Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) (18 page)

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Authors: Bell Hooks

BOOK: Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics)
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Feminist critiques of the sexism and misogyny in gangsta rap, and in all aspects of popular culture, must continue to be bold and fierce. Black females must not allow ourselves to be duped into supporting shit that hurts us under the guise of standing beside our men. If black men are betraying us through acts of male violence, we save ourselves and the race by resisting. Yet our feminist critiques of black male sexism fail as meaningful
political interventions if they seek to demonize black males, and do not recognize that our revolutionary work is to transform white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in the multiple areas of our lives where it is made manifest, whether in gangsta rap, the black church, or in the Clinton administration.

12
ICE CUBE CULTURE

A shared passion for speaking truth bell hooks and Ice Cube in dialogue

 

bell hooks:
People have been really, really excited about me talking to you because they think that we exist in worlds apart, because I do feminist theory and all this other stuff. But one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you is that I feel very strongly that black people have to talk to each other across our differences. I’ve been listening to Predator a lot, and I wanted to know whether you’re trying a wider range of musical styles, making this kind of a softer album even though the lyrics are still tough.
Ice Cube:
Well, I want each record to have its own identity. I don’t want the records to sound alike. And I think Amerikkka’s Most Wanted doesn’t sound like Death Certificate, and Death Certificate doesn’t sound like Predator. So what I did on Amerikkka’s Most Wanted was use The Bomb Squad for a different sound, and then on Death Certificate I used more West Coast producers for that sound. That record was more like, I was stuck in the format with the Death side and the Life side. On Predator I didn’t want to stick myself in that kind of format. I just wanted to do jams. I just wanted to do a record, put ’em together, put ’em in order and call it the record. And on this record I kind of wanted to show my skills as an MC, with more style, with really political messages. I just wanted to get a record with its own identity, and that’s about it. And that’s what I want to do on every record, you know. My next record will probably be way more political than anything I ever put out, just because that would be a different record.
bh:
Well, I’m glad you raised the question of politics, because for months I’ve been going around just to regular people saying, “if you had a chance to talk to Ice Cube, what would you talk to him about?” And by and large people wanted to talk about politics, and particularly about the malt liquor shit. And I don’t really want to talk about that as much as I wanted to raise the political question of whether it matters how we earn our money. Because one of the things I’ve been saying a lot this year in my talks is that black capitalism is not black self-determination. That doesn’t mean we don’t need black capitalism, but we can’t confuse the two.
IC:
See, that’s a crazy question because people say, well, selling drugs to each other or this or that is the wrong way to earn money. You know, all these things people say.
bh:
Well, like, for example, I just bought myself a Beamer for my birthday, and because my writing is real political, a lot of people said, “How could you do that?” I said “Well, shit, I’ve been driving a trap for thirteen years, you know.”
IC:
That’s ridiculous. People actually ask you why you buy a Beamer?
bh:
But I think that people don’t understand and that’s why people are raising the question of the difference between being political and trying to decide what is ethical about how we spend our money. I think that we all deserve the best.
IC:
Just because we black and we write the way we write don’t mean we don’t want the finer things in life. And that don’t mean we don’t want a nice, big house and all the goodies. And if we work, and earn the money, then we should be able to buy these things without the neighborhood saying, “Why you coming around in this or why you going around in that?” I don’t really think the way we spend money as individuals is even relevant. The thing is, nobody wants to be a follower. Everybody wants to be their own leader. Nobody wants to pool money. Because there are a lot of rich black people in America, but nobody want to pool their money, say, I’m going to invest with such and such and we’re going to try to do this and put this together and put a market in the neighborhood. See, that’s the problem that I have, and I think it’s just because of self-hate.
bh:
