CJ Mack a Toledo, Ohio artist know all about the mean streets of the Glass City. The drugs,the murders, the poverty, the struggle to stay relevant in the music industry that soon dismiss your relevance as soon as your last hit go flat. Yet, instead of creating music with bubblegum lyrics he choose to produce music that was reality based. His reality was growing up in the Ghetto he had to learn to survive emotionally, physically while staying spiritually intact! Yet how do you survive creatively intact? By surviving by any means necessary! I to grew up in Toledo and learned one mans thought is a gift to another mans reality, reality in knowing a picture has been painted of his thoughts and emotions..
There are two extreme images of the African American Black male in mainstream white media Good vs Bad! Everyday the media reinforces these extremes. There is OJ Simpson who presumably killed a white woman, Bill Cosby who allegedly drugged and raped white women,and Michael Jackson who allegedly molested white children.
This hyper-sexual, violent and angry stereotype placed on the most recognizable black male figures in entertainment are used to terrorize the white collective and project us into being symbolic icons for the nation's ills. The white media not only have the power to control these images but create them. “These Black men are not people, not US citizens who belong in your/ my communities; they are predators,monsters and criminals who threaten “OUR” way of life. Lock them up and throw away the key”.
With the death of R&B in the 90’s and what I would mark as the rise of hip-hop in its absence. Rap and hip-hop
have become the defining marker of the new millennium black male. At its best rap and hip-hop opened the door by inventing a lane to fame and fortune for poor black musical artist who could have never made it in the R&B world. At its worse Rap created a ghetto fabulous image that paraded its example around 70’s blaxploitation that reinforces one dimensional stereotypes.
All this to say I hate the way mainstream media depict the Black male and I hate how some Black men buy into the propaganda and play into these racial stereotypes. When we don't tell our own story truth become twisted into stereotypes.
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