Rap, Race and Social Class

I heard the crime writer Dreda Mitchell on the radio at the weekend, so of course I looked her up. This article in The Guardian makes a nice point about the social position and impact of rap music. Here’s a chunk of Mitchell’s article:

“The real problem with rap is that far from undermining society’s values it’s reinforcing them, and the most fundamental of all our society’s values at the moment is that you are what you own. Commercial rap’s money and success ethic won’t do any harm to middle-class youth; they have access to the professions and property where they can participate in it. For working-class youngsters, taught by our culture since the 1970s that they’re losers and failures, it’s part of a profoundly poisonous cocktail of attitudes. Pride and self-respect are at the heart of this debate and it’s the lack of those, or the wrong sort, that’s really driving the violence on our streets.”