Is Hip Hop Promoting Voilence?

Not really

Hip hop is a disgrace to Africans.

Hip Hop is just a culture, it is the people that gets involved that are trying to destroy it, and there is nothing like violence in it, because people like boyz 2men are into hip hop and nothing like violence, it is the gang behind some of the culture that si causing the wahala.

To insinuate that hip-hip contributes to violence in the African /African Americans communities more so than any other community or ethnic group is to perpetuate the stereotype that African/African Americans are more easily influenced by external stimuli than others. To ask this question is also to disregard the fact that other ethnic groups have dealt with violence in music and it's potential to negatively influence the youth. People should instead examine the individuals who commit violent acts and their personal predisposition to violence. We should instead consider the music as document of the violence that is destroying urban communities all over America not the cause of it.

Music does not cause or contribute to violence, but is a reaction to it. Music cannot create an emotion that is not already present but only enhance what is there. A person who is prone to violence maybe riled by a particular song, but the desire to commit violence was already there from the beginning. Consider the Columbine case, various musical acts were targeted as influences for inciting the killers to act, Marilyn Manson being one of the most prominent. The boys would have acted the same in the absence of the music, because their motivation for killing was a result of their internal response to their environment, not the music.

To say that anyone is incited to violence by a song or a certain type of music is to assert that they are an unstable person who is incapable of making sound decisions. Unstable people are capable of all manner of acts with out the slightest provocation, so music could make an unstable person commit a violent act. Stable, responsible people who are able to process their emotions properly and know right from wrong are able to listen to any song and appreciate it as a work or art or fiction. To lay blame for any crime on a work of art is to take remove responsibility from the offender and make it easier to stifle free speech.

This statement is also lumping the broad field of hip-hop into on category when in fact there are many positive hip-hop artists in the industry. So one could ask the opposite question. Does listening to positive songs make people commit positive acts? Does not listening to violent music keep violent offenders from committing crimes?

Hip-hop does not contribute to violence in the African / African-American community. Hip-hop, like other forms of music, is a testament to the violence, a verbal history of the violence. A violence which would continue whether the music is there or not.