Yo Momma: MTV Tarzan Takes the Ghetto by Storm
by Lloyd Williams

“You’re momma’s so lazy, the last time she had a job, the minimum wage was slavery.”
– White winner insulting black loser on MTV

In the climactic showdown in the movie 8 Mile, the character Rabbit humiliates his hapless black opponent in a rap contest staged right in the ‘hood in which they take turns ridiculing each other. Of course, since Eminem was the star of this supposedly autobiographical vehicle, everybody expected the white guy to get the better of the brother.

Recently, MTV debuted a new reality series entitled “Yo Momma” ostensibly inspired by the sort of braggadocio found not only in 8 Mile, but in the average hip-hop music video. Picture an unplugged version of gangsta rap, trash talk sans samples and beats, where all you hear is the loudmouth shouting.

The basic format has the host visiting a couple of different L.A. neighborhoods to find the most gifted trash talker on the block between the ages of 18-22. Then he has the two best square-off in a no-holds-barred finale where they mercilessly denigrate each other’s mothers on national television in order to walk away with a measly grand prize of $1000.

Though only on the air for a few weeks, the show has already shot up the charts, and presently enjoys the third highest rating among all cable programs in the coveted teen demographic. Given its sudden popularity, I decided to check out an episode and was frankly quite shocked at the offensive repartee, which struck me as almost deliberately designed to antagonize and inflame along ethnic lines, especially the insensitive barbs aimed at blacks by white participants.
“You’re mother is like an SUV, big, black with room for six construction workers inside,” went a winning quip leveled by a great white hope named Harp at a dumbstruck black kid who couldn’t think of a clever comeback. So the fast and furious abuser only escalated the attack with, “You’re mother gave birth to a black Shrek. That’s why you look like a [expletive]-ing ogre” and “You’re mother’s so old and fat, it wasn’t the Underground Railroad till she sat on it.”
I know that “playing the dozens” is an age-old oral tradition, but excuse me for asking exactly when did it become socially-acceptable, let alone cool, for a Caucasian to pervert African-American culture by resorting to every hurtful stereotype about slavery and skin color and in the most mean-spirited fashion he can think of? Worse, why, at the end of the day, is he proclaimed “King of the Hill” as if a modern-day Tarzan or kimosabe capable of conquering the slums?

Tragically, in one generation, the defining anthem of African-American youth has gone from asserting, “I’m black and I’m proud,” to being exogenously defined as the good-natured butt of racist jokes in demeaning tirades with punchlines like “You’re mother’s so black, they use her bath water to dye bowling balls.”

If you’re a responsible parent, you might want to monitor closely what your child is watching on television, because if we’ve learned nothing else from all the misogyny, self-hatred, self-destruction, conspicuous consumption, celebration of black-on-black street violence, and general jive superficiality running rampant in the rapidly vanishing Hip-Hop Generation, it’s that it doesn’t take very long for an impressionable young mind to become what it beholds.
And a mind is a terrible thing to lose.
http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur26236.cfm

Lloyd Williams is an attorney and a member of the bar in NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.

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