Jay-Z: "Every Step You Take, They Remind You, You Ghetto"

At the Grammy's, Jay-Z rapped with Coldplay in the song "Lost," and what he said bears repeating:

"It's only half if they like you. There ain't even the half what they might do.
Don't believe me, ask Michael. See Martin, see Malcolm...
See success and it's outcome.
See Jesus, see Judas. See Caesar, see Brutus.
See success is like suicide. Suicide is a suicide.
If you succeed, prepare to be crucified.
Media mettles. Yea, they sue you , you settle.
Every step you take, they remind you you ghetto.
So it's tough being Bobby Brown, to be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now.
Now the question is, is to have had and lost better than not having at all."

President Obama was wise to reach out to Sergeant Crowley after rushing to defend his friend, Professor Gates. No one is right, no one is wrong. If Crowley had gone to law school with Gates, he would have known not to arrest him too. Any person, white or black, who harshes out on an officer knows there's a downside.

The problem is this: if Professor Gates were not a well-known Harvard Professor, would anyone have defended him? Cambridge is not the liberal mecca many think it is: it is a medium safe neighborhood filled with the world's elite teachers and students, as well as a collection of drug-addicts, hangers-on, and families who like the neighborhood. So what if you were a couple miles away in a bad neighborhood in Boston, and the person on the porch jiggering the door were not part of America's cultural elite? Or what if the person were in a different state altogether?

The problem isn't so much what happened with Crowley and Gates, although that has helped bring racial tension to light and could be productive to jiggering the conversation apart. A greater problem is the divide between famous and easily identifiable people of color and those with no defense. There should not be two different world's for people of color. But there is: there's the one we just saw play out in the media, and another you never hear about, much bigger in population, and much less privileged.

I'd say it is the latter we should be the most concerned about giving voice to now that the conversation's going.

Comments

[lteezy]

JustinAddison,

Jay-Z does not rap about jewelry. Music is ENTERTAINMENT as well as art... so whats wrong with calling your self a gangster. Everyone seems to love the movies Godfather and Scarface so why hate on rappers when they use the term? The "n" word in the rap world means Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished. So do your homework on rap before you start dogging it sir.

[lteezy]

Wow thanks for that insight. Jay-Z is definatley a gifted poet/realist. Thank you Jennifer for recognizing art and truth.

[Pippen]

We live in a human world. Police officers see crack dealers, gang bangers, thieves, and bums hourly. They are surrounded by them 24/7. Think about how this affects your pysche.

Gates thinks too much of himself, it's obvious he's full of ego.

We live in a class society. Not because of black and white or money or capitalism or democracy or colonial England. We have levels of social strata because humans are corrupt. They will always seek to diminish others in an effort to garner power for themselves.

The strong victimize the weak. In every social strata. It's not a justice or educated thing, it's a human thing. We're not evolved. We're less than. We're animal.

[eatmorchikn 2000]

God are you people complaining about Jay-Z's lyrics really that dense?

Did you ever go to scholl and learn about creative writting and poetry, imaigery, metaphors or where your favorite classes P.E. and Metal Shop cause it had no homework?

The lyrics are simple and straight forward and any school kid could understand what they mean and how they relate to this story. By the way Coldplay is an all white band from England and the lyrics are part of one of thier songs that Jay-Z colaberrated on with them. Go and listen too it sometime.....

What he is saying is that no matter how far you reach and make yourself better, through education, money, social justice the Established Authorty will still see you as the person where you started, ie the Getto for black men, a radical for religious figures (Jesus, MLK, Malcom X ), and it does not have to be a white authority, it can be a black or religious authority establishment. The more popular you become the more you make yourself a target for the authority thats in charge. Finally he talks about you have to take both worlds, poor and rich, happy and sad because you can't have one with out the other and the question you have to ask yourself is, is it better to be sucessful and rich and have all these problems or stay unkown and go unnoticed in life.

So ends the lesson ......

[Mnemanth]

I stopped at the second "sentence" of your "entertainer's" quote. Attempted to read a couple of times, and I'm, frankly, confused.
Please decypher and get back to me.
Thanks.

[creo13]

Police are there to serve and protect, but I think it is fair to say that in certain circumstances some will go above and beyond for some, and do less than half of what they could do for others. The minority experience has been mostly the latter. There's not much of going above and beyond for minorities.

[BlueFloyd]

Any police officer who teaches seminars in racial profiling and its implications MUST be held to a higher standard of empathy and understanding of the racial implications of his job. It is that simple. His involvement in teaching racial sensitivity only makes him more responsible in a case like this.

[littlebrowngirl]

I have heard this argument from all angles but consider the following:

If a 5'8" 150 lbs. white professor with a caine was in the house would the officer have assumed someone else was breaking into his house instead Gates being the person who was doing the breaking and entering?

