Billboard Ad Removed Amid Controversy
Let me preface this by clarifying that I am one of the most peace lovin', gun hating, socialist, damn-dirty-hippies you will ever meet. I am as liberal and socially permissive as one person can be without disappearing to some clandestine hippy detention facility in the Balkans. (God bless the patriot act. Please don't arrest me. I had nothing to do with the fecal flinging incident at the White House. I swear.)
But I digress, back to guns: The main issue with this billboard, which displays a successful black rap artist (50 Cent) holding a gun in one hand and a microphone in the other, is that it is pasted on billboards and buildings towering over predominately black neighborhoods in southern Los Angeles. Activists claim that the billboard is showing urban black youth that gun violence is ok, because one of their 'role models' appears to be using one on a daily basis.
My argument is that celebrities are not responsible for gun violence in any community. If a teenager gets his hands on a gun, his parents and teachers are to blame, not Snoop Dog, not 50 Cent, not Dr. Dre, or any one else. His or her environment is to blame.
Why was there no controversy over these billboards?
If anyone is supposed to be a 'role model' it should be the Governor of your state, right?
Is the controversy because most white, middle class people already associate black men with gun violence? Or is it really that the community is already so weary from constant gang shootings, and drug related gun violence that they don't need anything else giving young black men the idea that it is ok to carry and use a hand gun? How much influence does one billboard have anyway?
As far as I know, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold haven't caused an increase in gun violence among white kids. Why is 50 Cent now the gun violence whipping boy in the southern LA black community?
50AngelinaBradBillboard
posted by abbiapple at 1:51 PM
2 Comments:
The only problem I have with it is that it positions RICH over the gun, and DIE TRYING over the microphone, suggesting if you want get rich, working ain't the way to do it.
Other than that, a billboard coming down while the kids juke around with iPods full of "whore" "fuck" and violence shows we are so far from admitting what the problem is in black culture a hundred Bill Cosbys wouldn't make a dent.
It's kind of pointless to take it down. Do the people that protest the billboard think that the kids in that area get their perceptions of violence from rappers or from their home and street lives?
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