Chapter 1 Hip-Hop Causes Violence

The first chapter of The Hip Hop Wars, by Tricia Rose, is about violence caused by hip hop. Critics have said that hip hop glorifies and encourages violence. In the 1990s gangsta rap was prevalent in hip hop. These rappers told stories of violence, and young listeners were hearing these stories told by the artists they looked up to. It is said that when you listen about or see violence, such as in hip-hop and video games, it encourages these same acts of violence. There are five major elements that contributed to the dismantling of stable communities. These elements are, high levels of chronic joblessness, loss of affordable housing and urban renewal, drug-trade expansion, access to automatic weapons, and incarceration over rehabilitation. We supported destruction of low income african american communities which led to homelessness. Corporations used to hire african americans last over whites, and the african americans were also the ones who got fired first, which contributed to homelessness. The lack of jobs for african american teens led to increased drug use and trade. The increased drug trade led to the use of readily available automatic weapons and the drug use led to increased african american prison populations. We try to correct the violence with more violence and incarceration. Then we associate these young african american males with violence, because they react to the violence they experience from police and others with more violence which in-turn repeats this cycle. This creates the connection between violence and african americans, which is untrue. The violence that is spoken about in these artists songs are ridiculed and seen as a bad influence on the young listeners. However the violence and discrimination that was used to combat these violent acts, in these low-income neighborhoods, was accepted. This process needs to be changed. Rehabilitation and community projects need to be implemented in order to combat these violent tendencies in low-income communities. There needs to be programs that turn teens away from violence and towards peaceful resolution. We have to understand that these rap artists are influenced and are products of where they grew up. They might be rapping about violence because that is what they see/saw on a daily basis, it might be a way for them to release their feelings they have about these situations. We also need to look at how much these rap artists are talking about violent actions, because they might represent the actions that have taken place in the communities recently, and if so then policies need to be made, or re-addressed in order to limit these violent actions/tendencies. The chapter correlates violent rap lyrics with the violence in communities. The experiences these rap artists have/had and write about, raise the question,  are they really influencing young listeners? The chapter also explains why violence occurred in these communities and that policies must be made to stop the violence in these neighborhoods.