By Sikivu Hutchinson
When N.W.A.’s mega-hyped
biopic Straight Outta
Compton opens next Friday, the brutalized bodies of black women will be
lost in the predictable stampede of media accolades. While early reviews have lauded the
“prescience” of the group’s fierce critique of anti-black state violence and
criminalization—epitomized by its de facto theme song “F-- Tha Police”—they
fail to highlight how the group’s multi-million dollar empire was built on
black women’s backs.
Yet, as national outrage over state violence grows,
the release of the film should
prompt fresh reconsideration of how institutionalized sexual and intimate
partner violence against black women continues to be all but invisible in
mainstream discourse about black self-determination. As gangsta rap pioneers and beneficiaries of
the corporatization of rap/hip hop in the 1990s, N.W.A. played a key role in yoking rape
culture and rap misogyny.
Throughout their career they’ve been hailed as street poets and raw truth
tellers mining the psychic space of young urban black masculinity. In song
after song, gang rape, statutory rape, the coercion of women into
prostitution and the terroristic murder of prostitutes are chronicled,
glorified and paid homage to as just part of the spoils of “ghetto” life. The 1988 song “Straight Outta Compton”
trivializes the murder of a neighborhood girl (“So what about the bitch that
got shot, fuck her, you think I give a damn about a bitch, I’m not a sucker”)
while its outlaw male protagonists go on an AK-47 and testosterone fueled
killing spree. “Straight Outta
Compton” was an early salvo for such popular fare as “To Kill a
Hooker,” “Findum, Fuckum & Flee” and the rape epic “One Less Bitch” in which
N.W.A. co-founder Dr. Dre lets his boys gang rape a prostitute then notes, “the
bitch tried to ‘gank’ me so I had to kill her”.
In a recent L.A. Times profile
on the group, writer Lorraine Ali extols Dr. Dre’s role as a businessman and entrepreneur
while conspicuously omitting his history of vicious misogyny and violence
against black women. Sidestepping the importance of misogynoir to the group’s
body of work, Ali argues that “it’s the film’s depiction
of police brutality, and the tense dynamic between law enforcement and the
urban neighborhoods they patrol, that makes it so topical”. Ali’s near reverent profile of the group is yet another example
of white America’s double standards when it comes to the brutalization of white
women versus that of black women.
In 1991 Dre brutally beat
and trashed Dee Barnes,
the young African American host of the forerunning rap show Pump It Up, at a record
release party in Hollywood. Allegedly spurred by negative comments made about
the group on the show, the beating was co-signed by N.W.A. members Eazy E and MC
Ren. Pump It Up was one of the first
grassroots showcases to capture the hip hop juggernaut in its infancy. Barnes’ assault
by Dre all but ended her rap career, underscoring
black women’s perilous status in the rap/hip hop world as well as the obscene
rates of intimate partner violence in the African American community overall (it
is worth noting that Barnes was not the only black woman to
suffer a brutal attack at Dre’s hands. Dre’s ex-girlfriend, rapper Michel’le,
also alleged that she needed plastic
surgery after she was beaten by him).
Every year thousands of black women are shot,
stabbed, stalked, brutalized and sexually assaulted in crimes that never make
it on the national radar. Black women
experience intimate partner violence at a rate of 35% higher
than do white women According to the
Department of Justice nearly 40% of young black women have experienced
sexual assault by the age of 18. Further,
in Los Angeles County black girls have the highest
rates of domestic sex trafficking victimization and are more likely to be
locked up for prostitution than non-black women.
And although intimate partner violence is a leading
cause of death for black women, they are seldom viewed as proper victims and
are rarely cast as innocents. Far too often, intimate partner violence (such as
that committed by former NFL player Ray Rice against wife Janae Rice) and/or sexual
assault against black women are only propelled to national attention by a
perfect storm of graphic videotape and feminist of color outrage. Yet black
female survivors suffer on the margins in a culture that still essentially
deems them “unrapeable”.
As an educator and mentor I work daily with young
black girls who silently cope with the trauma and PTSD of sexual and physical
violence in the very same South Los Angeles communities “immortalized” in
N.W.A.’s hyper-masculinist terroristically sexist oeuvre. Inundated with multi-platinum misogynist hip
hop and rap, these girls have grown up with the pervasive message that violence
against black women and girls is normal, natural, and justifiable. Coming full
circle, the “Straight Outta Compton” narrative sacrifices their bodies on the
altar of black masculine triumph and American dream-style redemption, signifying
that the only occupying violence black America should really be concerned about
is that perpetrated by the police.
