Monday, October 3, 2011

Why is it okay to call out African American musicians, but not white ones?

I was searching around a while ago for articles about misogyny and racism in music. I found a few of them and noticed a pattern. If you google "Misogyny in music" you will find a lot of links to rap and hip hop music.

Misogyny Set To Music calls out R Kelly.

Here's the Top 10 Misogynistic Rap Songs That Women Love, which calls out Lil Jon, Snoop, Yin Yang Twinz.

Chris Brown, Tyler the Creator and mostly other African American musicians are always, always getting called out.

Then, google "mindless self indulgence misogyny" and "mindless self indulgence racism" and what will you find? Nothing more than a bunch of white people defending the sexism and racism by saying it's "clearly ironic," "tongue in cheek," "Jimmy Urine says he's not a racist so obviously he's not" and "how can they be sexist with women in the band?" And my favorite, "MSI is reclaiming those social slurs."

So my question is, why is it acceptable for these white people to "reclaim slurs" and use slurs "in irony" but when an African American musician does it, there is a huge outcry?

I also notice that the people who post here are the only ones really calling out privileged white men like Frank Iero and Gerard Way on saying horribly racist and misogynistic things on Twitter. If an African American spoke like that on Twitter, what would the reaction be?