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| Love & Hip Hop Cast |
"Love & Hip Hop" exploits the dysfunctional relationships and lives of six black women. The six women are all involved with hip hop entertainers, who only bring them pain wether its leaving them to be single mothers or failing to be faithful. The drama of this show intrigues many Americans who like myself often make fun or ridicule them all. However my eyes were opened to my own disfunction after reading Brainwashed by Tom Burrell. Tom Burrell's novel encouraged me to question why I found "Love & Hip Hop" so intriguing? Why was I entertained by the chaotic lives of suffering black women? Why was I blindly accepting the stereotype that "Blacks Can't Form Strong Families" (argued in Brainwashed Chapter 2). And lastly how can I disengage from this self loathing behavior and learn to up lift my race.
As more and more mondays went by I found it harder to watch "Love & Hip Hop" because of what I learned on the black inferiority complex and how my race especially black women, were brainwashed to believe that they couldn't achieve marital and family bliss. I was disgusted that I naively agreed to this condition and I wanted to change the stereotype that blacks "...accept and share these perceptions without question or qualm" (Burrell 33). So what I could I do to change? I started informing my friends that "Love & Hip Hop" was bad for our state of mind and in order to not accept the black inferiority complex we must not watch the show. I realized that by watching the show I not only accepted black dysfunction as normal I was contributing to the strong self-hatred present in the black community. So instead of tuning into "Love & Hip Hop" I watched "Black Girls Rock" and intensely read Brainwashed to become more aware of the burden my people faced and how to overcome it. Watching shows like "Love & and Hip Hop" not only encourages Americans to continue to accept black inferiority, but also allows African Americans to expect our race to be dysfunctional. I don't want to accept or expect these negatives stereotypes of my race so since I have realized the problem, I will now encourage my race to not associate themselves with this kinda of entertainment.
