Well, who didn’t see THIS coming? In the aftermath of the Oklahoma University Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter’s worst bus singalong and its consequences, the good people of MSNBC’s Morning Joe blamed hip-hop music for their tirade. They posited that because the N-word is so prevalent in rap music, the students were just emulating what they heard so much. Forget the fact that the fraternity was born in a state that had a racist labor policy, that over 90% of them fought on the Confederate side of the Civil War, that nearly every racist-themed party of the last 30 years that has was highlighted in the news was thrown by SAE chapters, and that the song that promised death to African-Americans over induction into their frat was sung to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”, a song that predates the birth of hip-hop, this was DEFINITELY hip-hop and black people’s fault for leading these poor innocent white men astray.
We all knew this was coming, though. The “[INSERT CAUSE HERE] cause these poor innocent white men to act so wrong” is a common theme. When it comes to everyone else, be it poor people, women, black people, brown immigrants, etc., it is because they are lazy or dressed scantily or dressed too “thuggish” or didn’t assimilate fast enough that something terrible happened to them. They should have taken responsibility for their actions. When it comes to white men, though, it is always the bad influences of the aforementioned groups that have corrupted their minds. Their own actions are never up for scrutiny. You know, for a demographic that has socially and politically dominated the last few hundred years, they sure are very susceptible to a lot of outside influences. Such fragile constitutions, they must have!
Well, thanks to the Internet, the best way to take down such a ridiculous argument is with humour, and boy, was it taken down. #RapAlbumsThatCausedSlavery broke Twitter. It was beautiful, and you should see it. Here’s a short list of mine:
- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Build This Other Nation
- Yo! Bum Rush the Shore!
- Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde or the West Indies
- Baets, Rhymes, & Life of Servitude
- Run the Blood Diamonds
- Enter the 13 Colonies
- Me, Master, & I
- The Miseducation of Joe Scarborough
- Arikka’s Most Wanted
- Like Labor for Chocolate
- Like Labor BY Chocolate
- The Chronic…Statte of Dependence on Low- to No-Wage Labor
- Conquistadors on My Lawn
- Steady Moppin’
- 100 Miles and Runnin’…North
- SouthernPlayalisticCottonPickinMusic
- Take minks off! Take things off! KEEP CHAINS ON. Take rings off! ANTEBELLUM UP!
- Moni in the Middle Passage
- Straight Outta…We Don’t Know Because of Inadequate Record Keeping!
- 3/5 Mafia
- Fuck that Po’tuguese
- Sharecropper’s Delight
- The Marshall Master LP
- Run the Humans
- Nothin’ But a Flee Thang
- EFIL4ZEVALS
- Get Rich or Make ‘Em Die Tryin’
- Puff Daddy & Ma$on-Dixon Line
- A Tribe Called Conquest
- A Tribe Called Igbo, Dahomey, Hausa, Oyo, Kongo, Mali, Ashanti, Ndongo…
- Eric B. & Rakim’s MaHottentotany
- Make ‘Em Say “Toby”, by Master.
- (Thanks for this, Brian) Fear of a Black Plantation
There are so many better ones or there. It is hard to tell if Scarborough, Bill Kristol, and most of Fox News are deliberately making false allegations in order to drive ratings or if they are truly that ignorant about history and reality, but sometimes the best way to battle a barrage of arrogant stupidity is not with rage. Sometimes humor is the best medicine... though it seems lately we've needed to use that medicine more and more.
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