McWhorter: Rap Music Holds Blacks Down

John H. McWhorter, a Fellow in Public Policy at the Manhattan Institute and also is an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, weighed in on how he feels rap music is holding blacks back. McWhorter writes, “Many writers and thinkers see a kind of informed political engagement, even a revolutionary potential, in rap and hip-hop. They couldn’t be more wrong. By reinforcing the stereotypes that long hindered blacks, and by teaching young blacks that a thuggish adversarial stance is the properly ‘authentic’ response to a presumptively racist society, rap retards black success.” Read more.