."

Gangsta rappers tell similar tales of a savage and almost cannibalistic existence in the ghetto. Away from whiteness, do they revert back, in Calhoun’s words, to their "low, degraded" condition? In W. B. Griffin’s movie Birth of a Nation (1915), white America was entertained by rowdy, undisciplined "niggers" taking over America. In the end, the KKK came to save the day.*26* Does Dr. Dre’s The Day the Niggaz Took Over give white America a similar thrill? Do songs about police shoot-outs and brutality, such as the Geto Boys’ City’s Under Siege, offer, at least subconsciously, some entertaining security?

Could gangsta rappers entertain white America if they were not contained in inner cities—away from the "true Americans?" Would white female teenagers be as entertained by the psychopath in Geto Boys Lunatic if they visualized his victims as white women? Probably not; but when the narrator brags that he’s a "menace to society," we assume the society he menaces is the ghetto. Similarly, when the rapper in the Geto Boys’ Assassin pistol-whips an innocent woman or chops up another woman with a machete, the setting is black, urban America. The violence becomes as thrilling as any action or adventure movie that evokes Dr. Dre’s comparison—perhaps even more exciting, since some people actually live this lifestyle. Even Ice Cube says, "so-called gangsta rap is starting to look like a comic book to many kids"*27*

Just as black America had ambivalent feelings about Amos ‘n Andy, black America has mixed emotions about gangsta rap. Some groups argue that it sends negative messages of violence, misogyny, and homophobia to black youth. The National Political Congress of Black Women and other Black Women’s groups urge the start of a national crusade to persuade the music industry to clean up violent "gangsta rap" lyrics that the group said demean and threaten women.*28* C. DeLores Tucker, chair of the National Political Congress of black Women relates:

Our kids have adopted the gangsta culture as a direct result of this music. We have kids killing kids, little boys raping little girls and both boys and girls memorizing every word of these violent and pornographic songs.*29*

Additionally, singer Dionne Warwick has confronted gangsta rappers about the misogyny and violence in their music.*30* Supporters argue that gangsta rap gives voice to another side of America. Scholar, father and ordained minister, Michael Eric Dyson finds gangsta rap’s misogyny, homophobia and verbal violence repulsive and a cause for concern,*31* but he also believes that "gangsta rap’s in-your-face style may do more to force our nation to confront crucial social problems than countless sermons or political speeches."*32* When conservative politicians pressured Time Warner executives to stop selling records containing controversial lyrics by rap artists, several black leaders, including Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and U. S. Rep. Maxine Waters came to the music’s defense. They protested the censorship and championed the right to free speech.*33*

The Middle-Class Black

If gangsta rap speaks for the urban black male (while entertaining the white suburban teens), who speaks for the middle-class black American? According to scholar bell hooks, we cannot assume that black middle-class culture makers like Spike Lee and the Hughes Brothers (makers of the movie Menace II Society) will. She writes that since the black underclass is more marketable to white America, such culture makers downplay their middle-class origins.*34* When Time magazine covered gangsta rapper Ice-T’s growing-up, they write:

Although he lived in Windsor Hill, a middle-class section of L. A., he claims he began hanging with a rough crowd. He plays up these tough-guy roots to legitimize his hard raps, although a teacher at his alma mater, Creshaw High, remembers Marrow (Ice-T) as a milder short whose most serious offenses were trying to get into basketball games without paying.*35*

Ice-T is best known for his song "Cop Killer." Claiming that the song glorified the murder of police officers, law enforcement groups (and even then-President Bush) protested Warner Brother’s release of the record.*36* Popular talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, a white conservative, accused Ice-T of raging war on traditional (white) American culture.*37*

Nor can we assume that black middle-class teens assimilate into white America and identify with white teens. Nearly 30% of black Americans live in suburbs. Many want to be "true" blacks and identify with the inner-city culture. They feel their parents have sold-out and betrayed their "blackness" by leaving the inner city.*38*

But how are they defining "blackness?" According to Toni Morrison:

Race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic than biological "race" ever was.*39*

Where do middle-class black teens fit into this "equation" since they live on neither plantation nor ghetto? Do they internalize white America’s notion of the "nigger?" Do they feel they are treated like minstrels, the black American "other," or as a nigger/"nigga" defined by white suburbia? This is important, since for many black suburban youth, gangsta rap may represent their only connection to the inner city and to what they consider "true" blackness.

We cannot assume that conditions for the middle-class black teen are better than those for the urban black male. An article in The San Francisco Chronicle, "Suicide Rate Climbing for Black Teens: Move to Middle Class May Cause Identity Crisis" details a federal study that claims the suicide rate for black teens has been rising dramatically. Unlike white and Latino teens, the black teens who commit suicide tend to come from much higher socioeconomic backgrounds than the general black American population.*40* What is the cause? Why isn’t their voice being heard even in the black media? Would their raps be as marketable to a white suburbia looking for the exotic "nigger"?

Even as an adult, I have encountered white America’s notion of "nigger" when outside the ghetto. A white Canadian immigrant once told me "I like you because you’re not too black . . . You’ve been exposed to white people. I don’t see you as black, I see you as a person." He even said "You’re not a ‘real’ black, you’re a ‘good’ one." He meant this as a compliment.

