Hip-hop

Apparently listening to Hip hop and having a less than angelic history isn’t what killed Sean Taylor.

According to police, the intruders were a group of would-be burglars who didn’t know Taylor personally. They weren’t assassins and this wasn’t a hit. And nor was the incident some form of retaliation for a slight the men had experienced from Taylor during his former days as a wild, childless, responsibility shirking ne’er-do-well.

So unless it is later discovered the killers were bumping that new T.I. at the time of Taylor’s murder, this was probably just your average, everyday, unfortunate, mindless violence.

It was probably the same violence that affects Americans across all gender and racial boundaries everyday. It was the same violence that takes the lives of men and women, boys and girls in their homes, at their jobs, or in their schools. It was the same violence that shook our spiritual foundations with earthquake-like tremors the morning the towers fell; the same violence we then tearfully gathered, repackaged and sold to the world under the titles “Shock and Awe” and “War on Terror.” It was just good old-fashioned American mindless violence.

By Cincinnati Enquirer Editorial Cartoonist Jim Borgman

Sadly however, no one wants to admit that we, a nation “under God,” can be so inherently, and inescapably, violent. The idea that American violence is so rampant throughout our culture that it permeates our art, entertainment, politics and religion, across the board, is too much to take. This is especially true now, when we are fighting moral wars at home and abroad. No one wants to look at themselves critically, especially nations built on the self-righteous cornerstone of predestined religious superiority.

So we look for scapegoats, I like to call them the “3 H’s”: Homosexuality, Hispanics and Hip hop.

If there’s anything wrong with our country, one of these three more than likely will take the fall. Divorce rates reaching an all time high? Blame homosexuality. Is it becoming hard to find a job? Mexicans must’ve taken them all. Young black superstar athlete with a troubled past gets shot in his own home? Hip hop must’ve done it.

Well, as I am not a member of either of the former categories (I don’t think); I can only speak from the perspective of the latter. And as such, I have to say…good job America.

Only in America can a young black father and soon-to-be-husband, be gunned down in front of his child and fiancé in his own home, and still be found at fault. If we were talking about post police investigation, then fine, let guilt rest on the heads that deserve it. But no, we’re talking about the day after he passed, before suspects or motives materialized. America still found a way to blame ‘the nigger.’

Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock all but dismissed Taylor’s last heroic moments by assuming that Taylor had some how brought this tragedy on himself. Whitlock likened Taylor’s “checkered past” and ultimate death to a fat man “[falling] to the ground clutching his chest. You’d assume a heart attack, and you’d know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.”

The problem with Mr. Whitlock’s blindingly prejudiced assumption is that he’s comparing Taylor to a man whose continual bad health habits directly lead to a heart attack. A more fitting analogy would be to an overweight man who, after losing a substantial amount of weight, suffered from a heart attack nonetheless. The fact is everyone from Washington Redskin teammate and close friend Clinton Portis and the team’s Head Coach Joe Gibbs agreed that Taylor, despite his troubled history, had drastically changed his lifestyle following the birth of his daughter.

He was no longer the man that courted danger. He now attended church regularly and lived in an upscale community in Palmetto Bay, Fla. To paraphrase: he was doing everything right. If Taylor had been shot in a club, a bar, or anywhere else outside of the supposed safety of his own home, Whitlock’s argument would stand firmer in logic.

Unfortunately, it does not. Taylor was a man who was in the process of turning his life around, but because of his past and/or the culture into which he was born, the media felt fit to lessen his victim status. Before any shred of physical evidence was found, Taylor and Hip hop were found guilty…again.

But what do you expect? When a black man dies, no one wants to look at America’s broad, deeply residing social and cultural deficiencies for a reason, let alone a solution. No, they would rather point to a subculture such as Hip hop and its alleged obsession with violence. Never mind that the subculture is invariably tied and influenced by its parent. Honestly, would there even be gangsta rap if Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” hadn’t made it look so damn cool? Sure, there would still be community-wide poverty and thus violence, but would anyone be trying to make money glamorizing it in the fields of entertainment if Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone and Al Pacino hadn’t paved the way?

But it’s easier to imagine some Hip hop phantom traveling through ear phones and television pixels, possessing its hosts with a self-destructive nature that otherwise would not have existed, rather than acknowledge how a violence worshipping culture influences its impoverished citizens. I doubt any of the victims of the Columbine or Virginia Tech shootings would be held up to such media scrutiny, even if they had criminal backgrounds and listened to Ludacris religiously. You see, few of them, if any at all, fit into the three scapegoat categories. They were allowed to be victims.

Conversely, multiple news outlets chose to mention, if not highlight, Taylor’s “checkered past” before it was even established that his history had any involvement in his murder. And this is the reason why the negative aspects of Hip hop were cited in articles covering Taylor’s death, despite the situation not involving a single element of the culture. When a young black man is killed, whether rich or poor, criminal or law abiding, the sword that he may have lived by, even if it had since been discarded, is recovered, polished and reinserted in his hands.

If the tragedy is his fault alone, or the fault of his minority culture, then why should we care? The answer is, most choose to not care. And the larger problems of our society continue to go unheard and unchecked.

Apparently, even the Rev. Jesse Jackson believes the media may be missing the point. Speaking at Taylor’s funeral on Dec. 3, Jackson offered a more focused view on a real problem that affects urban America: the U.S.’s often lackadaisical gun control policies. Later reiterating the following day in a statement published by the Chicago Sun-Times, he continued by saying, “Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sean Taylor . . . the tragedies keep coming. We are slow learners. Now it is legal to own and sell semiautomatic weapons. In an age of terror, restrictions on guns are being rolled back, not increased.”

“Sean Taylor died alone with his family, but we must do this together. We need to rededicate ourselves to making America better, to getting guns and drugs off our streets, to getting crime under control.”

Indeed, America is a violent place with far too few solutions on how to change things. This isn’t a problem that is unique to a specific group of people. If Taylor’s death proved anything, it’s that no matter how you change your life, your social level, how much money you have, or where you live, violence can find you. And that’s whether you listen to Jay-Z or not.

.

.

. ==========================================================