MSNBC: rap music is to blame for racism at University of Oklahoma

I'm very liberal/progressive/left-leaning — whatever we want to call it — but I actually can't stand MSNBC most of the time. Part of my problem with the network is the liberal bias, the Jon Stewart-esque no-risk "low hanging fruit" content that just tells Democrats and liberals what they already agree with and want to hear, but this post from Jezebel (love Jezebel, won't apologize for citing it!) illustrates another issue I have with MSNBC a lot of the time: it may be overwhelmingly "liberal," but it's in large part a much older and more socially reserved streak of liberalism. Notice the table in the MSNBC clip featured here is full of middle-aged white folks, who aren't the best source of expertise or understanding when it comes to rap music.

Here's some excerpts from the post: "Morning Joe Has a Good Explanation for the Racist SAE Kids: Rap Music" ....

On Tuesday night, Waka Flocka Flame–who has performed at the OU previously for SAE but says he's cancelled his upcoming performance there–went on CNN to express his "disgust" with those in the video. "I was more like hurt, I was more like disgusted," he said. "Because I knew those kids, I performed for those kids. They made me feel like a brother."
... Brzezinski said she doesn't get why the rapper would be upset because he is partially to blame:

I look at his lyrics, and I'm thinking, why wouldn't you ask this guy, why would you go on this campus, and if you look at every single song I guess he's written, it's a bunch of garbage. It's full of n-words, it's full of f-words. It's wrong. And he shouldn't be disgusted with them, he should be disgusted with himself. That's all I have to say.

Scarborough also weighed in:

Anybody who watches Empire knows that 70 percent of the audience is white! The kids that are buying hip hop or gangster rap as Mark [Halperin] wanted us to call it, it's a white audience, and they hear this over and over again. So do they hear this at home? Well, chances are good, no, they heard a lot of this from guys like this who are now acting shocked.

Perhaps he should have listened to rest of Waka Flocka Flame's comments: "To me, I really can't blame the kids. To me, I feel like that's passed down." 

...in other words, yeah, they actually probably did hear it at home, from racist parents.


In my opinion, this is a case where more diverse voices in media—more younger folks, more people of color—would likely (though not assuredly) improve the perspectives they feature. To their credit, other programs on the network like the MHP show and Janet Mock's So POPular do a much better job of this—and are also housed on MSNBC.