MAN and Tracey Sharpley-Whiting Talk Gender and Hip-Hop

Duke Magazine Forum:
Hip-Hop: Not Your Pop's Culture

Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor of black popular culture in the African and African American Studies Program at Duke, has explored the effects of hip-hop culture on black popular culture, black women, and black intellectual production through both his studies and his writing. His four books, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture; Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic; Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation; and, most recently, New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity, have earned him praise for his ability to bridge the divide between academe and the public.

In April Neal had a public conversation with Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, director of the program in African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University, at the fourth annual Duke Magazine Campus Forum. Sharpley-Whiting teaches a variety of subjects, including comparative diasporic literary and cultural movements, critical race studies, feminist theory, and film and hip-hop culture. She is also a professor of French and director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies and has written several books: Negritude Women; Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narrative in French; and Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms. She is also the author of the provocative forthcoming book on Black women and hip-hop, Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Young Black Women, Hip-Hop and the New Gender Politics (New York University Press, 2006).

At the forum, the two scholars sought to investigate how hip-hop culture influences a wide spectrum of human interaction, ranging from the idea of the strip club as a new "church" to the tension between artistry and commercial values in music. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Read the Full Conversation


* **Sharpley-Whiting and Neal will be part of the 2007 Rap Sessions Tour, that will include Joan Morgan, Byron Hurt, Raquel Rivera and Bakari Kitwana

A statement from UBUNTU--a Women of Color and Survivor-led community coalition in Durham, NC

Not Even a Little Funny

A priest, a rabbi, and a nun walk into a bar. They sit down and the bartender tells them that the best joke gets a beer on the house.

The nun looks up, excited, and says, “Your mother is so old, her social security number is 1.”

The rabbi follows, “What do you call a fish with no eyes?” The others look around with anxious smiles on their faces, “A fsh.”

The priest blurts out, “I’ve got one that’s going to slay you. Tonight I’m having some women come to my room to dance and strip for me. I’m planning to kill them, mutilate their bodies, and be sexually satisfied by the whole thing.”

The nun gets her pint.

The priest’s joke, of course, doesn’t work; specifically because it’s not a joke, it’s a threat. And it would be read as even more of a threat if the priest had just come from a retreat where some members of the priest’s, shall we say, lacrosse team, had hurled racist epithets at a pair of women they paid to dance for them and brutally sexually assaulted one of them. In fact, if this was the case, no one in the bar would read the statement as a joke, but an unambiguous assertion of power. Seemingly, there isn’t a setting in the world, whether a barroom, a party, a street corner, a classroom, or a church, where this kind of statement could be understood as appropriate. It does nothing but dehumanize women and sex workers, encouraging violence.

Any bartender with integrity would kick the dude out and ask him to never come back. This type of inhumanity would not be tolerated for several reasons, and the bartender would realize that roughly half of the bar’s most loyal customers were women who could not feel safe in the continued presence of this individual.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to get that this would be the only right thing to do.

Apparently, however, having a Ph.D. might make this situation less clear.

In the last week, it has become public knowledge that Duke University, which apparently has neither integrity nor concern for the safety of its students, has readmitted Duke lacrosse player Ryan McFadyen to its “hallowed” halls without sanction. McFadyen, for those who don’t know, wrote an email less than an hour after leaving the now infamous March 13th Duke lacrosse party where he explicitly described plans to kill and mutilate “strippers” for his sexual satisfaction.

For this act, Duke sent him home at the end of the spring semester. In readmitting him, they have stated that he had been asked to leave campus as an act of “protection” against violence or harassment that he might face. No mandatory counseling, no public apology, no punishment, and he will play on the reinstated lacrosse team. Duke officials also stated that the sending of this email, while “given the context of the time” was inappropriate, was not, in fact, disorderly conduct. But here’s the kicker: the administration has affirmed McFadyen’s explanation of the email as a joke made in reference to a scene in a popular movie

A joke?

This raises some important questions. Who has the power to decide whether or not an unrestrained threat is explained away as a “joke”? On whose behalf do we allow such explanations? What would make a threat be so bad that someone in power might take it seriously?

Let’s keep it real: any culture with the ironic gall to call giving something and then taking it back “Indian giving,” not “white man giving,” has a pretty staggering inability to correctly name a phenomenon. A “white lie” is one that isn’t so bad, though we’ve seen the results (cough, weapons of mass destruction) of white men’s lies. So we shouldn’t be surprised that such a blatant threat can be renamed a “joke” as the ruling class welcomes one of its prodigal sons back into the fold.

This, in America, is the ultimate mulligan, a “do-over.” “Wait, wait, you must have misunderstood what I meant.” “You musn’t have gotten the context of my statement.” “Aren’t you are being a little sensitive?” “I mean, I have several Black friends.” “I treat all my employees fairly.” “Our school is very diverse.”

