In his Rolling Stone interview, President Barack Obama said he listened to Jay-Z and Lil' Wayne. Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, complains that in doing so, the president is reinforcing "a hip-hop culture that is ignorant, misogynistic, casually criminal and often violent."
It's an important question, obviously -- the president's consumption of offensive content is an outrage. But it really doesn't end with Lil' Wayne. Last year the president was favored with a performance of content produced by an artist who has written some of the most atrocious things -- a monologue from a character who murdered his own wife. This artist has written about cannibalism, rape, incest, domestic violence, torture, murder, and warfare. His work is peppered with sympathetic portrayals of characters who carry out these crimes -- not to mention explicit sexual references and bawdy jokes. Bawdy. Jokes.
The most outrageous thing is that this material isn't just reflective of the president's abhorrent personal values, because this stuff is actually taught to our children in public schools with taxpayer dollars. How long before some impressionable youngster bakes someone in a pie or removes their eyes with bramble thorns? What message does it send to black families about domestic violence for James Earl Jones to perform a monologue at the White House from a character who killed his own wife?
Of course, it's also possible for most grown folks to see art as art independent of politics, even art that explores parts of the human experience we'd rather not encounter ourselves. But then we wouldn't be able to race-bait the president or implicitly reinforce reductive notions about the pathologies of black American youth culture, would we? Especially since, if the president listening to hip-hop music has no effect whatsoever on his ability to maintain a challenging career, a fulfilling marriage, and a healthy family, then maybe telling people to stop listening to rap music isn't particularly useful advice. But if you realized that people, even black people, can listen to rap music without being seduced by its primitive rhythms into grabbing a ski mask and robbing a 7-11, or that black people don't fit into simplistic cultural binaries, then you might not buy Williams' book.
But even granting Williams' concerns about rap music and black culture, the president is still sending the exact right message: You listen to Lil' Wayne. You don't imitate him.
