Michael Eric Dyson (2004) and Dave Chappelle (2004) may seem like unlikely bedfellows when it comes to the expression of the attitudes of African-American males towards certain stereotypical attitudes said to be associated with their racial group or community, but in reality the two share much in common. This brief essay will consider how these African-American males - one an entertainer who uses comedy to make serious ideological and social points and one a highly educated academician and intellectual รป have expressed remarkably similar ideas regarding race and racial stereotypes that emerge from the so-called "black culture." It will be demonstrated that both Chappelle (2004) and Dyson (2004) are often critical of this culture and the varied stereotypes its produces, with both agreeing that some of these stereotypes are based firmly in reality.
Dyson (2004), for example, readily acknowledges that in African-American culture, women are often objectified as sexual playmates and presented as such in musical genres such as hip hop and gangsta rap. Chappelle (2004, agrees; in the very first episode of his television program on Comedy Central, Chappelle (2004) created a film clip of Nat King Cole literally pouring a bottle of champagne over the breasts and groin of a beautiful woman while singing a Christmas Carol. Chappelle's (2004) point was that objectification of women was not new, that it has been ongoing for literally centuries, and that it was absurd to suggest that only with the emergence of hip hop that African-American singers and songwriters had begun to exhibit this attitude. What both authors are suggesting is that African-American males do too often demean and "dis" women, turning them into little more than objects whose value lies in their ability to gratify masculine desires for sexual dominance and power and control.
In discussing hip hop, Dyson (20040 makes the point that it is a misogamist form of music tha...