We spend our time focusing on the intent of one white man’s words or deeds, and not the terrorism that they represent for many, many women and sex workers. We talk about the lacrosse players and their ilk as “good guys” gone astray, not about women of color on Duke’s campus and in Durham who have felt accused, exploited, criminalized, and victimized as a result of this action. All of our energy is spent on folks terrorizing others, not those being terrorized.

This is not okay. As the folks with the power to define what is “real”, what is funny, what is terrorism, and who does and does not have the right to safety, wealthy white men wield tremendous power. This power means that Ryan McFadyen can be removed from school for his safety, like the lacrosse team being spirited off campus as this story broke, while women of color on campus faced regular harassment. This power means that the hurt, terror, and fear that his words and presence provoke in women on Duke’s campus does not matter.

Further, Duke students who perceive that they are under “attack” for making “jokes,” having reckless parties, and generally acting like they are the only people on the planet, get affirmed by this decision. Make a heinous threat; someone will re-name it a “joke” and take care of you. Here, “freedom of speech” means the freedom to terrorize, to sow fear. Meanwhile, women will see McFadyen on campus and have terrors of him mutilating them for sexual gratification, no one in power concerned for their safety. But hey, it was “just a joke.”

Ryan McFadyen should be held accountable. He should not get the privilege of representing Duke in the public. He should undergo counseling and face University sanctions. He should publicly apologize and seek to repair the damage he has done and the terror he has inspired. Anything less is an attack on students, faculty, staff, and community members who have ever participated in sex work, or are women of color, white women, identify as LGBQ or transgender, or believe that Duke University is a place that values safety and integrity.

Duke had a chance this time. The fact that it blew it just isn’t very funny.

***

UBUNTU is a Women of Color and Survivor led coalition in Durham, NC, committed to justice, supporting survivors of sexual assault, and transforming our communities until the day that sexual assault no longer occurs.

Those who wish to read the text of McFadyen’s email can at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0405061duke5.html.

Phyllis Hyman: A Diva for All Time

Remembering Phyllis Hyman

by Mark Anthony Neal

"She's more important than her music — if they must be separated — and they should be separated when she has to pass out before anyone recognizes she needs a rest and i say i need aretha's music"— Nikki Giovanni.

When Nikki Giovanni wrote "A Poem for Aretha" it was as much a cautionary tale as a celebration of Aretha Franklin's groundbreaking talents. She wrote it during what was arguably the height of Franklin's popularity — a moment that established her as the most popular black female entertainer ever. And it was that immense popularity that most concerned Giovanni, as she wondered aloud whether or not Franklin would ultimately visit the same fate as so many other black women entertainers before her. Names like Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Esther Phillips (who was no doubt dying a slow death when Giovanni's poem was first published) are more than footnotes to black musical genius; they are constant reminders of the travails and dangers that black women face in an industry that seemingly cares little for them and has always seemed to place more value in their sexuality than their talent. One can only wonder if Phyllis Hyman had ever read Giovanni's poem before she took her own life in June of 1995. Though Hyman never achieved the popular success Franklin did, she still stands as a diva among divas.

Living All Alone gave audiences a small glimpse of the feelings of loneliness and depression that had begun to engulf her. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Pittsburgh, as a teen Hyman didn't think herself much a singer. As she told Jacquelyn Powell in a 1981 profile, "I didn't know I could sing… Not like Nancy Wilson, or Dionne Warwick." But pianist Dick Morgan thought different, and after hearing Hyman sing at local clubs in Pittsburgh in the early '70s, asked her to tour with his band. It was while Hyman was doing regular gigs in New York City at Rust Brown's and Mikell's in 1975 that bandleader and producer Norman Connors first heard her. A year later he tapped her to sing the lead in his version of the Stylistics' classic "Betcha by, Golly Wow." Nearly 30 years after its release, it remains one of Hyman's most memorable performances.

Hyman initially signed as a solo artist with Buddah Records, which had difficulty finding the right material to make her the crossover star they wanted her to be. Though Hyman would have minor success singing mainstream R&B and disco, as witnessed on tracks like "You Know How to Love Me" (1979) and "Can't We Fall in Love Again," recorded with former Miles Davis sideman Michael Henderson in 1981 (the duo was first paired together on Connor's "You Are My Starship" in 1976), she was more at home within the jazz and pop-jazz idioms. Though she didn't sell many records during her two-album stint at Buddah, Phyllis Hyman (1977) and Somewhere in My Lifetime (1978) remain a testament to her link to some of the great torch singers, such as Nancy Wilson and Abbey Lincoln. Hyman was eventually given the chance to fully shine within the jazz tradition when she accepted a role in the Broadway production Sophisticated Ladies, a revue of Duke Ellington's music in which she sang Ellington classics such as "Prelude to A Kiss," "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" and a stirring, heart-wrenching rendition of "In a Sentimental Mood."

