I'm not denying their right to feel anger
I'm denying that they have a right to cling onto an us and them mentality. As long as that sticks around, there can't be any sort of moving forward from the past.

Other communities comprised of a certain race percentage are faced with exactly the same problems. It is demeaning and insulting to segregate by race (exactly as you are doing.) The problem isn't colour, it's class and money, and for some black rapper to whine about it, just means self segregation from a problem that is *everyon*'s problem
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Mon 18 Oct 2010, 19:42, 1 reply, 15 years ago)

I don't segregate by race.
Just pointing out that hip hop culture has come from a community that has had poverty forced on them.

That's why it's based on sampling- kids that couldn't afford to buy drums, guitars, saxophones etc used what they had access to, which was their parents' record collections and turntables.

It's the unique background to it that fascinates me, and informs the whole culture, from graf to rhyming. One doesn't have to be black to either like or make hip hop, just as one doesn't have to be American to make techno, or white to like folk. I abhor any attempts to pigeonhole entire artforms and cultures according to race or anything else.

And I agree that the past has to stay there. But there is nothing wrong with recognising historical wrongs and directing anger at those wrongs.
(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Mon 18 Oct 2010, 19:50, Reply)