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It is a rather ironic thing, within hip-hop culture it is believed that they are helping to elevate the status of African-Americans, but this is not the case. Much of hip hop culture would in fact seem to tie into 19th century views of Africans and perpetuate racial stereotypes. Perhaps the most horrific aspect of this is the perpetuation of the 19th century thought that Africans are intellectually inferior to other races. Hip hop perpetuates this by lack of education, the reason Africans developed their own vernacular in this country is because as slaves they were not educated enough to have decent English skills. This is something that hip-hop culture has chosen to perpetuate. Also the thug image so popular in hip-hop is one that perpetuates the image of the African as a body without a brain. This is something Hip-hop strives to maintain; it elevates the uneducated thug facing jail time up over the educated African-American who is contributing positively to society. This odd preference is seen time and time again in Hip-hop movies and in rap. It ties in directly to the views of NeoNazis and the KKK that the black man is nothing more than the muscle for the Jews. To continue on that note there is also a tendency to hypersexualize Africans in Hip-hop culture, which is not a good thing. In the 19th century African women were hypersexualized due to the largeness of their posteriors, along with them white prostitutes and other degenerates of society were similarly hypersexualized. Is Hip-hop's use of parading scantily clad African women about because of their fine "booty" that much different than the 19th century practice of making African women parade naked, so that white men could scrutinize her exaggerated secondary sexual traits?
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Hip-hop's negative effect on racial stereotypes
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