| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Causal Arguments

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 4 months ago

Research

 

Claim it:

 

Does rap music lead to violence in youth?

 

Test it:

 

examples: Deaths of rappers due to gang violence/muder, deaths of youth due to same cause, statistics

studies: WebMD Bnet

questions: Can we blame the music, or is the music simply a creation of the people and thus has nothing to do with the violence? If it is the music is it the lyrics, or the actions within music videos/on the streets taken by musicians?

why? It leads to violence because those who listen are influenced by the lyrics/actions of rappers. 

 

Write it:

 

"What's the use unless we're shootin no one notices the youth. It's just me against the world baby." Tupac Shakur rapped these lines, holding within them the passion and meaning that he believed, and that lead to his 1996 murder. His death can be put on the extensive list of rappers that have died due to violence, all in the eyes of their biggest fans, of their avid listeners, of their true followers, influencing them every step of the way.

 

A largely influential source for rap to infiltrate the minds of youth today is the media and from that television. Rappers are portrayed mainly in music videos where they can be seen doing drugs, carrying guns, objectifying women, and destroying their surroundings. These videos are all over America, MTV, BET, FUSE, FUEL, and VH1 all show without any cencorship but for cursing in the lyrics the actions of these men and women. Studies hold a very strong argument for this violence. After studying 522 black girls between the ages of 14 and 18 from non-urban, lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, researchers found that compared to those who never or rarely watched these videos, the girls who viewed these videos for at least 14 hours per week were far more likely to practice numerous destructive behaviors. And over the course of the one-year study, they were found to be almost three times more likely to act out against authority and adopt a promiscuous and violent lifestyle, including the use of drugs.

 

"Most children between ages 2 and 18 spend upwards of seven hours a day ingesting some sort of media," says Susan Buttross, MD, FAAP, chief of child development and behavioral pediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). "We know that with any type of repeated media exposure, a desensitization can occur that makes these behaviors seem normal. So this finding doesn't surprise me at all."

 

This is not the first time that music has been pinned as a cause for behavior in youth, from the swing kids in nazi Germany to the punk rock scene in London, England, music has been moving kids to act, but never before has it seemed so purely negative. This music promotes shamelessly the violence and recklessness that it feeds into the minds of today's youth, it's less of a "this is what I do so I'm going to sing about it" situation and more of a "this is good! it's fun! so you should do it to!" situation. Rappers defend the actions that they glorify, and though not all the actions within rap music are in any way negative, those that are are clearly moving today's youth to action. Rapper Xzibit takes a stand against these claims, “Rap is a reflection of society,” Xzibit told the World Entertainment News Network. “If society wasn’t violent, then hip-hop wouldn’t be violent. You can blame hip-hop but we’re like reporters; we tell you what’s going on in the neighborhood, and we tell you how it is.” Although he insisted hip-hop should stop glorifying violence,the California-based rapper commented on the double standards prevalent in the entertainment industry. “But we can’t be like Arnold Schwarznegger; he can kill 70 million people on the screen and he’s still a role model. But when you talk about slapping somebody, or shooting somebody on a rap tape, you are a criminal.” While a conservative website's representative offers the same open opinion, "America for all her protests against violent rap lyrics has failed to acknowledge her role in the creation of this relatively new art form. There is no denying the language in some rap lyrics could be construed as offensive, however, just as other music forms are not homogeneous, neither is rap music. It is far too simplistic to portray rap artists as perpetuators of behavior deemed socially deviant without placing the artists and their life experiences in context. Instead, this article considers rap music as a creative expression and metaphorical offspring of America's well-established culture of violence." (Bnet) But are these ideals strong enough to combat the statistics and the history that has ridden alongside rap as it has become a major media source for America's youth?

 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.