Whites and Rap Culture

The article “Attuned to Rap’s Power to Provoke” (by Eric Harrison, April 10) mentions how white filmmakers increasingly are embracing rap music. It seems, though, that instead of being innovative, this trend is a slight variation of how blacks have been depicted since the beginning of film.

Portrayals of blacks have either shown them as dangerous, oversexed felons or as hapless buffoons. The trend of some white filmmakers to depict rap culture as synonymous with the range of the black human experience is ultimately just as harmful to the development of good role models in the black community as was any Stepin Fetchit caricature in the era of black-and-white movies.

The public should recognize such films that rely on the worn-out formulas of sex and violence to sell tickets as exploitation of a minority community by white filmmakers whose exposure to racial and ethnic minorities is often limited to the Latinas who clean their condos and to a few minority “industry types” who, other than being of a different skin color, share the same status symbols of using cell phones while driving their Beemers.

BOB McKAY

North Hills