Hip Hop and Inequality: Searching for the
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Hip Hop and Inequality: Searching for the "Real" Slim Shady By S ...

Chapter 1:  Introduction
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uncomfortable. They correctly identify hip-hop as a Black youth subculture that many young whites are enthusiastically engaging. Uncritically accepted, however, are the accompanying pop culture perceptions of young Black males as criminals and young Black women as “bitches,” “hos,” “chickenheads” and worse. Over the past decade, as we’ve witnessed the rise of conservatism in America, this dissatisfaction has found a public voice in the claim that American morality is disintegrating and hip-hop's arrival as a mainstream cultural phenomenon is a large part of the problem. Put bluntly, too many white kids are trying to be Black. (2005, 18)

Kitwana is helpful in understanding another aspect of the “Why do white people like rap music?” answer. What our respondents shared with us is that white youth who are isolated from minorities gain a significant amount of their understanding of blacks, Latinos, and other minorities from their interaction with hip hop culture. One student who went to a white high school in New Hampshire said that it was

hard to think of minorities or people of color as regular people down on the block…I try not to look down on people of color, and I don’t want to believe in minority stereotypes, but it's hard not to [believe] after listening to lots of the music.

What appealed to many of these students is the “street credibility” that anyone who was of a minority status was assumed to have. The gangster ways, aggression, and violence celebrated in elements of contemporary mainstream hip hop are feared and at the same time serve as an appeal to young, white suburbia. To see or hear destitute urban areas depicted or rapped about is to “understand inner-city culture” and “to be very thankful to God” that one