>you call that "blood money"? there's a pretty >big difference b/t selling DMX records and >selling crack IMO. crack physically harms
>the user, can harm their
>unborn children if they get
>pregnant, often influences its users
>to steal to support its
>purchase, encourages violence as a
>tool for market management ("running
>the block")...I can't see how
>you can seriously compare that
>with selling a DMX CD...

What's the difference btwn cigarettes/alcohol & crack - except the fact that cigarettes/alcohol kill more people than all the narcotics combined? So if you work for a company that also sell cigarettes/alcohol or if you buy from a store that sell cigarettes/alcohol, you are supporting drug dealers. But you do what you have too to get by (which is the same excuse the brother selling rock gives). Wanna see violence, let them prohibit cigarettes/alcohol.

Now you guys have to pick a side, either you believe that DMX types are negative & wrong or you don't. If you truly believe that they are wrong then why would you support the companies that put these products out by buying other products they sell...so they can put out more DMX type shit? Why, because you do what you have too to get what you want or feel you need (same exucse the brother selling rock gives).

>Legally, they're all wrong.

The content argument about DMX or the Hot Boys in not a legal one, its about morality. There are many legal acts that are immoral. We pay taxes to a government we know is pouring drugs into our neighborhoods...that is complicity. My point is that people use mad different measuring sticks for morality based on nothing more than personal agenda. If you truly believe that our main problem is brothas selling drugs on the corner but steady send in tax money for the government who responsible for putting the drugs in their hands, you are a hypocrite - plain & simple.
>
>I disagree here. You can't compare selling CDs to selling crack, I'm sorry.

When the companies are using manufactures that engage in the worst human rights/moral violations just to make your precious cds (clothes, computer parts, cars, etc.) - you sure fucking can. Tell it to the pregnant women & children locked up in these sweat shops for days (for example).

>Most poeple don't ruly live by their own moral >standards, yet feel perfectly justified in >critiquing another individual's choices.
>
>What a generalization.

So you feel that most people live by the moral standards they claim to have in all areas of their lives? Fine. But I look around this world & I know that it wouldn't be this way if that were true & the violators aren't just rappers & corner drug dealers. When people take their kids to water parks when people are dying of thirst right across the border - to me there's a problem.

>I'm not understanding what's underlying your
>argument.

It seems quite clear, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The disagreement is in who & what is morally wrong. I feel many of the ones complaining about lyrics like to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own complicity by denying it or the extent of that complicity.

>Most social movements are based on agitating >against what some perceive as a "moral wrong".
>Moral activism is a proud part of the black tradition.

No disagreement.

>Why should we limit our moral outrage to racism, for example?

didn't say we should.

Why can't we express moral outrage at certain lyricism?

you can but I suggest that people atleast be consistent - and I can't see where that is the case. Ie: check all the "so what" posts re: Common's (supposed?) anti-gay comments.

Besides, I am expressing moral outrage - at the what I see is hyprocrisy, blatant elitism/classism.