When a Black female college professor argued that World Star Hip Hop is cultivating a digital culture of violence that exploits Black women for profit during a Huff Post Live Google+ discussion moderated my Marc Lamont Hill, the Black male panelists rebuffed her thesis as nonsense.
It was a disturbing exchange that revealed how some Black men cannot comprehend that respect for Black female bodies and the discussion of racism go hand-and-hand.
During the 30-minute online panel discussion “Do ‘Hood Sites’ Normalize Black Stereotypes,” Professor Brittney Cooper of Rutgers University, Professor Shayne Lee of the University of Houston, television personality Amanda Seales, Chicago rapper Rhymefest, and filmmaker Mandon Lovett discussed whether World Star Hip Hop was irresponsibly profiting from Black-on-Black violence.
The conversation became tense when Prof. Cooper said that WSHH is cultivating a dangerous Black female pathology by publishing videos of Black girls fighting each other, all while the “CNN of the Ghetto” profits from the millions of views the clips generate.
“What we’re seeing is real expressions of Black girl pain and Black girl anger,” Cooper said. “I think it is becoming spectacular because we don’t have any healthy outlooks to talk about what it means for Black girls to be part of the bulling conversation, what it means for Black girls to be angry about negotiating friendships where they feel there is some kind of betrayal, which seems to be the subtext of the Sharkeisha video. But what we do have is a moment where Black women’s and Black girl’s pain makes folks multi-millions of dollars in reality television and now also on World Star Hip Hop.”
To watch the discussion, click here.
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