How American Media Influences Our Understanding of Race and Hip-Hop

How has our understanding of ‘race’ been shaped and influenced by mass media in America in relation to hip-hop? Mass media, through its selective portrayal of hip-hop has played a crucial role in the way that it has been understood and interpreted over time. The media’s focus on negative aspects of the genre has led to the establishment of a two-class system. This brings forward the theories of Karl Marx in relation to the ‘two-class system’. The media also portrays the dominance of capitalism, and has a sensationalist view where the high powers have hyperbolized selective aspects of the hip-hop culture with the intention of increasing viewership and readership numbers. This sheds light on artists such as Biggie Smalls and his provocative messages about the ghettos in Brooklyn, New York and the stereotypes of African Americans. Before attempting to understand racism in relation to mass media, one must be familiar with the history and origins of racism. ‘Race’ has become an institutional aspect of American society from the Founding onwards. Since then, race has played a notable role in the shaping of American consciousness. Robert Entman argues in The Black Image in the White Mind “the most widely consumed source—television… is both a barometer of race relations and a potential accelerator either to racial cohesion or to cultural separation and political conflict”. Thus, we can understand why the issue of racism is inextricably linked to depictions made by mass media. Issues of race relations in America can be used as a case study in Marxist class theory. Marx emphasized that society is divided into two classes: “the exploited” or ‘working’ class and “he exploiters or owners of the means of production” (Marx, K (1975). Moreover, he stressed that one class will ultimately overpower the other using any necessary means. The development of the ‘two-class system’ has become evident in American society. For example, slave owners and slaves used racism as a

Bibliography: Cornell West, Race Matters (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 74. David Goldberg, Racist Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 42.