He did not identify himself as a right-wing white conservative. He identified himself as an open-minded, enlightened liberal. Still, his statements raise several questions. What is "too black?" Should I feel proud not being "too black" and being "exposed to white people?" How can he not like me as a black person? If a "real" black is not a "good" black, then what does a "real black" mean to him?

Most importantly, where did he learn this notion of a "real" blackness?

Camille O. Cosby, wife of entertainer Bill Cosby, helps answer these questions in her opinion essay published in USA Today, July 8, 1998. She writes:

I believe that America taught our son’s killer to hate African Americans. After Mikail Markhasev killed Ennis William Cosby on January 16, 1997, he said to his friends, "I shot a nigger. It’s all over the news" . . . Presumably, Markhasev did not learn to hate black people in his native country, the Ukraine, where the black population was near zero. Nor was he likely to see America’s intolerable black stereotypical movies and television programs, which were not shown in the Soviet Union before the killer and his family moved to America in the late 1980s.*41*

In a July 27, 1998 letter to the American pubic, Cosby adds that her son’s killer chose to befriend diverse, ethnic American individuals and a gang who shared a racist commonality: hatred for black people.*42* Hence, the white American notion of "nigger" continues to be used to help define a white America.

NOTES

¹ "Number One With A Bullet." Newsweek July 1, 1991, p. 63.

² Wittke, Carl Frederick. Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage. New York, Greenwood Press, 1930. p 7.

³ For this essay, the words "nigger" and "darky" are interchangeable.

⁴ Wittke, 7-9.

⁵ Hilmes, Michelle. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952. University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 25-29.

⁶ Wittke, 111.

⁷ Bogle, Donald. Blacks in American Films and Television. New York, Garland Publishing, 1988. P. 250

⁸ Ely, Melvin Patrick. The Adventures of Amos ‘n Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon. New York, Maxwell MacMillan International, 1991. P. 161

⁹ Ely, 174

¹⁰ Ely, insert

¹¹ Ely, 7.

¹² Museum of Broadcast Communications. Encyclopedia of Television. Chicago, Fitzroy Dearborn Publisher, 1997. 64 – 65.

¹² Ely, 222.

¹⁴ Ely, 210.

¹⁵ Ely, 206.

¹⁶ "Straight Outta South-Central." Newsweek: July1, 1991, p. 63

¹⁷ The New York Times Magazine: April 3, 1994, p. 43.

¹⁸ Ely 2

¹⁹ Samuels, D. (1991, Nov. 11). "The Rap on Rap." New Republic, 25

²⁰ "Violence Tops the Charts." Los Angeles Times: April 3, 1995, p. A18.

²¹ "Number One With A Bullet." Newsweek: July 1, 1991, p. 63.

²² From the song on the album titled "Gin and Juice"

²³ "Violence Tops the Charts." Los Angeles Times: April 3, 1995, p. A18.

²⁴ Calhoun, John C. "Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions." Slavery Defended. Eric L. McKitrick, Ed. Spectrum Books, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963. 13.

²⁵ Brantlinger, Patrick. "Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent." In Race and Difference, ed. Henry L. Gates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 194.

²⁶ The American Film Institute rated Birth of a Nation as number 44 of America’s top one hundred films.

²⁷ "Generation Rap." The New York Times Magazine: April 3, 1994, p. 44.

²⁸ "Black Women Crusade Against ‘Gangsta Rap’," Jet, January 10, 1994, p. 15

²⁹"What’s Wrong (And Right) About Black Music," Ebony September 1995, p. 26

³⁰ Veran, Cristina, "Psychic Enemy," Vibe April 1998, p. 52.

³¹ Dyson, Michael Eric, Preface. Between God and Gangsta Rap. Oxford University Press, 1996. P. xiii.

³² Dyson, Michael Eric. "Gangsta Rap and the American Culture." Between God and Gangsta Rap. Oxford University Press, 1996. P. 186.

³³ "Black Leaders Weighing In on Rap Debate." Los Angeles Times: June 14, 1995, p. 8.

³⁴ Hooks, bell. "Marketing Blackness: Class and Commodification." Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1995. p. 179.

³⁵Time. June 22, 1992, p. 66 COMPLETE CITATION

³⁶"Violence Tops The Charts." The Los Angeles Times: April 3, 1995, p. A18.

³⁷Limbaugh, Rush H. See I Told You So. Thorndike, Maine: G. K. Hall & Co., 1993. P. 134-142.

³⁸ "Suburban-Urban Youths Fraternizing Could Be For The Best." Michigan Chronicle: Sept. 24, 1996, p. 6-A

³⁹ Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. p. 63.

⁴⁰ "Suicide Rate Climbing for Black Teens: Move to Middle Class May Cause Identity Crisis." The San Francisco Chronicle: March 20, 1998, p. 1.

⁴¹ "In Memory of Ennis by Camille O. Cosby, Ed. D." Jet: August 17, 1998, p. 34.

⁴² Jet: August 17, 1998, p. 35.