From the time they were dumped in shackled heaps on these unforgiving shores, black African males have had to endure a disgrace that their female counterparts did not: social castration, or put differently, emasculation. Shunted to the backwaters of life but always, at first, under the direct, brutal suppression of their overseers, then under the oppressive system of segregation, ghettoization and forced social marginality, the black man's day in America, by a comparative analysis, has been a long time coming. So now we see, having dashed upon the scene while the opportunity presented itself, the "authentic" modern-day black men of the ghetto, the rappers, hurl vile insults at their women (who could be their civilizing salvation) as a means of proving their manhood, damn it, and accumulating enough money so that they simply don't have to care what people think, anymore. It's a twisted mix of self-assertion based largely on a foundation of hatred blended with "on-the-make" capitalism and a cry of pain masquerading as art.
