“No Whites Allowed”

I’m tearing through “Ruthless”, rap impressario Jerry Heller’s memoir of his days managing N.W.A. The book is a stunning chronicle of the gangsta rap movement, not to mention late-80’s urban social dynamics. Heller was a classic rock executive who found himself at 45 sleeping on his parent’s couch, entirely disillusioned with the post-disco corporate takeover of the music industry. He got back in the game distributing local funk and early hip-hop records out of a warehouse on Santa Monica and Vine, when an alleged crack dealer from Compton named Eric Wright paid one of his associates $750 to meet him. Wright was putting together a rap group with a local Compton pop producer who turned out to be Dr. Dre (those pics of Dre in the sequinced jumper were really him), and a high school kid named O’Shea Jackson who spent the hour long bus ride from Compton to Taft High School each day writing fuming lyrics about life in the ghetto (and called himself Ice Cube). Heller asked Wright the name of his group:

Eazy-E: “N.W.A.”

Heller: “What’s that stand for? No Whites Allowed?”

Eazy-E: “Close enough.”

Below check out the group’s classic appearance on “Arsenio”, barely a month after N.W.A. got a letter from the F.B.I. condemning their music.

Yes We Kant

Immanuel Kant opined that “things which are beyond value have dignity“. Dignity has always been an ill-defined and ephemreal quality, but channelling the great Justice Potter Stewart, I know it when I see it. The fact that Stewart’s foregoing recitation was originally applied to obscenity is very telling of the nature of human existence and (hopefully) this blog. Dualism aside, dignity has always been a quality associated with the American experience and one that I find much more tangible than “freedom”. Dignity has been fairly detached from the political establishment since Watergate and reached its nadir during a recent period I feel no further need to document.

Our current President’s detractors are mystified by his appeal and the sometimes dogmatic following he attracts. John McCain childishly railed against it as “celebrity” (like that was going to be accepted in the negative) and the Snide Society bristles away at the nationa’s subjugation to “The One”. In their desperation and frustration, they may fail to notice the explanation right beneath their noses. That which Kant lauded and which we typically take for granted. Dignity. As the administration’s chosen conservative chronicler David Brooks puts it eloquently below, restoring the nation’s dignity, and that of the political establishment in general, has transcended policy and politics.

But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.