What's Behind Debate Of Rap Artist's Murder?

[Brian Hauk]

What's Behind Debate Of Rap Artist's Murder?
{`As I See It' column}
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from the Militant, vol.60/no.35 October 7, 1996

BY BRIAN TAYLOR
There has been much hype in the media about the recent death
of Tupac Amaru Shakur. The rap artist was fatally wounded in a
September 7 drive-by shooting and died a week later.
Conservative commentators have used his killing as an occasion
to fire some more shots in what rightist politician Patrick
Buchanan has termed the "culture war," by portraying rap music
and Black youth who listen to it as the cause of crime. Others,
including petty bourgeois leaders in the Black community, have
tried to portray Shakur as some kind of revolutionary -
another Malcolm X. Both are dead wrong.
Thomas Sowell, a conservative columnist who is Black wrote a
piece in the September 20 New York Post, where he abhorred the
"barbarism being celebrated and marketed to impressionable and
immature minds." He said that "the poorest and least educated
segment of the Black population," who listen to this sort of
music, glorify "savage and self destructive behavior." He then
argued, "The 1960s were a crucial decade, not only because it
made Black cultural patterns sacrosanct, but also because it
saw the burgeoning of a welfare state which subsidized behavior
that would otherwise have had a much higher cost to those who
engaged in it." A photo of the late artist accompanied the
column with the caption "Tupac Shakur: A loser's culture."
An article in the September 17 Wall Street Journal described
Shakur as a "thug rapper." It painted a picture of unruly,
undisciplined, dangerous animals when speaking of Tupac Shakur,
Biggie Smalls, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and other performers. "As the
saying goes, if you lie down with Dogg, you get up with fleas."
Then the article pointed fingers at the producers and business
managers of various record labels, saying that Marion Knight of
Death Row Records "recruits the talent, negotiates the deals,
brainstorms the film projects and bails his stars out of jail,"
perpetuating this apparently unique phenomena.

Welfare and `gangsta-rap'
It is no accident that Sowell brings the question of welfare
into this discussion. He, in effect, claims that the social
safety net for those relegated to the ranks of the permanent
army of the unemployed by capitalism breeds the "attitudes" of
violence. It's the same culture war arguments Buchanan
presents, only with a Black conservative twist.
What is at stake here?
The ruling class of the United States and the parties and
newspapers that are chattel to them have a big problem: the
bosses can't make profits any more at a satisfactory rate. They
have "downsized" and shut down factories to the limit. Now they
are undercutting basic democratic rights and slashing social
services that workers won in struggle; rights that in the eyes
of many come with being human. This will not pass without
resistance. But since one of our biggest weapons as working
people is unity of our class, the employers aim to keep us
divided. Workers are forced to compete against each other for
survival and blame each other in a system where better economic
conditions for our class and a stable future are impossible.
The culture war, in a nutshell, is the ideological
preparation by the bosses' class to make us think that certain
layers of the working class are responsible for bringing the
nation down due to lack of moral values. It is a bourgeois tool
to soften labor resistance to capitalist austerity.
In this case it is "gangsta-rap" music, in another it is
single mothers, or immigrants from Mexico, and the list goes
on. The aim is the same. Make young Blacks look like criminals.
Point to these "criminals" as the ones using welfare. Conclude
that if it wasn't for the loads of money spent on public
assistance America would be all right. These arguments may
sound silly, but they can make sense, at least initially, to
workers feeling the squeeze on their wages or who can't find a
job and want to know why.
Shakur may have been involved in corruption and thuggery
that many entertainment "stars" are engulfed in, in a society
where art is nothing but a commodity. He may have been killed
by competitors in the business. These values and modes of
behavior come straight from the capitalist class and the
policies of its government. One only has to look, just this
last week, at the revelations of CIA drug-running in the Black
community in Los Angeles, the Pentagon manuals instructing
bribery and torture at a U.S. military school, the cop killing
of Anthony Baez, and other examples of police brutality to
pinpoint the source of the problem: the profit system and the
bourgeois values it breeds put into action by the repressive
apparatus of the capitalist class. Neither Shakur's lyrics, nor
welfare, are the root cause of violence in the Black community.
The attempt to portray the corrupt behavior of music
"celebrities" like Shakur as some fresh revelation is bogus.
It's nothing new. Shakur's record label is worth over a $100
million. He was living the rich life. The description given
about Knight bailing out the performers is no different that
what United Fruit or other big businesses do when their crooked
chief executives get caught doing their slime.

Tupac was no Malcolm X
On the other hand people like Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a
national leader of National Black United Front, referred to
Shakur as "revolutionary" and compared him to "Martin [Luther
King] and Malcolm [X]." Nothing is further from the truth.
No matter what Shakur said in his music, Malcolm X was a man
who led a revolutionary movement of working people in action.
Malcolm awakened Blacks involved in struggle to our dignity and
self-worth. He became an internationalist and began pointing to
capitalism and imperialism as the cause of racism. For these
reasons he became a dangerous man to the powers that be and
was assassinated - by thugs organized by the Nation of Islam
with the knowledge and complicity of the police. "Member s of
the Nation of Islam were involved in the assassination of
Malcolm X," acknowledged Nation leader Louis Farrakhan at a
public meeting in Harlem's Apollo Theater May 6, 1995. "We
can't deny whatever our part was." The Nation of Islam
organized a memorial meeting for Shakur in Harlem's Mosque no.
7 recently.
Malcolm's political evolution and assassination have
nothing analogous to Shakur's life and works. The attempt to
portray Blacks who have made some money as supposed leaders of
the struggle for Black freedom is bourgeois to the core. It
comes directly from those who act as a brake and an obstacle to
the proletarian masses of Black people leading the struggle
against racism independent of the capitalist class and its twin
political parties.
Tupac Amaru Shakur was a musician who made money. Nothing
more, nothing less. Music, and in this particular case rap
music, is not inherently revolutionary or reactionary. It is a
tool of expression that reflects the reality and culture of the
class society we live in - bourgeois culture today. It is only
through an uncompromising struggle to uproot the causes of
racism and class exploitation - the capitalist profit
system - that crime among the oppressed will diminish, and in
the process human values will find their expression in songs
and music.

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