The First Amendment Applies to Hip Hop Too Guys!

English 1010-11 Reaction Essay


I read an article once that talked about the first amendment. It focused not just on the amendment itself but in particularly the freedom of speech portion of the amendment. The author mentioned that in his opinion the most important attribute of a citizen in regards to this amendment is the ability to fight for the rights of people to publicly say words we may hate. I had to think about that for a minute. The concept itself is staggeringly profound. The idea that we live in a place where individuals have not only the ability but the right to articulate almost anything they see, feel, think, believe, or just plain want to put out there, (short of slander that is) is marvelously extraordinary. Many countries kill for such blatant displays of freedom.

The first amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What exactly does that mean? I wonder sometimes if our forefathers thought this through completely. My understanding of this right is not that we may say whatever we choose providing it does not hurt, anger, or offend anyone else. To me it means that we may use language whatever language we may choose(i.e.: English, music, art…..) as a medium to express ideas and emotions any way we see fit, be it through journalistic prowess, poetry, painting, and even lyrical content. I don’t always support someone’s position but if they are being suppressed I will vehemently fight for their right to express themselves. This brings me closer to my point.

I grew up in South Jersey as we residents fondly refer to it. Growing up there I lived in a rundown town riddled with drugs and crime, a “ghetto”. We had a great deal of racial tension there when I was a child due to the segregation of the area. It happened that in a time when everyone was working hard to be “P.C.” the town I lived in was the quintessential segregated urban population. A town that was literally separated down the middle by the rail road tracks, a city where all the blacks lived on one side of those tracks and all the whites lived on the other. There was one elementary school on the far end of either side of the tracks within the city limits. As a way of curbing attention the “bureaucratic powers that be” decided to forcibly integrate the community by way of the school system.

The solution was to have K, 1st, and 2nd grade attend the school closest to each locality. ALL of 3rd and 4th grade would attend one school and ALL of 5th and 6th grade would attend the other school…….make sense? Talk about a hotbed of disaster.

The tension built and built for years and by the time I hit high school it was virtually explosive. People said and did all kinds of vile things and there was little respect for your fellow man. Hip Hop crossed the boundaries for both sides. It was the one thing we all had in common. For the first time we had something to relate to.

Here is some guy who we have never met, from an entirely different side of the globe, who was having the same life experiences we were. I actually remember being afraid to walk to school because you could get stabbed or shot for walking by a drug deal and looking up from the sidewalk at the wrong time. There was a man who was stabbed to death across from the police station and left there. I was in fifth grade at the time. He laid there until us grade schoolers found him and someone ran across the street to tell the police.

Faced with these kinds of tribulations there has to be a release. I wonder if these people who have such negative things to say about Hip Hop have ever been exposed to the kind of violence I grew up with. I gather “no”. If they had they would understand the relief you feel when you find something to connect with.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think all Hip Hop is uplifting. Some of it’s crap. A lot of it however has much more substance and more positive moral messages than its harshest critics are willing to merit. I think it is sad when anything becomes defined by its least positive examples. Look up a song by Spice One called The Ghetto you can find it on Youtube. It talks about the harsh reality of growing up in a place where violence rules and no one cares enough to change it.

No matter how you feel about Hip Hop, the truth is, it’s established and it is not going anywhere! Get used to it. Enjoy it, detest it, let it provoke you to think and grow and maybe even infiltrate a subculture of America and get to know it better. You don’t have to like it to learn from it.