5. Hip-Hop & Black Identity (The Obama Effect)
And now all of a sudden, we've fallen in love with the prospect of new leadership, specifically of color. So to point in the direction of how he could influence black conservatism, when hip hop got a hold of Obama, his celebration really put a stamp on the issues of classism that we as a community have. And I think it's muddled with success, like I said before. Now, when Jeezy released that song, my president is black and my lambo is blue
We can see the growth of different people in different political organizations where we see more black conservatives arising and being outright like assimilating the culture of white politics, white bigoted politics that they don't deem bigoted as black people representing these things. They believe it as an alternative of ideology due to the fact that Democrats did not live up to the expectations that we would like after getting a civil rights bill passed by Lyndon Bain Johnson and then getting a black president by way of Obama
It's really a fascinating portrait, this Boondocks episode, and it furthers my argument of the dynamic of black conservatism spawning from Obama and the use of hip hop as a tool to put him on this pedestal regardless of whether he would succeed as a president or not, or by definition of what exactly is succeed
Then you have these fascinating figures like Oprah Winfrey and these figures like Steve Harvey, whom the black community do like and have a relationship with in terms of both success and identity that straddle this line between popularity and entertainment and conservative values, even though they don't outright say it. Oprah has always had a very odd relationship with hip hop. And it's not that black people aren't allowed to like rap music
