Overreaction to Party Not Very Gangsta

by Daniel Bjork

Men wearing big, baggy clothes with their pants hanging down below their keisters, scantily clad women showing off their rather large keisters, people eating fried chicken, drinking malt liquor, and wearing gold caps on their teeth; while this might sound like the discription of a recent party held by Clemson students, it is actually a description of a typical rap video you might find on BET. While university and NCAACP officials were busy overreacting to the “gangsta” party, they never stopped to consider where those stereotypes are most emulated and even celebrated: rap music.

The NAACP has a history of overreacting - most especially in states that fly the Confederate flag on its State House grounds - but they also have a history of being unwilling to turn and look at their own community for the problems that exist both in the African-American community and in race relations. The NAACP, in my opinion, holds an important place in American history, but the civil rights era ended more than forty years ago, and the NAACP has not been able to move on since then. Leaders of the African American community continue to blame racism for all of its problems, and as a result actually make race relations worse.

Is racism to blame for the cultivation of negative African American stereotypes through rap music? In my opinion, rap music is the largest detriment to the African-American community that exists today. Rappers not only imitate negative stereotypes, but they celebrate them as well. Nowhere else in American culture are gang violence, sexual promiscuity, dealing and using drugs, and prostitution so panegyrized. Yet when a group of white Clemson students get together and have a chicken and malt liquor party (note the title of Ludacris’s third album, “Chicken and Beer”) it is considered racist. One of the most celebrated things in today’s rap culture is the size of a woman’s posterior, yet when white females at a Clemson party stuff their pants to make their ends seem larger, it is considered racist. Does the NAACP even care that there were black people at the party as well?

As for the university, they are concerned only with saving face. If there is anything the perpetually arrogant in the modern world of academia are concerned with, it is not racial sensitivity - it is the way they are percieved by the prestigious - and even more arrogant - academics across the country. President Barker’s mass email was not written out of disgust over the party, but rather out of concern for his mission to put Clemson into the top 20. Thanks to his apology, however, perhaps now the people at Harvard and Yale won’t be quite so mad at us - because after all, that is what’s really important.

As for the party itself, there are a dozen like it every year at Clemson and other schools. I would venture to say that most Clemson students who regularly attend parties have attended a “gangsta” or similar themed party. I do, however, believe that the participants of this party took it too far by painting their faces black; this is what brought on the majority of the controversy. It should, however, make a difference that African-American students were actually in attendance at the party, and that should make it clear that no racism was intended. Eventhough this event has been an embarassing one for the university, it should not be painted as a racist function, but rather as a foolish one.

Instead of looking for apologies from President Barker, the student body president, school newspapers, and the students involved, offended African-Americans should turn to the leaders of their community and to the current state of rap culture for that apology. Rap music’s continuous support of negative African-American stereotypes and the NAACP’s frequent overreactions have made race relations more tense. The NAACP has made more enemies than friends in the white community over the last several years, often traveling to wherever there are television cameras to argue that the white man is still holding African-Americans down. It is time for the NAACP to make a change in policy, and criticize those in their own community who hurt their culture. Racism still exists, but not to the extent that it did several decades ago - and like most things, racism is a two way street. I know it pains the NAACP to hear this, but white people - let alone a group of college students just trying to have fun - are no longer to blame for everything.