For people of color, the economy's slide has been especially hard: Last month's census data saw poverty numbers rising for all Americans, but especially for blacks. A quarter of African-Americans are living in poverty.
It's one of the reasons why the Army-Source campaign infuriates Kitwana. "The Army is providing jobs, and I think that is a good thing, but we have to put that in context: Why does our country not have jobs for young people?" he asks, pointing out that unemployment rates for black youth are twice the rates for whites.
"One of the things that [African-Americans in the Army] complain about is that we're over here helping these people, and that's all good, but when we come back home, the hood is fucked up," says Kitwana, who researched the military's economic effect on young African-Americans for "The Hip-Hop Generation." "We can be using this same energy to get drugs out of our community, to redevelop the economic infrastructure. It feels empty, as important as it is, to know that we're going back home to that."
"Look at it as the Army returning to that community a better person and a leader in that community," counters Nickerson. "Young Americans who join the Army leave the Army a better person."
Chris White, the Source's vice president of corporate sales, says there's nothing to criticize about its partnership with the Army. The Source is just helping an important Source advertiser get its message out to kids. "The Army has made a very strong advertising commitment for the year," he says, adding that these days, advertisers are more interested in marketing partnerships, like the Army-Source deal, than just buying ad pages. "Clients want more than just an ad page in a magazine," White says. "This is our first foray into doing cool marketing programs with the Army, and it's our hope that it leads to a bigger relationship." (Calls to the Source's editorial staff were not returned.)
The Nappy Roots, one of this year's most popular hip-hop groups who traveled to the Middle East this summer on the USO tour, don't see a problem with the use of hip-hop in the Army's campaigns. "I think a lot of poor folks go into the service because that's the only way out for a better education, better jobs, and seeing the world," says the Nappy Roots' Big V. "It's their only way to travel. Everybody can't be a musician or a successful doctor or lawyer."
Some young people in the Army's target demographic agree: "The Army gives young people opportunities, especially urban people," says Sterling Canter, 23, of Brooklyn. "It's not all about killing. There's an upside to it."
"Joining the Army is a personal choice," agrees Devon Edmeade, 25, also of Brooklyn. "Even if Jay-Z was passing out enlistment papers, I'm not joining. But still -- it's a choice. They use hip-hop to market beer and clothes. So why not the Army? I think it's cool."
But isn't it a paradox that hip-hop -- now a culture, but one based on a genre of music rooted in inner-city resistance to the white majority -- is being used to sell the military to African-Americans? Well, sort of, say critics like Werner and Bakari. In many ways hip-hop's past has little to do with its present. The last decade has seen hip-hop evolve from gangsta rap, which reveals the hard-knock life of the projects, to a celebratory bling-blingism that fetishizes personal acquisition and the lifestyles of the rich and famous. From Biggie Smalls' yacht cruise in 1997's "Hypnotize" (arguably the watershed moment for the so-called bling-bling era) to Busta Rhymes' shill for his favorite liqueur in 2003's "Pass the Courvoisier," it's a bit hard to argue that hip-hop shouldn't be used for marketing purposes, or to draw the line between acceptable or unacceptable uses of hip-hop.
"What has hip-hop been used for? To market mainstream capitalist culture," says Werner. "The contradiction is that mainstream capitalist culture is what's keeping those kids who need the military as an escape poor. The capitalist system wants to create a desperate labor market. It wants to create a situation in which a whole lot of people with real talent are so damn desperate just to make a living that they're not going to think about the terms on which they're offered that living. You're signing up to perpetuate the same system that put you in the position where you had no alternative except to sign up."
Franz Mullings, 20, a student at the New York City Technical College, agrees. "I don't think they should exploit hip-hop to get people to join the Army," he says. "Hip-hop's not what the government is about. They don't care about people in the hood. They don't come around when things are going down. They shouldn't exploit our culture."
It's not the Army's place to address or solve these issues, says Muse Cordero Chen's Martin. "I know very few marketing campaigns that have been able to vault over and satisfy solutions for specific larger social problems," he says. "Our goal is to present the Army as an option for career advancement, as a life alternative, and as a way to represent one solution out of many for African-Americans specifically. If someone's looking for a way out of their current position, the Army presents a very compelling argument."
For Rangel, it's not just the message -- it's the medium. "It's so unfair to people who don't have an even playing field in this country to give them the option to run around in Hummers and play hip-hop games," he says, "when, at the end of the day, what you're talking about is putting their life on the line."
About the writer
Whitney Joiner is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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