Know What I Mean (part 2).

First, I went and looked up a little on his books and viewed a couple of videos of Dyson. I'd almost forgotten how intense and opinionated he is. I thought I'd put up some YouTube videos from some of his TV appearances so those less familiar can get an idea of what he's like.

But I want to warn you. He speaks in very frank and potentially offensive terms - and by that I don't mean to say that he uses profanity. What I mean is that he makes little effort to shield the harshest of criticisms from those who disagree with him. As I read his words or listen to him speak, I often think "Whoa, calm down just a little bit. Maybe you should do a little more showing and a little less telling." But I'm (trying to be) a journalist and he's not, so maybe it's OK for him.

I want to stress that I don't agree with everything he says here, but it seems like a good starting point for discussion.

On a related note, I thought of a couple of other points about the question from his website, "Is Hip Hop good or bad for the culture at large?"

Michael Eric Dyson's website

* Is it possible for it to be bad for the culture but good for the people of that culture? Put another way, maybe Hip Hop, despite its relative commercial acceptance, still carries enough of a novel edge to shake people out of complacency and represent those that are unheard otherwise. The best of Hip Hop might be thought of as a threat to the status quo, and thereby "bad" for "the culture," but because lending voices to the voiceless is itself a threat to the culture as it is. Maybe being "bad for the culture" is something to be applauded.

* This may seem random, but something about the other responses I saw on his site reminded me of a piece of theology I studied in Sunday School and college religion classes.

Some theologians argue that evil is "noncreative." The idea is that creation is a positive activity that evil is incapable of. All evil can do is corrupt or pervert something that is "originally" or fundamentally good. Good creates man; all evil can do is corrupt that man. Good creates beauty, all evil can do is corrupt it into ugliness. Darkness is merely the negation of light, not a material or energy of it's own, etc. etc. In many Western and Middle Eastern traditions, bad requires good to survive, while good doesn't necessarily require bad (Eastern thought often places them on more equal footing).

What the heck does this have to do with Hip Hop? Maybe it's negative trends (criminality, misogyny, violence, etc.) only have potency because they are drawn from a positive source. For instance, maybe the only reason people identify with gangsters in Hip Hop is because they are a perversion of a culture that, on a more fundamental level, imbues a sense of self agency and identity to those that have trouble finding their human identity affirmed by the culture around them in other ways. Maybe the violence is only compelling because it draws on the sense of justified anger and/or righteous indignation that helped form the core of Hip Hop's expression.

Or maybe I'm just full of it. The rest of you out there are probably a better judge than me.


~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