In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
From Ho-House to Hip-Hop, from Jazz to Rap
Did Hip-Hop create the image of thuggish oversexed African Americans?
The European aggressors created the idea of the violent oversexed African race in order to facilitate the terrorism inflicted on over a hundred million human beings for over five centuries. The biblical, philosophical and “scientific” basis for the enslavement and terrorization of Africans in the United States perpetuated this image of the violent oversexed African. As we transformed from Africans into African Americans, and not having an independent knowledge of history, we became of two minds – two unhealthy minds. One mind identified with the oversexed violent image; the other mind embraced European culture and rejected African culture, in an effort to escape the violent oversexed image.
It has never been unusual for these two minds to cohabit the same body. In the history of music, traditions as divergent as minstrelsy and jazz have perpetuated the image and identity of African Americans as oversexed and violent. At the same time, those who were striving to be “civilized” embraced the Bible (complete with the “white” Jesus) and European classical music, and often rejected blues and jazz as “devil music”.
The ho and thug Hip-Hop controversy is partly a generational thing and partly a reflection of certain developments in American culture. The jazz generations did not use the words “ho” and “thug” but accepted the “sophisticated lady” and the switchblade as glorified emblems of African American life. The alienation between the jazz generations and the hip-hop generations, it seems to me, is the most extreme in the history of African Americans, except for that between the new arrivals, centuries ago, and their American-born children.
So, we don’t like “their” language. Do we realize that their language is designed to liberate them from our hypocrisy? We said MF on the QT; they shout MF to the rooftops. In addition, the general society has undergone a “sexual revolution”. In my opinion, it’s out of control and headed in a bad direction. But don’t blame the hip-hop generation. They didn’t start it. As Elijah Muhammad warned us, “Don’t follow the white man.” Let the jazz generations not forget that jazz started in the “ho”-house and never liberated itself from that reality.
The Quimbo Syndrome
In the original novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom was a dignified and courageous man who refused to tell the brutal slaveholder Simon Legree where two escaped slaves were hiding, and was beaten to death for his defiance. Sambo and Quimbo were Simon Legree’s thuggish Black slave-drivers, who thought Uncle Tom was uppity and who happily accepted the task of brutalizing him.
Because of Minstrelsy’s depiction of Uncle Tom as a cowardly and buffoonish lackey, later generations of African American men have preferred to identify, unknowingly, with Sambo and Quimbo and reject Uncle Tom. Today, calling an African American man a thug is apparently not considered an insult.
But try calling him an Uncle Tom!
25 Jumaad-al-Aakhirah 1428 / 2 Rabee’al-Awwaal 1433 / 1 Rabee’al-Awwaal 1438
July 10, 2007 / January 15, 2012 / November 30, 2016
Which Way Is Up? 