News

By Peter J. Smith

  NEW YORK, April 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Leading hip hop mogul Russell Simmons and the Hip Hop Summit Action Network have called for broadcasting and record companies to clean up their act in the wake of the recent Imus controversy and begin by banning three common derogatory words from the airwaves.

  Both Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis released a press statement on behalf of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN) urging “the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ and the racially offensive word ‘nigger.’”

  The three words appear profusely in hip hop songs, and have ingrained themselves in the language and culture of many youth who imitate the leaders of hip-hop and rap. Critics of radio personality Don Imus (fired two weeks ago by CBS Radio and NBC for referring to the Rutgers university women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”) pointed out that the hip-hop industry is also deserving of similar outrage, since it constantly broadcasts over the airwaves a high diet of brutal misogynistic degradation and sexually objectifies women.

  Chavis along with Simmons, the co-founder of the hip hop summit, sent the recommendations to the heads of major record labels, video channels and radio stations, and cited songs like 99 problems by rapper Jay-Z as prime offensive examples: “I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one.”
 
“We recommend (they’re) always out,” Simmons told the Associated Press in an interview Monday. “This is a first step. It’s a clear message and a consistency that we want the industry to accept for more corporate social responsibility.”

“The time has come for black people and other persons of color to speak out and stand up,” said Dr. Chavis according to NY1 Bronx reporter Dean Meminger. “We should not be silent in the face of derogatory language about our women and we should not be silent about the use of a term that speaks to the history of racial oppression, the n-word.”

  HSAN says artists still can make plenty of money without resorting to these degrading words, and Chavis warned the industry needs to police itself, before the government steps in.

  Chavis met with the CEOs and presidents of numerous media companies to discuss the issue before HSAN released their recommendations. Both Chavis and Simmons have called for the creation of a “Coalition on Broadcast Standards” which would consist of leading executives from music, radio and television industries and set lyrical and visual standards for those industries.
 
  Members of the NAACP’s youth and college division told NY1 that while the recommendations are a start, they don’t go far enough and they want stricter guidelines.
 
“I have seen young people in my neighborhood nine, 10 years old using words that at that age I had no idea what they meant,” said Michael Fleming of the NAACP Youth and College Division.

  Victoria Lanier of the NAACP Youth and College Division told NY1 that the time has come to “lay down the law and push these record labels and corporations to hold their artists and themselves accountable for what they are putting out into our community.”