“Our intent is to limit student exposure to religious teachings, profanity and violent lyrics,” said a government-schools spokesman recently. The statement speaks volumes, lumping all religious teaching in with “profanity,” whose original meaning pertains to treating sacred things irreverently. The reason for its utterance also speaks volumes. It was a defense of a rap-music ban on Portland, Oregon, government-school buses, a prohibition “social-justice warriors” (SJWs) have called “racist.” Interestingly, no concern was expressed that the accompanying ban on religious music (generally Christian) might be anti-Christian. The Oregonian reports on the story:
Portland Public Schools officials are rethinking a district ban on rap music on buses after allegations of racism.
The district had banished hip-hop from its buses, deeming the genre “inappropriate.”
Teri Brady, senior director of transportation at Portland Public Schools, sent a directive to bus drivers in March forbidding “religious, rap music, or talk show programs.” The memo included a list of acceptable stations, broken down into three genres: pop, country and jazz.
This didn’t sit well with rabble-rousing SJW parent Colleen Ryan-Onken, who obtained the memo and disseminated it among her Church of the Perpetually Offended. Onken, who we might suspect has too much time on her hands, is a white liberal who apparently specializes in being offended on behalf of minorities too busy to be offended. She said that upon seeing the memo she was “livid” and complained that it not only excludes rap, but also doesn’t list Latin music as an option. As she explained, reports the Oregonian, “When you outlaw a kind of music that is very indicative of the modern culture of one group of people you’re basically saying that they’re not welcome.” (Either that, or your just banning junk.)
The irony here is thick. Not only does Onken say nothing about the ban on Christian music, act unlovingly in opposing those who would protect young minds from imbibing cultural poison, but what of accepting that rap should be “very indicative of the modern culture of one group of people” (blacks)? I’m quite sure that accomplished black figures such as Dr. Thomas Sowell, Dr. Walter Williams, Ambassador Alan Keyes, Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson and Tea Party stalwart Lloyd Marcus don’t take ownership of rap. And while shows such as Amos ‘n’ Andy were condemned as fostering stereotypes and sent to the cornfield, is there a more demeaning stereotype than that advanced by the “gangsta’” rap subculture, with the caps turned backwards, baggy pants, simian-like gestures, and thug personas? It’s no coincidence that the lists of rappers imprisoned and those killed look like Hillary’s scandal sheet. (Of course, Obama’s DOJ may now investigate why white rappers are underrepresented here. It’s “racism,” I tell ya’!)
Speaking of which, if rap must get equal time, I suggest “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “White & Nerdy” (shown below).
No doubt Onken and her SJW comrades would view such a move as “white privilege,” which, not surprisingly, is advanced mainly by white liberals who mistake their liberal privilege for white privilege, which is imaginary.
Of course, there’s one simple solution to the bus-music brouhaha: Turn off the radio, period. Do we really need constant stimulation? Can’t we disconnect and decompress at least occasionally? (Barring this, I suggest playing Gregorian chants on the buses.) This is an especially good solution since it’s impossible to please everyone. Onken, for instance, desperate to defend rap, also said, “Country music is offensive. It’s about date rape, liquor and drugs — all kinds of things!” Silly me. I just thought that when you played a country song backwards, you got your wife back, your house back, and your truck back.
Old jokes aside, the deeper issue of music’s effects is no laughing matter — and concerns about them are warranted. I explored this in the 2014 New American essay “Influential Beats: The Cultural Impact of Music,” writing:
[D]id you ever wonder why our music continually changes? Sure, we accept the phenomenon unthinkingly as we do rising prices, but there is no genetic difference that could account for why each generation now finds the music of the last unsatisfactory. And note that tastes in food don’t change so radically; for instance, today’s youth love McDonald’s and pizza just as their parents did 35 years ago. Moreover, musical tastes weren’t always quite so transitory, either. There were times and places — in the Europe of the Middle Ages, as an example — where music might remain largely the same for hundreds of years.
And it is no coincidence that in medieval times something else also remained quite constant: culture. It is clear to me that changes in music hew closely to changes in society’s consensus world view.
This is why Greek philosopher Plato once warned, “Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.” So music does have influence. And, I continued, since this is so,
it follows that it can have a destructive influence if misused. There is no shortage of examples insofar as this goes, either, so pick your poison. Marilyn Manson sang in “Get Your Gunn,” “God**** your righteous hand. I eat innocent meat, the housewife I will beat, the prolife I will kill, what you won’t do I will”; and Jay-Z disgorged in “D.O.A.,” “My raps don’t have melodies. This should make ni**as wanna go and commit felonies” — and note that far more vulgar lyrics can be found. But what is the precise effect of such material?
As to this, Science Daily wrote while reporting on a 2003 Iowa State University study, “Songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions and this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics,” and these “violent-song increases in aggressive thoughts and feelings have implications for real world violence.”
And I provided some real-world examples of music inflaming the savage breast in my essay:
In “African Rebel Soldiers and Their Eerie Obsession With Tupac Shakur,” Paul Rogers of LAWeekly.com quoted a Libyan fighter as saying, “I only listen to 2Pac before going to shoot Gaddafi boys.” Rogers also cited Sierra Leone’s soulless Revolutionary United Front rebels and wrote of how they “started donning Shakur shirts en-masse in 1998. They mimicked Shakur’s hairstyle. They wrote things like ‘Death Row,’ ‘Missing in action,’ and ‘Only God can judge’ on their rag-tag vehicles, and danced to his music between firefights.” By the way, this is the band of musical warriors whose greatest accomplishment was chopping off the hands of innocent villagers.
Shocking, isn’t it, that these rebels weren’t listening to Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, or Jason Aldean — or religious songs?
By the way, Shakur died a violent, gang-related death himself at the age of 25. And this is what Onken is happy to call “very indicative” of black culture. With friends like her, who needs the KKK?
