�ś W E L O V E H I P H O P, B U T D O E S H I P H O P L O V E U S ? ”

message that few dared to consider. As long as images of lewd black sexuality continued to power hip hop’s mainstream appeal and plat-inum status, why should they care what black students had to say.

Still, the women at Spelman had taken a stand. Their move was

significant because it could not be dismissed as the disgruntled views of an out-of-touch constituency. This was not Bob Dole or Joe Lie-berman trying to score political points with social conservatives.

Neither was it C. DeLores Tucker or the Reverend Calvin O. Butts III hoping to preserve the notions of black bourgeois respectability by putting irreverent young blacks back in their place. The outrage

sparked by the �śTip Drill” clip emanated from hip hop’s very own,

the community the movement presumed to represent. Spelman’s

courageous eĆłorts, however, did not come risk-free. Some critics

agreed that while the video was contemptible the cause bringing

Nelly to campus was more important. Those same critics dismissed

the protest as self-centered and even simple-minded for placing

media images above the health of African Americans.

But rather than cast the Spelman protest as silly the criticism re-vealed why the young women’s voices were so desperately needed.

Hip hop’s raging misogyny undermines the movement’s progressive

claims by glamorizing a culture and sustaining a climate that rou-

tinely demeans women at virtually no cost. Significantly, the critics failed to recognize that big media’s distribution of such images is a serious health problem, particularly for hip hop’s most invisible and, arguably, most vulnerable group, black girls. All but ignored by the critics was the perilous culture that young black girls wake up to every day: a culture that oĆłers few empowering images of black

womanhood. That reality, and its implications for their health and well-being, apparently, did not matter.

. . .

Black teenage girls occupy an unseen world. For all that the public sees and hears about urban youth culture, we know very little about

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