Has a police officer EVER showed up to your house to stop or possibly PREVENT a break in?

The officer had no legal right to enter the house, so why did he do so?

You can not be arrested for disorderly conduct in your own house, so Gates' "crime" was stepping outside the house, right?

If Gates was wrong, why were the charges dropped by the police?

Is being angry at a police officer a crime?

If Gates was not a prominent figure with money and influence, he would probably still be in jail or still have charges stand against him.

The thing that makes me SO irritated is that the police acted as though their behavior was beyond reproach, and it was not. No one is perfect and the police certainly are not perfect. I wished they has admitted that they sometimes make mistakes. This was bad judgment on the part of the officer. Unless Gates assaulted the officer, there was not basis for the arrest.

[ClownPosse]

Thank You Jennifer for more shallow, trite garbage !

[ItsMickeyBricksBaby]

All the people on this thread disparaging Henry Louis Gates are forgetting something: if a black Sgt. arrested a white professor in a white affluent area, and hauled him off to jail in handcuffs, that black Sgt. would be placed on desk duty "pending an internal instigation", because the outcry from whites statewide, regionally, and possibly nationwide would be intense.

Think about it: a revered white professor in HIS OWN home, screaming at a black officer? Really? Trust me, pressure would be put on Massachusetts' Black Govenor to "do something" about the Black Sgt. who dares to arrest a white professor.

No one can tell me that most whites wouldn't see this thing differently if the shoe was on the other foot.

Oh, and all the folks claiming that "Obama made a rookie mistake by commenting on the matter before all of the facts were in", um, ah, did President Bush make a rookie mistake by commenting on the Rodeney King Beating before "he knew all of the facts"?

[ceindependence]

Gates needs to learn to control his anger. That being said, the cop would have arrested any person regardless of race in this situation. Police feel that they should be treated with respect and submission. If you do not respect them and submitt they can and will find a way to teach you that respect. However, we don't learn to respect them, we learn to fear them. That's fine with them as well. All the law enforcement officers I have ever known were bullies who use their position and badge as tools. I don't trust bullies, and I don't trust policemen. Gates should have known or recognized this too.

[GinaFace]

if your argument is that we should all accept responsibility for abuse of power by law enforcement by pre-emptively bowing down and/or submitting, I completely disagree. that behavior is called enabling, and the constant submission is soul-crushing. while I agree that both people involved in this situation could have made different choices, this was clearly a display of power for both sides. and while being arrested on his own property for no REAL reason is violating, like being robbed or beaten or raped, I am glad things worked out the way they did, for there was a time the outcome would have been a true tragedy. if anything, this story has allowed us to have national conversation about the roles that race and class and authority and power play in our culture in a relatively decent fashion, PRECISELY because no one was harmed. prof gates gave up more than enough power and control by allowing himself to be wrongfully arrested. this is a daily drama across America; rather than validating abuse of power through submission and perpetuating this cycle, we should welcome these opportunities to evaluate our attitudes, actions, beliefs, etc. as this honest self-awareness will allow us to grow stronger together. these conversations, when decent and respectful, establish trust.

[jcwtts1]

I would love a classless society. I would love a colorless one. Right now we have neither. The justice system has many levels but I would just like the police to be able to differentiate between a crack head and a billionaire with no criminal record. We don't all actually look alike.

J

[Disdain]

What differentiate a crack head from a billionaire is the manner in which they conduct themselves. In this particular instance, the well known, well educated, well traveled professor behaved like an irrational, arrogant and out of control miscreant and as a result of that was arrested. Had he simply produced his ID as requested without the temper tantrum, the two police officers, one black, one white would have simply left and that would have been the end of the story. These officers responded to a call of a break-in. There was no mention of race in the call. Racial profiling does happen but that was not the case in this particular instance. All that does, is rightly create the impression that every time a black person misbehave they pull out the race card. All it does is dilute the seriousness of racial profiling when it does happen.

[vim876]

If he'd been in a different neighborhood, the neighbors would be unlikely to call the cops. But that's partly because fewer people are home at any given time in many poorer neighborhoods, and poorer people are less trustful of the police. It's natural that people with a lot of possessions to protect trust the cops more. Those that don't take themselves out of the sample by moving to gated communities with private security. Normal people have to work to eat. Also, at least in my experience, they are more likely to know their neighbors than wealthy people, since they are more likely to do things like take the same bus, rather than driving (or being driven) everywhere. I don't know how other people would react, but I have to say, I would definitely call the cops on a white guy jiggering a door. He might be an armed methhead. But I'm also paranoid.

