Hip Hop Music and its Significance in Racism and the African American Community: A focus on Donald Glover.
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Hip Hop Music and its Significance in Racism and the African American Community: A focus on Donald Glover.
Music has, for a long time, been used to send across messages and point out issues in the society. This paper focuses on the significance of hip hop music in pointing out the struggles of African Americans in the United States that include racial injustices. The United States struggles with accepting racism as a concept in modern post-racial America. For a long time, music, and especially hip hop music has been used as a voice against racial injustices(Wright, 2004). African American music has been away for the community to express its views and ideas about various situations affecting their community(Wright, 2004). For this paper, I will focus on Donald Glover, an African American artist popularly known as Childish Gambino. Childish Gambino uses his music to point out issues in the African American community. Some of his biggest songs are; This is America and Redbone. In both songs, he uses music to point out social injustices against the black community in the United States. Using his music, he can indirectly show the struggles of the black community experience. This paper will seek to understand how Donald Glover addresses the various social injustices facing his community using his music.
One of his biggest songs was, this is America. The song’s video, coupled with its lyrics point out at an African American society filled with chaos and violence. The video begins with a peaceful session with smooth music, which is stopped when Gambino shoots a covered up man sitting on a chair (ChildishGambinoVEVO, 2018). The event portrays gun violence in the Black community. Guns are easily available to black people that are, in turn, used to cause violence. Childish Gambino is a video that tries to depict America (Lyubansky, 2018). He shows how a country seems not to care about the black community. Violence and chaos erupt in the black community, but as shown by the continuous dancing of Childish Gambino, America does not care about what goes on in the black community. In one scene, a church choir is shot at by Gambino as they were in church singing. This particular scene could depict the shooting scene at a church in Charleston, South Carolina(Lyubansky, 2018). The shooting had a self-proclaimed white supremacist, Dylan Roof, shot and killed nine African Americans in a church and injured one(Lyubansky, 2018). In the video, it shows the shooting of ten church members who were happily singing in a church choir(ChildishGambinoVEVO, 2018). After the shooting, Gambino, who could be seen to represent America, continues with his dancing as nothing had happened. This shows how America treats the black community. The country continues normally even after the injustices meted upon black people.
Gun violence is heavily rampant in the black community. Even with such information, America has continually refused to review gun ownership laws. In the music video, Gambino is seen to acquire guns easily, which he then uses to shoot conduct violence. The video tries to show the easy availability of guns. In his lyrics, there is also a clear glorification of guns, which is a wild thing in the black community. Hip hop has set out a culture that glorifies guns in society. In one of the lines, Gambino is heard saying, “guns in my area, I gotta strap, I gotta carry them”(ChildishGambinoVEVO, 2018). This shows how African American societies have glorified the issue of gun ownership and usage.
His music also goes further to show how African Americans are not safe in their communities. The Charleston shooting took place in a church that is one of the places African Americans would have considered safe(Lyubansky, 2018). Gambino, therefore, uses this scene to point out that African Americans are insecure in their own homes and even in their places of worship, while the nations seem not to care about that. The African American community is also characterized by riots and chaos, as seen in the video. There is a lot of chaos in the background, with people running all over. Police cars are probably indicating issues of police brutality in the black community. Gambino uses this to show that chaos, violence, and police brutality and rampant and a norm in the African American community. All these go in the face of the government, while the government does nothing about it.
In another of his songs, Redbone, Donald Glover continues to focus on African American society. The use of the term redbone could have been to depict new post-racial America, where the country thinks that they are past the racism era, but racism still occurs. The term redbone refers to a person of mixed race, in the song to depict a black woman of mixed race. Gambino constantly tells her to stay woke. In this song, Redbone depicts the black community, where Gambino tells her to be watchful. He seems to be asking the black community to be watchful of the racial injustices directed to their community, and not to assume that they are already acceptable in America as any other Americans. In his lyrics, he is seen to tell Redbone, “if you want it, you can get it, if you need it, we can make it” (ChildishGambinoVEVO, 2016). This is probably to encourage the black community to go for their rights and justice; however, they need to be watchful of the racial injustices in their community.
Through the works of Donald Glover, we can see how hip hop has been used to depict issues prevalent in the black community in modern America. Through the use of art, Donald Glover has managed to bring out serious issues affecting his community. In the black community, music has been a major unifying factor. The black community has, for a long time, used music to bring out issues and injustices towards them(Morgan, & Bennet, 2011. Since the times of slavery, Black people have used music to channel their struggles (Morgan, & Bennet, 2011). Music has played a big part in their freedom. Major music Genres such as rock and roll, jazz, and rhythm and blues began as songs for black movements that pushed for black rights(Wright, 2004). This shows that music has a huge impact on the African American community and has always been a major form of art and expression (Netcoh, 2013). Hip hop has also joined other genres of music that pushed for black rights and freedoms (Wright, 2004). In post-racial America, hip hop has been a major player in championing for better living standards for African Americans. Childish Gambino is today a major player in the hip hop music that champions for better living standards in modern America. Through his music, he challenges the United States to consider African Americans as an equal part of the American population and offer them proper services and protection.
References
ChildishGambinoVEVO. (2016, November 17). Childish Gambino – Redbone (Official Audio). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7eSUU9oy8
ChildishGambinoVEVO. (2018, May 6). Childish Gambino – This Is America (Official Video). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY
Lyubansky, M. (2018). A Racial Analysis of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” | Psychology Today. Psychology Today; Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-the-lines/201805/racial-analysis-childish-gambinos-is-am%C3%A9rica
Morgan, M., & Bennet, D. (2011). Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form. Inequality and Culture.
Netcoh, S. (2013). Droppin’ Knowledge on Race: Hip-Hop, White Adolescents, and Anti-Racism Education. Radical Teacher, 97, 10–19. https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2013.39
Willis, K. (2018, May 7). Donald Glover addresses gun violence, racism, in ‘This is America&rsquo…Dayton daily news; cmgsharedcontent.com. https://www.daytondailynews.com/entertainment/donald-glover-addresses-gun-violence-racism-this-america-music-video/3IH8mFrtJQfOL1K3rxyHvN/
Wright, K. (2004). Rise up hip hop nation: From deconstructing racial politics to building positive solutions. Socialism and Democracy, 18(2), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300408428395