Hip-Hop Props for Prop 8?

Shortly after checking the mailbox for my Obama prize Thursday afternoon (and realizing it's probably just coming on CPT), I came across the following music video/proponent of California's hotly-contested Proposition 8.

As you likely already know, Prop 8 stipulates the unconstitutionality of same-sex unions within the state of California. Interestingly enough, Governator Schwarzenegger is already married to something quite "mannish," as they say on the DJ Quik records. I wonder if he'll face any criminal charges... or lose his green card. One could only wish.

[Blogger's Note: Seriously though. He married the creature from Predator, who I am sure is both a dude and "one ahhhg-lee maaaatherfaaaaahker."]

Before discovering the clip at the center of today's rant, I'd long since pondered how, if at all, our beloved hip-hop affected the Prop 8 outcome. Pundits from every walk of media wasted no time in noting that 70% of black voters--let's say 95% of which voted for Barack Obama, a proponent of gay rights en masse--voted "Yes" on Prop 8. According to the same media outlets, including this one, the terms "hip-hop," "urban," and "niggerdom" are synonymous.

While I understand hip-hop as an artform to be universal, culturally it's dictated and defined by black and Latino inner-city lifestyle. Thus, to make a pro-Prop 8 appeal in rap form is to attempt engaging us in our own native tongue.

[Blogger's Note: Sadly enough, this Prop 8 song is far more lyrically sound than most contemporary mainstream rap.]

I mean, you don't see Snoop Dogg brigning his Long Beach gangster drivel to country music do you? Heh.

Even if the aforementioned means of communication were effective, I grew up believing in hip-hop's power as a catalyst for social progress, not regression. As quickly as we "urban" folk and "mobile quarterbacks" throw down at the slightest implication of racial injustice, I'd think we'd be a little more sensitive to the civil rights struggles of other groups.

Clearly, 70% of Californiggas disagree.

If you're black and voted "Yes" on Prop 8, come forward and accept your "Negro, Please!" If you're a man, it will come in the form of a personalized dick sandwich. If you've been misled by Mormons in your hood--who must be toting ironworks in their Jansports these days--or hardcore Christian right organizations, I'll say this:

No one's going to show gay porn to your first graders. I can assure you that's not part of any sex education curriculum. Fuck what they told you. If anything, sex-ed (for children of age, as you were) would merely address the fact that homosexuals do exist... and in your own immediate family no less.

Your church will be allowed to discriminate as per usual. If anyone's looking to encroach upon the limitations of church and state separation, it's the person behind the pulpit. All these folks want is to be able to put the person they've lived with and loved for 25 years on their damn health insurance and file some joint tax returns.

Don't take part in the denial of certain unalienable rights to folks because they are who they are. I'm sure your grandpappy can tell you a story or two about what it was like to fight for them.

Questions? Comments? Requests? I know... I know, children. Fear not. They don't want to marry your ugly, ignorant ass anyway. ron@ronmexicocity.com