[vim876]

Moreover, I think the real racism comes into play in the cops' actions. However, the fact that people let power make them stupid is not racist, it's human. (See Stanford Prison Experiment.) Do you think the cop would not have arrested a white guy for yelling at him? While the white guy might not have as many reasons to yell (being treated like a 2nd class citizen every day takes its toll, I'm sure), if he had, the cop would have arrested him just as quickly. Perhaps it is useful to look at this as a racist situation. It is entirely possible that every action anyone took in this situation was based on nonracial issues. However, the experiences that formed the decision-making patterns in everyone's brains were developed in a racist society, and cannot be separated from that context.

[JustinAddison]

Please check out who Jay-Z is before you take seriously anything he has to say. He calls himself a gangster and uses "the n-word" frequently (wasn't that a bad thing last year?). He dresses and comports himself in a ridiculous way that emphasizes every negative stereotype that some people hold about blacks. He's one of the last people who should try to chastise anyone about racism.

For some real eye-opening commentary read Stanley Crouch and Walter Williams. Use your rap CD's for coasters or target practice.

[Waltb31]

Walter Williams???
Right.
Pathetic.

[sheikwil4]

you apparently dont know who Jay Z is and you missed the entire point of the article, you must be a class mate of sara h aplin.

[JustinAddison]

Check for yourself, his lyrics are easily available online.

[JustinAddison]

And I do know who Jay-Z is, just not this Sara H Aplin person you're referring to.

[GinaFace]

jay-z can act and dress any way he pleases, and I am not sure what that had to do with his trustworthiness. and while you seem entitled to dismiss him as "ridiculous", I am not sure your opinion matters much to him. I find it disturbing for you to be evangelizing against him because you don't like him (your right to do so) but framing it in such away that makes jay-z responsible for your personal preferences (because you feel he fulfills certain "stereotypes"). I think jay-z has a body of work that defies sterotype, but he shouldn't have to regulate his behavior so that it appears to be non-stereotypical for the benefit of people like yourself. to do so would imply that, rather than acting independently and of his own free will, he should depend on you to define him.

[progressiveblkgrl]

No, you don't know who Jay-Z is. The Jay-Z who made $80 million in 2008 and was the President of Def Jam Records. The Jay-Z who mostly wears suits everywhere he goes. The Jay-Z who frequently travels the world handing out philanthropy to forgotten places in the world. The Jay-Z whose a poet. That's right, come on liberal and conservatives, take me on and remind me of Bob Dylan and the Beatles and what great poets they were. The same Beatles and Bob Dylan who frequently did drugs and no they weren't gangsters they just believed in free love. It's so ironic how easily it is to forget what it's like to be a kid and have a love for a music that speaks to what you're going through at that moment. You might not agree with Jay-Z the man, but I'm pretty sure anyone who understands the experience of the non-majority in this country would find his words touching and true.

[JustinAddison]

Oh I didn't know there was another Jay-Z out there. So this isn't the guy with the gaudy jewelry who talks about gangsters and hoes?

[AleshiaMassey]

Serve and protect...?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/27/alexandria-police-chief-arrested-on-dui-charge/

[Ohioan730]

Race, race, race.

I'm black and from the inner city. I happen to know that cops of all races abuse their authority. I have seen how police victimize poor white folks and I've seen black cops abuse black people. The argument is WAAAAAY off the point.

This is not exclusively about race. There is an element of class profiling here that NOBODY WILL TALK ABOUT. Skip Gates situation is just but a peek into the lives of millions of people who have felt as if the police overstepped their authority and violated the person's first amendment rights and wrongfully arrested them. I have heard middle aged white men tell their stories, too.

There is a terrible racial and class profiling problem with the cops but they are diehard supporters of each other no matter what race. Black cops are the same as white ones. If they perceive you as someone with no clout, they WILL sometimes take advantage of your rights--the bad cops, that is. A lot of them are bad. Too many.

Nobody gets it.

[Flavor]

I do, and you spoke that well, I could not have relayed that any better than you, you are 100percent right. Coming from a lineage of officers that I respect and they work hard at their job but the fact remains that like you so eloquently pointed out black cops are guilty also, I hope when Professor Gates, does his documentary that he points that out. People seem to think that citizens don't realize the authority that a cop has (we do), we are so aware of it until it's branded in our heads. My upset with law enforcement is their unwillingness to admitt to wrong doing it would take the FBI to come in and find the corruption that goes on in the police force. Listen to this, officers are to protect and serve, and they know this, if we think that they will most times tell the truth, think again. If you want respect, make sure the officers carry themselves with respect, no one should be scared when they see an officer, clearly we have a serious problem for as what the duties of an officer is and let me also state this they come up against horrible situations, some have been spit upon, hit, cursed out, ect......and the ones who truely represent need to be rewarded and honored. Yes, there are (some) good cops as well (some) good citizens.

[sheikwil4]

Flavor, this is way over some of these idiots head, they don't get it I guess Jay Z lyrics are over their heads also because he is right on this is someone who is 55. I get what she is saying and Jay Z.