Response to Tricia Rose lecture: Claims not justified

I typically only read the Argus when I’m waiting for my food to come up at Weswings, but an article headline caught my eye as I walked past a stack of them in the science center the other day: “Professor critiques contemporary hip hop music, Kayne West.” “Hmm, I said to myself. What do the ‘academics’ have to say about ‘Gold Digger’?” As I had expected, Dr. Tricia Rose had an incredibly erroneous view of music and its place in and relationship to society. Her comments were both racist and ignorant, which are unusual qualities coming from the keynote speaker of Black History Month. I must note as an aside that I am relying on the accuracy of Hilary Moss’ synopsis of the lecture in question, since I did not have occasion to attend it.

Just because someone may have a Ph.D. it does not make them qualified to speak about any given subject as an expert. Dr. Rose seems to know as much about the realities of music in America as I do about why somebody would willingly eat tofu. I’ll begin by addressing Moss’ one-sentence summary of Rose’s lecture: “…black music has shifted from offering solutions to simply reiterating common sentiments, disintegrating the cultural art form that used to be community affirming.” This is the typical kind of reactionary nonsense our generation has been spoon-fed our whole lives. It’s a bunch of bullshit that glorifies and mythicizes our country’s recent past by constantly referring to the “good old days.” Anyone who points to any period of human existence as exemplary is too blind to be a social critic. As for Rose’s statement, yes, it is true that African American musicians made socially conscious music that addressed a variety of problems forty years ago. But it is equally true that most of that music was trivial nonsense about having a good time (just like most popular music, regardless of the color of its creators). If you want to call doing the “mashed potato” or “the jerk” some kind of “community affirming” exercise, then be my guest. If you think that encouraging people to wiggle their bodies in silly ways is some kind of solution to our social ills, I can’t stop you. If, however, you are accustomed to living in reality, then you know that music is not really any dumber today than it was when Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin were doing their thing. Some may find that the stupidity in today’s music is more flagrant or more offensive than the stupidity of the past, but that is simply a matter of taste. There are as many socially conscious artists in the hip hop world today as there were in the R&B world in years past. The same goes for the socially unconscious artists who are simply concerned with providing people with a product. After all, popular music is a business, and businessmen are primarily concerned with money and the types of actions that relate to making more of it. Even in instances where record companies are artist-owned and artist-controlled money reigns supreme. Rose has gotten the color wrong for the type of music she is complaining about. It’s not black; it’s green.

Even more astonishing to me than the temporal distortion of Rose’s lecture is the unnecessary racial component. Obviously she does not intent to imply that stupidity in music is specific to black artists; she is merely concerned specifically with black stupidity, which is her prerogative. What is offensive to me about her argument is the implication that black musicians do not have the right to be stupid. She paints the sad little portrait of rappers harming the black community with their ignorance. Would somebody think for a minute that I was in my right mind if I were to argue that Ashley Simpson has damaged the white community somehow? Stupidity is colorless, and everyone is entitled to it. What’s more, stupidity sells, so Rose is telling certain hip hop artists to stop making money and stop being so ignorant just because they are black. The presumptiveness of her argument is galling. The problem is not with people making ignorant music, but with the societal constructs in place responsible for producing the ignorant children that will consume it. When will these misguided liberal self-appointed prophets stop? As long as there is a mass of unchallenging minds among the faculty and students at places like this, it won’t. They rely on the support of us “educated” (indoctrinated) individuals to lend credence to their poorly reasoned, overly emotional responses to serious problems that require serious and intelligent consideration.

We even have a Wesleyan professor going for this drivel. She confirms that “While [Rose’s] work is intellectually sound and theoretically sophisticated, she has the unique ability to speak both of and to today’s youth culture.” Hopefully I have given reason to question “the intellectual soundness” of Rose’s argument. As for her ability to speak to today’s youth culture, I’ll leave it to your imaginations to picture her keeping a captive audience of youngsters while explaining to them that the music they dig the most is harmful and wrong for such and such reasons. The only thing that young people hate more than being told what to do is being told what not to do. It does not take much thought to reach that conclusion. How has academia gone so far astray as to trust the immensely complex theoretical quandaries of racial dynamics and social problems to people who do not even understand simple elements of human nature?

Rose says, “I’m concerned we have lost sight of what purpose music serves,” and I would agree with her. I am concerned that she has lost sight as well (if she had it to begin with). What Dr. Rose has lost sight of are the forces that control the music industry that is responsible for manufacturing those little plastic circular discs that make us all so happy—or unhappy if you’ve got a moral bug up your ass. As hard as people try, they will never succeed in instilling music with some sort of altruistic ideal, some sort of aesthetic criteria, or any other sort of presumptuous philosophical constructs. Music is simply the sound claimed by people to be music. Music as such is not inherently supposed to cure the world of its evils. Music (in some forms) is one of the world’s evils; it always has been and always will be as long as there are evil people around to make it. Art does not lie on a plane apart from the ugly workings of life. Art is simultaneously a byproduct of that ugliness and a distraction from it. We live in pretty ugly times, so if you expect today’s music to be about hugging your neighbor and putting flowers in your hair, then maybe you should request a wake-up call from one of the many thousands of different kinds of people that hate you for both justifiable and unjustifiable reasons.

Before leaving Rose alone, I would like to address one last comment from her lecture. Rose was quoted saying, “If [Kayne West] wants to say Bush hates black people, he needs to figure out what the answer is. I know 10 academics who would help him.” Here we have a college professor who is supposed to be an expert on American Studies taking the notion that “Bush hates black people” as a valuable hypothesis worth further exploration. This alleged expert of the inner-workings of America knows at least 10 other such experts who could apparently have a little jam session about just why exactly Bush hates black people. Now I am not claiming that is absurd to question whether or not our president has any racist leanings. I am merely saying this question can only be answered largely by speculation. Furthermore, what could be done if we did know that in fact Bush does hate black people? I don’t think that it’s grounds for impeachment. It’s not like he’s getting a blowjob in the Oval Office or something serious like that. So while Rose and her academics are out researching the all-important question of “Does Bush hate black people?” the world is crumbling around them and they become less and less fit to understand why.