Maurice’s Final Assignment Desricption

My topic is criminalization of African American men through rap music and films. I chose this because being a young African American male who listens to rap music on a daily basis and has been since a very young age, I understand that rappers talk about things that are very prominent in the black community, and not always in the most positive way. Also because many movies portray black men in various ways that are all criminalized. And because of this, not only will people outside of the race create their own skewed image of the  African American male, but so will the young African American men that listen to this music and watch these movies. They are trying to figure out their own identity , and sometimes they end up conforming to the stereotypes that will come from the people that created these images. This can be very life threatening for those that choose to imitate these representations of black men that are seen as “hostile” or “dangerous”. And it also dangerous for the African American men that do not make this choice, but will still be looked at as if they are all the same. The three keywords I will be applying are race, representation, and stereotype. The pieces of media I will be choosing are music and films. The music will be rap music from as early as the 1980’s to present day from black artist. The movies that I will take clips from are Boyz In The Hood (1991), Menace II Society (1993), and Paid In Full (2002).