The question of love and self-hate is something you raise a lot. I wanted you to talk a bit about black men and the question of self-love. I very much believe that we need to have a renewed black liberation struggle, but it seems to me that there’s a lot standing in the way of that.
IC:
It’s hard to be black in America. Look at all the images that run across us, from television, school, just everything in general. It’s hard. You got to fight to love yourself. They put everybody in such a bad light. They don’t put us on anything, you know. It’s mainly their fault, our self-hate. We got to really fight to love ourselves, because all these images of white TV, that’s the only thing we see. So when we look in the mirror, we changin’ our hair, we changin’ our eyes, try to change our features, try to not be black. We got to reverse that.
bh:
I know you’re a parent. I know you got a child. What are you doing to make it possible for that child to love himself?
IC:
Well, see, when I grew up I didn’t have a lot of black … you know, you remember, kind of like the pictures in your house and stuff like that?
bh:
Oh, Yeah.
IC:
And see, we didn’t have no … I got pictures of a black man and a black woman pulling on an American flag like a tug rope. Pictures and images of yourself just all around the house. Got pictures of Elijah Muhammad, Master Farrar, Muhammad, this picture this guy did for me where it’s black man reaching down and you see an arm of another black man, like he’s trying to help him up, got pictures of Malcolm X, got calendars and all that. Just to show and give them an image of who we are, for when they come up to me and say, “Well, who is this?” My son is too young to really know who these people are. When the day comes and he says something like, “Who is this?” I’ll be able to break it down to him and give him a sense of who he is and what time it is.
bh:
I’ve run into a lot of black folks and they’ll say, “I got pictures on the wall but my little kid came home from school and said she wants to be blond,” or what have you. It seems to me that one of our crises is that no matter what we do at home, we send these children out into a world that does not value them, does not value blackness. What do you think we can do to combat that? Because your peers sometimes will have a stronger influence than what is taking place in the home.
IC:
Yeah. I think they make white look so good and so nice and so sweet. My wife had a son. When I met her, her son was three years old. And now he’s like six, so now I can really break it down to him. I say, look, here’s what they’ve done to us, and here’s what they continue to do to us. We end up loving white more than we love ourselves. So you have to make that look unattractive. They got to be found guilty for the things that they done to nonwhites all over the world. So when you break it down to the kids like that, white people don’t look so attractive. And then you start pumping love for yourself, and you slowly reverse the process. But you gotta damn near fight your body to love yourself around here because you see so many images of you not in a good light.
bh:
I read that you liked the Malcolm movie, which really pissed me off as a black woman because I felt that that’s exactly what Spike did with the white woman; he made her look more sexy, more attractive.
IC:
I didn’t say I liked the Malcolm X movie; I said it’s interesting.
bh:
I would say that, too.
IC:
It was an interesting movie. I got problems with the movie, you know, but I think the best person to talk to about that is Spike Lee.
bh:
I was jumping on that point for a lot of black females. Even though Malcolm was supposed to be downgrading the white woman, by the very fact that the movie focused on her first for an hour and fifteen minutes, it’s saying that relationship’s on a par to his relationship with his wife.
IC:
Yeah, they really didn’t go into him and his wife but for a couple of times.
bh:
One of our issues as black folks is: If the major buying audience is white and we want to reach that audience, to what extent do we compromise ourselves in trying to reach that audience? My books are products, they’re commodities. I want to sell them to as many people as will buy them, right?
IC:
Well, see, I feel that I’ve gotten the most success by not compromising. And I say it in interviews, that I do records for black kids, and white kids are basically eavesdropping on my records. But I don’t change what I’m sayin’. I won’t take out this word or that word because I got white kids buying my records. White kids need to hear what we got to say about them and their forefathers and uncles and everybody that’s done us wrong. And the only way they’re goin’ to hear it uncut and uncensored is rap music, because I refuse to censor anything I have to say about anybody—the black community, Koreans, anybody who I feel distracts our harmony. That’s who needs to be, I won’t say attacked, but needs to be really checked.
bh:
How do you reconcile that kind of nationalistic stance with strategies to reach a larger audience that seem apparent when you hook up with Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Lollapalooza tour?
