'Stop Snitchin'' Says a Lot About Black Community

Segment on '60 Minutes' Shows Prison Culture's Influence
By JASON WHITLOCK
AOL
Sports Commentary

I’m going to sellout again today. Yep, it’s time for a little more Uncle Tomming in the name of trying to wake up black people to a crisis in our community.

You watched “60 Minutes” Sunday night, right? You saw Anderson Cooper’s piece on “Stop Snitchin’,’’ which was basically a 13-minute expose on how prison values have intersected with hip hop culture and turned inner-city communities into un-policed killing fields?

I hope you watched. It was a televised version of what I’ve been telling you right here at Real Talk for the past two months.

The rapper Cam’ron bragged on camera that he wouldn’t snitch on a next-door neighbor who was a serial killer. A black anti-violence advocate basically compared the millionaire rappers who promote prison values to the KKK. And a group of young black kids acknowledged that the gangsta rappers are influencing the values of young people.

“Whatever they dish out, we eat it up,” one girl said of the rappers. “They could dish out the nastiest thing in the world and we still would eat it up.”

Surprisingly, not one of these kids mentioned being scarred for life by Don Imus or any other white man they did not know. Maybe Cooper cut out those soundbites. I’m sure the ignorant ramblings of a radio shock jock did more damage to these young kids than the black-on-black violence they acknowledged witnessing.

Or maybe the kids are just a bunch of Uncle Toms, and they need a Vivian Stringer-type leader to explain to them why Imus’ words are more harmful than the prison lifestyle that is promoted in popular rap music.

OK, I’m done with the sarcasm. Cooper put together a powerful story. Unfortunately, he didn’t connect all the dots. That’s why it’s necessary to come here.

Hip hop/prison culture is a natural outgrowth from Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs/poor people” and the subsequent incarceration and brutalization of a large percentage of black men age 15 to 40.

Prison building and warehousing black drug offenders – the new, all-American Apartheid -- is big business. It’s a booming industry financially and politically. Americans bought the lies told by political strategists that locking up black, brown and poor men for long stretches would make America safe.

Are we safer? Or are we in far more fear of not only crime but of the youth culture (hip hop) that is swallowing black and white kids?

It’s worth restating what I’ve said in previous columns: the tattoos, cornrows, sagging pants, hostile attitude, anti-snitching philosophy, down-low sexual lifestyle, rep-your-‘hood mantra and instant-gratification approach to life – the tenets of hip hop culture -- are all taken straight from the penitentiary.

The values needed to survive in America’s barbaric prisons are being marketed to our children through gangsta rap. Denied hope, education, a legitimate opportunity at rehabilitation, the black men incarcerated in our prisons have immersed themselves in prison ethics and are passing along their hopelessness to their free and incarcerated children, relatives and friends.

It’s all rather predictable. Much of art is born out of pain and suffering. America’s flawed, immoral and discriminatory-enforced drug policies have created a significant amount of pain and suffering in the black community.

In order to diffuse this deadly culture, black America is going to have to develop the willpower to reject the negative aspects of hip hop and our country’s lawmakers are going to have to end the “war on drugs” and introduce hope, rehabilitation/habilitation, aggressive education and common decency into our prison system.

I’m sorry, we cannot simply lock up human beings and forget about them. The price of this crime against humanity should now be obvious. You can’t make the world more civilized by treating a segment of the population in an uncivilized manner. Prison building may be economically profitable, but the toll it is taking on society does not justify the profits. It’s no different from the tobacco industry. Astronomical incarceration is hazardous to our health.

The reason I’m adamant about fighting the negative images promoted in hip hop is because these powerful and pervasive images will damage the relief efforts made by well-meaning people to halt America’s drug war and globe-leading incarceration rate.

As long as Cam’ron and the other black KKK rappers are allowed to define us as lawless, uneducated buffoons, we will face impossible-to-overcome challenges in regards to changing our drug laws and introducing significant prison reform.

Based on what Cam’ron said on “60 Minutes,” do you think any sane person wants him as a next-door neighbor? Based on the picture he painted, don’t you think it’s a little more difficult today to convince viewers of that show that there are black men in prison worthy of rehabilitation?

You want to see America spend more money on education in our inner cities? It would be easier to make the case and pressure lawmakers if Americans who have virtually no insight into us – except what they see on TV through pop culture – believed our culture valued education more than prison ethics.

Who caused more damage to black America’s quest for social and economic equality, Cam’ron or Don Imus?

2007 America Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2007-04-23 11:15:23
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This is the 60 minutes Segment this article is referring to.