Great Moments in Journalism: Hip-Hop Holocaust
Great Moments in Journalism don't just happen on their own. They require your assistance.
Today's Moment is a dispatch from the continuing cultural war. Writing in the Washington Post, Lonnae O'Neal Parker takes the time to explain why she "gave up on hip-hop":
When those of us who grew up with rap saw signs that it was turning ugly, we turned away. We premised our denial on a sort of good-black-girl exceptionalism: They came for the skeezers but I didn't speak up because I'm no skeezer, they came for the freaks, but I said nothing because I'm not a freak. They came for the bitches and the hos and the tricks. And by the time we realized they were talking about bitches from 8 to 80, our daughters and our mommas and their own damn mommas, rap music had earned the imprimatur of MTV and Martha Stewart and even the Pillsbury Doughboy.
And sometimes it can seem like now, there is nobody left who is willing to speak up.