The Problem is not Hip Hop
April 20, 2007
I agree with Russell that art, in most cases, is a direct reflection of what the artist sees. It seems as if we have put the cart before the horse. We assume that if we change music, we will change the mistreatment of women. In order to kill womanizing, we must destroy it at its source, and the source is our community. Let’s be honest, misogyny was not created with Hip Hop. We see the mistreatment of women in Religion, Corporate America, in commercials, on television, and in magazines. All of which have a wider demographic than most Hip Hop Music. When I was a child I remember hearing older women telling their daughters, that they should be seen and not heard. If women raised to be trophies, then men must have been raised to treat them as objects. This problem is generational.
I am blessed to have come from a strong mother who was raised by my phenomenal grandmother, and a strong father who taught me how to be a man, after his father showed him. Unfortunately, too many men grow up without a father to teach them how to treat a women, and too many girls are not taught how to be women. Let’s not make this about the art, lets make this about us.
Comments (5)Tallahassee art exhbit fuels Confederate flag controversy
March 21, 2007
An art exhibit at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art Science, here in Tallahassee, is stirring quite a bit of controversy.
Bob Hurst walked into a Tallahassee art museum this week and saw the symbol of his Southern heritage hanging by a noose.
The Artwork, which has led to a standoff between descendants of Confederate soldiers and the museum, is a life-size gallows with the Confederate flag dangling from a noose. Created by a black artist from Detroit and titled “The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag,” the piece has brought an old debate to Florida anew.
One of a dozen displays of Confederate flag art by political artist John Sims, it’s part of an exhibit entitled AfroProvocations at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science that opened as part of Black History Month in February.”
The display also includes Confederate flags arranged in a cross, a Confederate flag displayed above a voting machine and a restaging of Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic that shows a grim-faced Sims, arms crossed, standing next to a noose with the flag behind him.
Isn’t it the duty of art to create controversy and spark debate? Isn’t art’s mission to outrage and enlighten it’s audience. So why would we ever stifle that?
What say you?
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