by GEHRY OATEY
To Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”:
“You want to put a big girl in a real good mood/ She gotta have some food/… So fellas (Yeah), fellas (Yeah)/Do you really like your women stacked (Hell yeah)/ Then feed her, please her, feed her some Cracker Jacks/… LA Face wit a big ole ass…”
Jamie Foxx is an ass
So that’s the parody version. Thank-you Jamie Foxx. Why would I waste good blog space to bring you these silly, mildly offensive, and not quite funny enough lines? Well, one of my students was howling these lyrics as he marched into class the other day. Even after being repeatedly asked to stop, he continued to sing.
“Why should I stop?” he asked. “It’s a parody.” That’s when he brought the video up on the computer to show me. Of course I had to watch out of curiosity. The parody, if you can call it that, is skin deep. I suppose it exposes the already sexist nature of the original, but it makes me wonder just what my 12-year middle school student is getting out of it. What I mean is, What does he think is so funny, and why does he get so much enjoyment out of singing it?
These are difficult questions for today’s teacher. Two weeks ago, a 15-year old Richmond High (Richmond, CA) student was gang raped outside of her school while bystanders watched and took pictures. With this incident fresh in my mind, I decided that a connection needed to be made between the lyrics of the song and the implicit sexism that it promoted. This kind of conversation is not easy. Even at twelve, boys have already been socialized to hold certain attitudes towards women, and that conditioning is hard to cut through. I wonder if the boys involved in the Richmond High rape ever had a male role model sit down with them and break down issues of sexism and misogyny?
To what extent is it the responsibility of the teacher and school to address this issue directly? As teachers, we need to have these conversations, and we need to find trainings and curricula that address the seriousness of this issue. The sinister and ubiquitous nature of our mass media demands that we give our students a vocabulary to counter the sexism and violence that can be found everywhere from hip-hop videos (not just hip-hop by the way—check this ridiculous video by country music star Toby Keith) to blockbuster movies. Only then will constructive conversation leading to real change take place in the classroom.
One excellent source for bringing this issue into the school environment is Michael Eric Dyson. He is a prolific African-American activist, author, and professor of Sociology at Georgetown University. In the film, Beyond Beats & Rhymes, Dyson addresses the media obsession with degrading women. He points out that this disease infecting young men is as much about race and power as it is about sexism.
Let’s ask what we are doing at the school level to prevent what happened in Richmond from happening in our own schools. Anyone out there got some strategies for confronting sexism/violence towards women in your classroom or school?
Gehry teaches cooking and gardening to middle schoolers at Melrose Leadership Academy in East Oakland.
3 Comments
November 23, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Thanks for sending me to this article, Gehry. I haven’t read Dyson on this, but I would add that teaching young men — especially young African-American men — to view women in this way is part of dehumanizing black people as a people. Some of these videos seem to me to be nothing more than a modern-day minstrel show in 2.5-second shots.
(Interestingly enough, the main audience for minstrel shows was *not* the Jim Crow South, although the shows were performed there. The main place minstrel shows were popular was in the North.)
November 24, 2009 at 11:57 am
Yes. Had hoped to also get a clip of Dyson on there and a clip from Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Have a look at that film if you get the chance. I am sure that you would have some interesting things to say about it. We need to get better at working with boys around recognizing and understanding the de-humanizing nature of sexism-and by we I am mainly referring to men, though all of us need to support that in a school environment. Thanks for your comment.
November 24, 2009 at 8:58 pm
I just remembered these really interesting organizations I came across a few years ago; I think they have similar missions and have worked together. It’d be awesome to see what in the way of posters (which are bilingual) and other materials could be brought into the school, and if they have curriculum.
http://www.mystrength.org/
http://www.mencanstoprape.org/index.htm
Their mission is to try and promote an idea of manhood and strength without violence. (One could have a whole side conversation about whether we need to be defending masculinity at all, rather that promoting the idea of being human beings first and foremost … but that’s an entirely different conversation.)