Hyman received a Tony Award nomination in 1981 for her work in Sophisticated Ladies but Arista, her label at the time, failed to capitalize on her new found mainstream popularity, instead trying to re-capture the dance-floor magic of "You Know How to Love Me," her first "hit" for the label. The awful "Riding the Tiger" from her 1983 recording Goddess of Love is an example of these efforts, though the song did help introduce Hyman's music to gay audiences, who reportedly embraced the song as a favorite at drag performances in the mid-'80s. Hyman would finally find a label receptive to her unique talents in Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International Records (PIR).

Living All Alone (1987) powerfully captured the full range of Hyman's vocal gifts, but it also gave her audiences a small glimpse of the feelings of loneliness and depression that had begun to engulf her. As her friend and manager Glenda Gracia told writer Esther Iverem, Hyman was "uncovering the riddles of stuff in her life…sometimes when you start that process, the demons that you confront may have more for you than you might have thought you would find." Part of the process for Hyman was dealing with very real feelings of loss after the death of her friend, songwriter Linda Creed, the long-time writing partner of Thom Bell (the duo penned "Betcha By Golly Wow" among other classics). Creed's "Old Friend," which appears on Living All Alone, was one of the last songs she wrote before her death.

Four years later Hyman returned with Prime of My Life (1991), which proved to be the most mature recording of her career as well as the last released during her lifetime. Tracks like "Meet Me on The Moon" and "When I Give My Love (This Time)" exhibit what producer Barry Eastmond refers to as "Phyllisisms." The record also contained her only chart-topping R&B hit, "Don't Wanna Change the World," which ironically was a throwback to her dance-diva days, complete with her first rap performance. Though the title of the album suggested that the then 42-year-old Hyman was at peace with her life and career, "Living in Confusion," a track she co-wrote with Kenneth Gamble and Terry Burrus, suggested a deeper darker reality. In the song's chorus Hyman sang, "seems like I'm always going through changes/Living in confusion…" Things took an even darker turn when Hyman's mother and grandmother died within a month of each other in 1993.

Hyman was working on what would be her last recording, ironically titled I Refuse to Be Lonely when she chose to take her own life on June 30, 1995, leaving behind a note that stated simply "I'm tired. I'm tired." When I Refuse to Be Lonely was released in November of 1995, it became one of Hyman's fastest selling recordings. According to Esther Iverem, so much of the recording was supposed to be about how Hyman "claws back from the brink, back from the place where she fought depression, loneliness, alcoholism, obesity and a consuming anger at lesser voices enjoying more commercial success."

Hyman's depression is telling in that the male-centered recording industry has rarely dealt with how gender impacts how artists are perceived, or with the way various artists choose to deal with the pressures of celebrity and the constant need to please fans, producers and A&R folk. Women artists are also forced to conform to some perceived notion of beauty. More than six feet tall, Hyman also battled her weight, often ballooning close to 300 pounds. Though folks remember Dinah Washington dying of a drug overdose, few remember that she overdosed on diet pills — an addiction directly related to her feelings that her body wasn't the right size. More often than not, women in the industry who struggle with these issues are described as "difficult," as was the case with Hyman, or even Mary J. Blige during earlier moments in her career. While these women may indeed have been "difficult," folks in the industry rarely ask why, or more specifically, how their experiences in a decidedly patriarchal and often sexist industry may have informed their personalities.

And it's not just women in the entertainment industry. As Iverem wrote in a 1996 Essence feature on Hyman's death, her passing "offers a particularly poignant example of the private struggles that many talented, intelligent black women face." Many women face this reality with a resolve that suggests that such darkness is in fact inevitable. In her book If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holliday scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin reflects on an interview Mary J. Blige did with Dream Hampton in 1997, where the "Queen of Hip Hop Soul" responds to the invocation of Billie Holiday with the quip "Dead. Like Phyllis Hyman. Dead." According to Griffin, for a young woman like Blige, the lives of Hyman and Holiday are only a reminder of "Death. Pain. Sadness."

In the end we are only left with the music of Phyllis Hyman. Though the recently released Ultimate Phyllis Hyman is a good introduction to her music, fans might want to instead take a look at The Legacy of Phyllis Hyman, which was released in 1996. For those desiring to hear Hyman at her most exquisite, it might be worth the effort to track down a copy of Pharaoh Sanders's obscure Love Will Find a Way (1978), on which Hyman sings the gems "As You Are" and "Love is Here." As Roberta Flack told mourners at a memorial service for Hyman, "God is a spirit, music is spiritual so every time you hear Phyllis sing she lives."