Monday, April 23, 2007

Simmons Wants To Ban Words Widely Used by Rappers...

In today's news: "Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said Monday that the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets from all so-called clean versions of rap songs and the airwaves. Currently such epithets are banned from most clean versions, but record companies sometimes "arbitrarily" decide which offensive words to exclude and there's no uniform standard for deleting such words, Simmons said..."

I think people may miss the point that Simmons' suggestion pertains only to the "clean" versions of songs. Those with the label "explicit" will remain just as the artist intended. Once again, it comes down to leaving educating your kids to record companies or other outside institutions. Why favor censorship when it can only lead to other kinds of censorship? There are many words that can be offensive in context. If your kids gravitate towards abusive language in music or otherwise you have missed some opportunities to teach them values and you can't blame it on whatever they are exposed to. The world's a messy place that you can't clean up by banning words. Niggers, ho's and bitches have every right to be associated with, just like you have every right to distance yourself from those definitions. That said, I welcome the discussion because only when we can use words may we be able to understand each other. I respect Mr. Simmons' initiative, but I respectfully disagree with the idea of banning or censoring language.

No comments: