“I mean, her butt, is just so big. I can’t believe it’s just so round, it’s like, out there, I mean – gross. Look! She’s just so…black!”
Director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut Jeffrey Ogbar quoted these lines from Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” in his lecture, Hip-Hop and the Black Power Movement.
Fairfield University’s Program in Black Studies, directed by Co-director of the history department Dr. Yohuru Williams and Co-director of Black Studies Dr. Renee White, who hosted the North East Black Studies Alliance program, which honored Dr. Peniel Joseph and featured a lecture by Ogbar.
While many think that the way black people are portrayed in current hip-hop music is offensive or vulgar, Ogbar argued that it also shows that black women can be beautiful. He said that this helps to correct years of self-hate blacks endured during previous eras.
Ogbar said that hip-hop is helping to reject the white version of beauty, women who are skinny with large breasts, instead being attracted to “fit women with large booties.” He referenced hip-hop music videos in which women had this body type and were all different shades of dark. However, he also said that most had straight hair as opposed to their naturally curly hair.
This is a change that has taken place in recent times. As recently as the 1980’s, R’B videos featured women with “Lisa Bonnet body types,” according to Ogbar. Lisa Bonnet is a thin light skinned black actress most notable for her role as Denise on “The Cosby Show.”
“White, you’re all right, yellow, mellow, brown stick around, black get back,” said Ogbar, quoting a saying in black communities as another instance of people being attracted to lighter skin.
But now these black women are getting prominent roles in hip-hop music videos and appearing on covers of magazines such as “King” and “Smooth.” To reinforce his point, Ogbar showed several pictures of different magazines. The “King” and “Smooth” cover all featured black women with their buttocks prominently exposed. “Maxim” and “FHM” all featured white women in poses that emphasized their stomachs and breasts.
The only exceptions were Halle Berry, a black actress, and Coco, a white former Playboy model. Berry has a body that white men will find more attractive and Coco has more of a black body according to Ogbar.
While the lyrics and pictures may be offensive, Ogbar said that young black women’s pregnancies are on the decline since the 1960s and that in 2004, the black homicide rate was the lowest it has been since the 1940s. He said that although people may attribute the lyrics to causing problems, there is no evidence to support this.
Williams, who introduced the speakers, was happy to have a controversial topic that found something positive in something negative. He said he was pleased the speech invited conversation with “cutting-edge scholarship that challenged preconceived notions about democracy, race, sex and gender.”
Also featured during the event was, Dr. Peniel Joseph, associate professor of African American Studies at Brandeis University who was awarded NEBA’s first W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize for authoring “Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America.”
Williams said that one reason his book was chosen was for its “full-scale treatment of the Black Power movement.”
The students in attendance were also interested by the event.
“I thought it was very interesting and informative,” said Monique Gordon ’10. “There were positives and negatives: the positive was that black is beautiful and the negative was objectifying women.”
Peter Otoki, Jr. ’08 agreed.
“It was interesting in regards that it looks at hip-hop from a different mirror,” he said, “showing the positive betrayal of women.”
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