On Geraldo's Cognitive Dissonance and Kendrick Lamar - Chris "Preach" Smith

Photo Credit: Pitchfork

I wasn’t initially inclined to write something about the new video
for the smash Kendrick Lamar single “Alright” off of his thrilling
recent album To Pimp A Butterfly. I mean, the video speaks on
its own in an intensely powerful way to anyone who’s seen it.
It heightens the commentary Kendrick has embedded in the
track concerning the onslaught of police brutality against the
Black community as a tool of systematic oppression. And when
those powers get threatened, they get defensive - and then they
go on their own offensive. Enter Geraldo Rivera, and Fox News.
Geraldo, who seems to be dead set on assailing what he thinks
is the root cause of the struggles that Black people have in the
past year or so as some sort of ‘paternal adviser’ attacked the 
video and hip-hop culture on a whole as to what’s plaguing the
whole of Black youth. When I first got wind of the comments, I
laughed. Yeah. I laughed. Because those words say something
more about Rivera and the supremacist outlook that Fox News
is guilty of nurturing and the effect that mindful hip-hop has on
counteracting their message of cognitive dissonance.

Look at it in these terms - Geraldo is being propped up to be in
this position for a couple of reasons. This is someone who at one
point was considered among the greatest of journalists this nation
had. Puerto Rican, a New Yorker who was a legal defender of the
Young Lords at one point. One of the pre-eminent Latinos to be
on television and who had his own television talk show. But his
comments on the video and Black youth(especially young Black
men given his reprehensible commentary during the Trayvon
Martin case) show that he’s turned for the worst. Because…it’s 
what pays the bills. To claim that rap music(because that’s what
he’s really going after with his recent comments) is the downfall
of the Black community in America is generalized, ignorant bile
that further cheapens his stature in the eyes of many who know
better. This is coming from someone who by being at Fox News
has gone from criticizing one of their champions in Michelle Malkin
to sounding like her. This is coming from someone who took a pay
cut to be at the network after 9/11 and has dealt with numerous
instances of his reporting being questioned while there. Elders in
the Latino community haven’t still forgiven him for going with a
more palatable version of his name in order to avoid anti-Hispanic
backlash. Rivera has essentially become just another tool of division
that Roger Alies and his network can use to try to salvage an America
that thrives on oppression and white supremacy. The sad thing is that
he believes it so much that he’s willing to alienate anyone. Look at 
how he had to apologize after the comments he made on Trayvon - but
only after a tremendous and justified backlash that even had his son
say that he was “ashamed” of his father.

Photo Credit: VEVO

The underlying message in Geraldo’s comments do prove
something else though. They speak to a growing fear among
those who think like this, and those who find themselves in
a country that’s beginning to undergo serious change in terms
of policies, demographics and thinking. The ‘Alright’ video and
song ultimately speaks about rising above the different factors
of systematic racism that the Black community faces daily in
the United States. For all of its stark portrayals, its about hope.
Hope that Kendrick spoke on in his rebuttal to Rivera a day or
two after the initial comments. Rivera’s comments are meant
to be a distraction from the real issues, and use hip-hop as a
way to do it. It’s meant to rally those in our community who
have been dead set against “commercial” rap music for years
to say, “he’s right!!” When they know all too well that unless
rap music goes by the name of Wells Fargo and other banks who
duped Black homeowners into subprime mortgages, that unless
it is the music of those police officers who go against their duty
to harm and murder Black citizens of all ages and many other
ills - the argument is not one of lasting substance. Notice that 
Geraldo and others with Fox News and their ilk are pointedly going
after Kendrick Lamar. They go after Killer Mike. Talib Kweli. Why?
Because these artists have actually cut through the commercially
profitable rap played on so many radio stations to give the people
honest and raw accounts from the streets. You know, how rap on
a whole used to be before 1995. And many are getting hip to it.
Are there negative scenarios and issues that plague rap and the
culture? Yes. Are they the total destruction of the Black community?
Of course not. But that’s cognitive dissonance - hold onto an idea
so tightly that critical thinking is rendered mute and any attempt to
fix it is swatted away. It proves that the fear of a better informed public
is growing more and more by the day among the elitists and those
who aid them for their own gains. And its also more proof that the 
real spirit behind the culture of hip-hop, one that informs and uplifts
in a variety of messages with skill and growth, is finding its tide to rise
upon just in time for folks to get behind.