COUNTERPUNCH LETTERS : Do Rap and Ice Cube Speak for Black Culture?

Concerning “Black Culture Still Getting a Bum Rap,” the June 25 Counterpunch commentary by rapper Ice Cube:

Ice Cube is right when he takes a stand against censorship. But he is wrong--dead wrong!--when he attempts to make “black culture” monolithic and when he claims that rappers are some kind of super communicators or message carriers for black people.

Black Americans are multicolored and multicultured. The African presence in the Americas dates back many, many years before the 17th Century. But Ice Cube, like most self-serving Johnnies-come-lately, likes to deal in extravagant claims and pretenses; the last thing they want to hear is truth.

Is Ice Cube going to tell us that black guys who demean and denigrate themselves by calling black women “bitches” in their raps are more important to the race than such proven greats and universal talents as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole?

There is no reason whatsoever why black American society and culture should now be denigrated in a so-called musical form or style that makes Ice Cube rich!

ANDREW S. YOUNG

Los Angels