| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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The second chapter also explores the values of the dominant culture/ideology and the controlling images which have developed on issues of race, class, and gender. This exploration is rooted in the historical development of the society. It considers the values and controlling images that have developed historically and how those values and images are still important for contemporary social stratification. In particular, the media reinforce those images, resulting in the perpetuation of the power of the privileged. Many of the images that have been brought into the mainstream reinforce the old controlling images of minorities, women, and the poor, and thus serve to perpetuate the system of domination. This is important since it fits into the overall color-blind ideology that is being promoted to justify contemporary discrimination and inequality.
In the 1980s, cultural and commercial forces united to forge an enduring place for hip hop within African American popular culture. Tricia Rose (1994) argues this point effectively in her early work, Black Noise; she observed (at the very beginning of urban hip hop) that rap's stories continue to articulate the shifting terms of black marginality in contemporary American culture. On the one hand, some aspects of hip hop culture can challenge racist and sexist stereotypes; however, those images sold by corporate America in hip hop culture increasingly reinforce many of those fundamental factors that further entrench marginality in America.
Chapter 3 looks at the contradictory nature of the black male image that is brought into the mainstream culture by highly commodified hip hop culture. Black males and the image they project challenge the system of racism, police brutality, and poverty, and yet, at the same time, perpetuate the hegemonic values of the oversexed, violent black male. The very images that are now brought into the mainstream about black men can be traced to