William Raspberry on rap
Topics: FreeSpeech
01 Jul 1994
From: ervan
In Tuesday's Chronicle, William Raspberry wrote:
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[after tobacco] Then maybe he'll [Kessler] turn his attention to
regulating rap music. And why not? Rap seems to share many of the
dangerous qualities of nicotine. It is addictive (or at least
habituating); it is available in some particularlay deleterious
strains, and it is mood-altering.
If you doubt that last, you ought to talk to James. D. Johnson, a
psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who has
just done an experiment on the deleterious effects of rap music.
[blah blah blah]
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I thought he was being sarcastic and was waiting for the punch line.
But no, he was serious. I suppose I should be grateful that at least
one liberal is honest in a call for censorship instead of mumbling code
phrases about protecting children or whatever.
The study was of 46 black male teenages split into three groups, each
shown a different video and asked questions afterward. Raspberry
assures us that those who saw "violent videos were significantly more
like" to find violence acceptable. Jumping from this sort of rubbish
study to trying to prevent crime with censorship speaks for itself. I
won't even start on what a weak argument this is. I also find it
interesting that the supposed problem was not rap per se but violence,
and not just violence in the lyrics, but violent videos.
Of course, he has missed the whole point of free speech. It is not to
let people speak whom the majority agrees are saying wholesome things.
It is to let anyone say anything, including unpleasant messages and
exhortations to violence. If the message of violence sells, don't
blame the messenger. Treat the problem, which is in this case the drug
war and the welfare state.
I suggest that there is a strong correlation between engaging in
extortion through the tax system and writing liberal newspaper columns.
Can I insist we ban columnsists that fill people's heads with such
foolishness?
---Ervan
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