phoetiquette asked: Hey. So this really is genuine curiosity, not a troll or a challenge, but can you elaborate on why/how misogyny in ‘black’ music is a product of racism?
You see, white d00dz set up this thing called the patriarchy a long time ago. We all live under it. We actively try to tear it down, but that hasn’t happened yet. In the patriarchy, masculinity is seen as ideal. At the same time, we live in a racist society (also set up by white d00dz, btw). In this racist society, white is seen as the ideal. Now think about black males growing up. We’re simultaneously told that masculinity is the most important thing a person can have, but we’re also told we can never be quite as good as a white man. After all, many of us don’t even have fathers at home, and if we do, we mostly see them working menial jobs that come with little to no respect, almost none of that awesome masculinity the patriarchy is constantly telling them they need.
So, we develop this overly masculine culture to compensate for it. We can never compare to white men in the masculinity factor (which, again, the patriarchy is telling us is the most important thing ever) because we’re black (and, again, the racist society is telling us that white > black), so this overly masculine culture attacks anything the patriarchy tells us is less masculine than us: women, gays, trans* folks, non-athletic people, etc.
And then we make music. We make music about our culture, our culture which we want so badly to believe is our own, but has been shaped so much by the patriarchy and by racism. That music then reflects the negative things that have been ingrained in us by the systems white people set up, so imagine how I feel when white people act like misogyny in hip-hop is the cause of misogyny? No no no, white people, don’t blame black men for the misogyny that your men have been ingraining in us since the day we were born. Deal with your shit and we’ll deal with ours, but this shit started with you, not us. Many, many African cultures were matriarchies.
Andrea Smith says essentially the same thing in Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide— misogyny came from the white colonists, not from the First Peoples. Before colonialism there was no such thing as sexism; there was not a matriarchy, but rather, a society in which everyone was equal and shared power in the community.
Misogyny didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
Genius
