Domestic Violence & the Hip Hop Community Guest Host Marcus Culvert of UNITY WEAR

Domestic Violence & Community An article called "Love Hurts", was recently published in Vibe magazine, discussing the occurrence of domestic violence within the hip hop community. The author, Elizabeth Mendez Berry (one of our readers!) asks several important questions about whether hip hop lyrics that condone/discuss violence against women, actually cause violence against women. "When you get paid big money to call every women a ho, at what point do you start believing you're a pimp?" She also talks about many famous rappers, including Biggie, Dr. Dre, Busta Rhymes, Mystikal, and Big Pun, who have all been accused of violence against there partners. "Violence against women crosses class and racial line, but it affects certain groups disproportionately... [One] academic study indicates that partner abuse against Latino women is 50 percent higher than among white women. Minorities are less likely to talk about it, however. "Communities find it easier to focus on oppression that comes from outside than on what we do to ourselves," says Dr. Oliver Williams, executive director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community. The complex legacy of racism has given gender dynamics a particular twist in communities of color, according to Marcus Flowers, 28, a community educator and trainer at Atlanta's Men Stopping Violence. "Because of socioeconomic factors, African American men have a harder time fulfilling the protector and provider roles, so they overcompensate in other areas," says Flowers. "They focus on wielding power they can-in their own communities and in their intimate relationships." Author and activist Kevin Powell has called this "bootleg masculinity"-and hip hop's studio pimps and gangstas are it's poster children. "Of course hip hop didn't create violence against women, but it can endorse and accelerate it," says Powell, who admits that he has himself been violent toward women in the past