an unrealistic trope of authenticity fueled by market driven expectations. However, a student experiment, by Bean and Moni (2003) used urban fiction to motivate critical discourse concerning racial images and messages. They offered the storylines as a way to challenge negative representations and cultural stereotypes, along with questioning beliefs about identity. Gibson (2016) taking that same approach discovered that African American girls were able to demonstrate some of the critical literacy skills necessary to challenge such stereotypes and problematic representations in urban/street fiction.
When problematic images and messages are promoted and accepted through the publishing industry, researchers, librarians, and teachers racialism is at work. There is no denying that The Coldest Winter Ever (1999) by Sista Souljah was the catalyst for popularizing urban fiction. And the problem, as Fugate expressed earlier, was that the main character, Winter, had absolutely no growth in the story. She was stupid at the beginning of the book and stupid at the end.
Book stores today are filled with ghettofabulous stories about black inner-city life that promotes ignorance and glorifies violence. Some of the obvious titles include: Thugs and the Women Who Love Them (Clark, 2002), Crackhead and Crackhead II (Lennox, 2012a, b), Murderville (Coleman, 2012), Gangsta (K’wan, 2014), The Dopeman’s Wife (Coleman, 2014), and Nasty Girls (Gray, 2007).
Munshi (2015) wrote about an urban fiction couple Ashley and Jarvis Coleman. Not only do they write urban/street fiction, but they met in a ghettofabulous way. According to the article in Financial Times, Jarvis was sixteen-years-old, running from the police when he threw nine ounces of cocaine into 15-year-old Ashley’s back yard. Ashley stashed the drugs for him and they have been together ever since. The couple started out reading urban fiction books together, then one day they decided to write one, Today, they each write approximately 5,000 words daily finishing a book in approximately three weeks. This is one of the many criticisms concerning urban/street fiction, the lack of quality. A book written in three weeks usually reads like it was written in three weeks.
Ghettofabulous in News
The unique difference when it comes to thinking about ghettofabulous in the news is that the news is real. In his song “Ghetto Fabulous,” Dr. Dre says no matter how much money you make you have to stay true to the game. Halnon (2011) argues ←30 | 31→that the way to stay true is to situate oneself in materialistic culture while at the same time maintaining authenticity which means keeping a connection to the street.
On the consumer side this means that media representations of the black ghetto require certain realities to support the popular image such as real thugs, real gangs, real gangbanging, real drug dealing, and the real selling of women … the authentic value of black ghetto cool is contingent upon the harsh material realities of everyday African American inner-city life. (p. 4)
The crossover between pop culture images of the ghetto and the real inner city are very important. Loury (1998) wrote that the legacy of slavery lingers in our cities’ ghettos. He believes there is problem with the color line when it comes to the lower class.
These black ghetto dwellers are a people apart, susceptible to stereotyping, stigmatized for their cultural styles, isolated socially, experiencing an internalized sense of helplessness and despair, with limited access to communal networks of mutual assistance. Their purported criminality, sexual profligacy, and intellectual inadequacy are the frequent objects of public derision. In a word, they suffer a pariah status. It should not require enormous powers of perception to see how this degradation relates to the shameful history of black-white race relations in this country. (Loury, 1998)
We see this pariah status in the news often. For example, one news headline reads, “In Chicago, One Weekend, 66 shooting victims and Zero Arrests” (Oppel & Harmon, 2018). The article reports that the shootings were concentrated on the west and south sides of the city which are areas known for high crime and high levels of gang activity. Another headline, “Baltimore is the Nation’s Most Dangerous City” was in USA Today. It cites city officials as saying that gangs and drug activity are responsible for the high crime numbers (Madhani, 2018). A third headline from FiveThirtyEight speaks for itself, “Black Americans are Killed at 12 Times the Rate of People in Other Developed Countries” (Silver, 2015).
In his memoir, rapper and actor Ice T said crime is about making easy money, “There is something sexy about crime because it takes a lot of courage to fuck the system.”
On mass media screens today, whether television or movies, mainstream work is usually portrayed as irrelevant, money is god, and the outlaw guy who breaks the rules prevails. Contrary to the notion that black males are lured by the streets, mass media in patriarchal culture has already prepared them to seek themselves in the streets, to find their manhood in the streets, by the time they are six years old. (hooks, 2004, p. 27)
←31 | 32→
Dixon’s research (2008) suggests that exposure to the network news often confirms black stereotypes such as blacks are poor and intimidating. Oliver’s study (2003) suggests that the power of black male stereotypes is real and examined how black men are often misidentified and assumed guilty based on bias frames. When crime victims were white, eye witnesses often described black suspects in stereotypical terms according to a study from the University of British Columbia. In that study, Jacobs (2016) found that white victims and black perpetrators tended to be seen through a stereotypical lens, specifically when it came to the more violent crimes.
Images in the news also send certain messages concerning black culture generally. Wing (2017) argues that the mainstream media sometimes treats white killers better than black victims. He reviewed a plethora of news stories that demonstrated how officials seemed dismissive or unsympathetic to black victims some even blaming them for their own deaths. Wing’s research showed that stories about black victims become character assassinations, while white criminals are written from a more positive and empathetic perspective. The article, included examples for black victims like, “Montgomery’s latest Victim had a history of narcotics abuse, tangles with the law” (Ala.com, 2014), “Travon Martin was suspended from school three times” (NBC News, 2013), and “Police: Warren shooting victim was a gang member” (WKBN, 2014). Along with examples for white criminals, “Santa Barbara Shooting: Suspect was soft spoken, polite, a gentleman, ex-principal says” (Whittier Daily News, 2014), “Oregon School Shooting Suspect fascinated with guns but was a devoted Morman, his friends say” (FOX News, 2014), and “Ala. Suspect brilliant, but social misfit” (Lubbock-Avalanche Journal, 2010).
An extensive study on news and opinion media conducted by Dixon (2017) found that many outlets misrepresent blacks in association with criminality, poverty, welfare recipients, and generally instability. His two-year study reviewed more than 800 news stories reported distorted representations, inaccurate information, and racially biased coverage which is a serious problem. Finally, Jan (2017) explains that media outlets routinely show poor black families as dependent and disfunctional while white families are usually depicted as stable. She cites a 2017 report by racial justice organization Color of Change that suggests political rhetoric and public policy are often fueled by stereotypes like absentee fathers, criminality and poverty in the inner city.
Ghettofabulous in Rap Music
In real life, according to a report by Lewis (2015), rapper Brandon Duncan known as Tiny Doo was charged with nine counts of gang conspiracy and faces 25 years in prison. Although Duncan did not shoot anyone, he was apparently linked to the gang responsible for a number of shootings when his mixed tape was released a year later. ←32 | 33→Because a couple of his songs described the murders in detail the prosecutor added Duncan to the court order. This means, if the gang is convicted, the prosecutor plans to argue that Duncan promoted and benefitted from their illegal acts (Lewis, 2015).
Just like Duncan, other rappers have found it difficult to break the link between real crime and rap music. As a matter