IC:
Well, the Lollapalooza tour was a tour that I had talked to Ice-T about going on. He said, well, you know, do you guys want to play to just one side of your fans or do you want to play to everybody? I feel it really don’t matter who I play to, as long as it’s a gig. I like to perform. I’m a performing junkie. (Laughs.) I’d perform in a club with seventeen people in it. So when this came up and they asked me to do it, I said, okay, I’d do it, because even though they’re eavesdropping on our records, they need to hear it.
bh:
I know that you said, quote, “When I speak I’m not speakin’ to white America,” and one of things I said is that we know they’re listening. What are they hearing?
IC:
They’re hearing exactly what they need to hear. A young black man speakin’ and not takin’ feelings into consideration. I think what I say is just as healthy for black people as for white people. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they was cool with me. Really, white people brought this color thing to the foreground and made this the issue. You know, that ain’t never been the issue for black people. Black people don’t care if you’re red or green or purple, you know what I’m sayin’? As long as you’re cool, we can hang and we can kick it. It’s always been them sayin’ you black, you this, you ain’t white, trying to get on this genetic annihilation thing. They just want to hold everybody back. But, you see, that’s just never been black people’s hang-up. If you cool with me, I don’t give a damn what color you are. But if you fuck over me, or your people fuck over me, then we got a problem.
bh:
That raises a really interesting point, because I was thinking about critical consciousness and how music like yours has raised a lot of black folks’ consciousness about white supremacy, and yet we’re not together. And I’m wanting to know whether you think gangsta mentality keeps us apart.
IC:
I mean, I don’t think … see, we gotta do a lot of reversing here. My message is to point the finger, you know what I mean? And hold people accountable. Even hold ourselves accountable. I don’t feel that my records have a gangsta mentality.
bh:
No, I didn’t mean your records, I meant just the mentality out there in the world. Do you think that keeps us apart as black people? One of the things that Malcolm says that’s really important to me is that we don’t have to worry about how white people are treating us, because we need to treat each other with warmth.
IC:
Oh, yeah, definitely. But if I don’t love myself, I don’t love the image of myself, you know what I’m sayin’? So you pull up in your BMW, and instead of me saying, damn, that’s a nice car, I say that to you—but behind your back—I be like, oh, this and that, thinks she got, boom boom. You know what I’m sayin’? It comes off negative, but that’s just because we haven’t reeducated ourselves to love ourselves and put black first. And that’s the whole problem. Once we do that, all of our problems are solved ’cause we’re able to trust each other and go into business with each other, and not be so quick to kill each other.
bh:
It seems to me that there is a kind of gangsta ideology that says I’ll kill you if you fuck with me, period.
IC:
Well, I think that’s the law of the world. See, what happens is, and it goes all the way back to slavery, when white people made black people slaves, they put greed in front of humanity. So they really stripped us of all our knowledge of the whole story and became our teachers. So now, what we do is put greed in front of humanity. So it’s easy for us to kill and shoot each other for the almighty dollar, because that’s the way our teachers do.
bh:
I know that you made a lot of fine political arguments for black self-defense. How do you think we can teach our children the difference between self-defense and meaningless violence?
IC:
Most people that are involved in violence are looking for trouble. We got to teach our kids that confrontation is not always the best way—I’m talking about a physical confrontation—to handle a problem. Even if somebody owe you five dollars and you go down there and beat ’em up, you might of beat ’em up, but you still ain’t got your five dollars.
bh:
So we gotta teach our children to negotiate to get your five dollars, if that’s what you want.
IC:
Yeah, I mean, you got to negotiate. But there is a point where you can’t take no more. In some cases violence is very, very necessary. When you take the riots, if we’d just picketed and held signs and walked in a big line for a day, people’d be like, oh yeah, you can really do what you want with them because all they’re gonna do is hold signs. And I don’t think negotiating on that level was necessary or the right thing to do. I think what was done was the right thing to do. So you just gotta tell them there’s a time and a place for everything. There’s a time for talkin’ and there’s a time for violence.

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