Words & Shots by: Brendan Lee
Unless you have been vacationing in North Korea for the past week, you’ve probably got wind that Kendrick Lamar released a new song that has garnered much debate. First and foremost, I would like to express the importance of a high profile hip-hop artist like Kendrick Lamar bringing attention and public discourse towards the pervasive issue of racial inequality in America. Before becoming critical or dissecting every lyric and meaning, we should acknowledge that progression is dependent on horizontal communication – that is communication across communities rather than from mass media to mass audiences. So, props to Kendrick for invoking people to be engaged with their peers about the issue. The mere fact that people are interpreting and debating the meaning behind his lyrics is proof positive of advancement and will hopefully lead more people to understanding the brutal history of racism in America.
So far, public interpretations of the song have taken two general positions. The first position being that he is challenging black culture and black communities to take responsibility for their own actions and realize the hypocrisy in their violent behaviour towards each other. This point argues that black people as a whole need to self reflect on how they carry themselves or racial inequality will continue to subjugate them. Therefore, it would be said that Kendrick is calling black people hypocrites for contributing towards their own oppression.
The opposite position interprets the song as a poignant resistance to systemic racism and oppression that is inherent to American society. He is critiquing all aspects of the culture, including the music industry. Here one would argue that Kendrick is expressing an exhausted disdain for injustices that have gone on for far too long. Kendrick is angry with himself, calling himself a hypocrite for giving into the system rather than standing up against it. If this position holds more truth than the former, then the irony of this song is genius in and of itself.
These positions are what sociologists refer to respectively as culturalist and structuralist perspectives on understanding cultures. In a recent article in the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh wrote about the two differing approaches in relation to past and present studies on black culture in America – with reference to Moniyhan, Patterson, and Anderson.
According to Sanneh, in studying black America structuralists are concerned with how the system has been designed to perpetuate racial inequality; while on the other hand culturalists look to flaws within black culture and (hopefully) American culture that exacerbate this complex social issue. Structuralists often fall into the category of those people/media that tiptoe around the issue in fear of being accused of “victim blaming,” and culturalists are often accused of subordinating black culture. As with any issue, completely abiding to a single perspective polarizes the issue and leads to unnecessary debates, hindering progression.
The truth of the matter is that complex social issues must be understood from multiple perspectives and there is no simple solution to diminishing racial inequality. It is a problem so deeply rooted into American culture and history that those who don’t experience it, are probably all but blind to its existence. For the remainder of this piece, I will argue that Kendrick understands this complexity and his words are reflective of him trying to make sense of different perspectives. To achieve this I will break down some themes of the song starting with the title.
The Blacker the Berry the Sweeter the Juice
This is more than likely a reference to the 1929 novel ‘The Blacker the Berry’ by Wallace Thurman, which tells the story of a young African-American woman coming to terms with the dark colour of her skin and overcoming racial inequality – or more blatantly, racism. The phrase itself is empowering to those who suffer from prejudice due to the darkness of their skin, where the degree of prejudice is strongest towards those with the darkest skin (degrees of blackness).
The novel regales the constant struggle of its main character to be comfortable in her skin and it sheds light on how racism in America pitted black people against each other – with light skinned black people distancing themselves from dark skinned black people. This central theme in the novel is very significant in interpreting Kendrick’s song because it expresses how white supremacy and prejudice can elicit, in some black people, feelings of self-hatred and hostility towards other black people, within black communities. For example, the main character of the novel is subjected to discrimination from lighter skinned black people, even from her own family and community. By naming the song after this novel, Kendrick clearly understands this brutal reality and one could assume he is not simply employing a culturalist perspective to criticize black communities.
“I’m African-American, I’m African.”
Kendrick uses this phrase in the first and third verse of the song, which seemingly expresses a struggle with his identity as a black person. The term African-American implies one is African first and American second – it inconspicuously separates black people from other Americans. Therefore, Kendrick is correcting himself to identify himself as African, further shedding light on the issue of racial inequality and the hypocrisy of the term itself. Being that, the term is meant to be politically correct but it really isn’t because it positions black people as being sub-American, unequal to other Americans. He goes even further in the third verse with the introspective line,
I’m blacker than the heart of an aryan.
This is a striking comparison to say the least. This line, of course, is alluding to the evils of white supremacy stemming from the Nazis and the Aryan race movement. In this line, black symbolizes an immoral evil, asserting that the black (immoral) heart of white supremacists is the root of the supposed equivocal immoral behaviours of black people.
Understanding this, it could be said that Kendrick is conveying that he is as black or corrupt as white supremacy has made him out to be – it is essentially a comment on the demonization of black people and how it is a social construction designed to make one race seem superior to another – this is the core ideal and function of racism. Race was a fabricated concept designed by European imperialists to justify colonization, assuming one race – the white race – is superior to other races. Early notions of this idea dehumanized black people by classifying them between chimpanzees and white people.
Racial prejudice is a central theme throughout the song, where Kendrick alludes to various racial stereotypes about black people and lays claim to those stereotypes, essentially stating, “this is what society made me out to be, this is what you expect, so I guess that’s what I am.” He’s negotiating with himself about his black identity and what it means to be black in a society dominated by white privilege. This type of framing is akin to the plight of the main character in Thurman’s novel – an ongoing struggle with low expectations and opportunities versus persevering and overcoming racist stereotypes and prejudice. In the second verse he contends that he is,
Black and successful, this black man meant to be special. CAT scans on my radar bitch, how can I help you?
How can I tell you I’m making a killin’?
You made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigga.
Here, it seems as if he is commenting on his ability to overcome this adversity and emancipated himself from the prejudice of black weakness. This prejudice can be affirmed when you hear people argue that racism is over in America because there is a black president – as if it were white progression, not black perseverance that allowed Obama to call the White House home.
Hypocrisy
This is central theme of the song and the part that has stirred up various debates from ignorant YouTube commenters to a Pulitzer Prize winner, and every other corner of the Internet. Kendrick refers to himself as a hypocrite throughout the song and some people believe he is simply calling black people that participate in violent behaviour against each other, or any other stereotypical behaviour, hypocrites for protesting against racial inequality. This point is supported in the final bars of the song when he rhetorically asks,
So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street? When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me? Hypocrite!
However, the issue is more complex than this line leads you to believe and, as stated previously, Kendrick is very much aware of this; inasmuch this line should be recognized as hyperbole functioning as a tool for rhetoric.
If he identifies with being black, he must also identify with the prejudice that comes with being black, one of which is proclivities toward gang banging and violence against other black people. Because of this, it can be said that he is challenging the behaviour of gang bangers because he knows that the prejudice system will always reflect their behaviour onto him and black communities. He has given up on systemic change because the system has given up on black communities. Are gang bangers going to hear this and change their ways? Probably not, but it is ambiguous enough of a statement to invoke necessary debates on who and/or what is perpetuating racial inequality.
In actuality, one could argue that Kendrick is calling himself, but more or less, also the majority of people within black communities, that do not participate in black on black crime, the hypocrites. Why are they the hypocrites? Because they do not abide to what white supremacy has made them out to be. Kendrick calls himself the biggest hypocrite of 2015 because he is accepting his blackness but rejecting the moral standards that have been set for black people by American society. He is critical of the system, and his own people, but more importantly he is being critical of the symbiotic relationship between prejudice, and the negative behaviour of gang bangers who do not represent the true morals of black communities.