I think the author of the article “Blacks held back by gangsta culture and Nelly” is easily as misled by the mass media as any black person from the inner city I’ve ever met. To begin, asserting that something as intangible as a single black culture exists is about as ridiculous as the idea that there’s such a thing as one dominant Caucasian culture.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that as a white guy from Minnesota, the author has never really spent much time in the “black communities in the inner city.”

Before the blame for black underachievement is placed solely on blacks, take a look at the world in which poor blacks are raised. This is a world in which the media tells them that they can’t succeed and that their only way out of the ghetto is to rap or play a sport.

I’m not saying that the author doesn’t have a point about the gangsta culture, but I think it’s uninformed to place the blame for it squarely on black people themselves. To imply that “we” produced Nelly is absurd. Last I checked, there’s an entire white dominated industry responsible for the promotion and distribution of so-called black music.

And last I checked, there were plenty of other types of predominantly black music that don’t involve bling-bling. But guess what — money, sex, drugs and violence sell in America, and blacks aren’t the demographic who produce or purchase the majority of it.

Mr. Peterson’s article is heavy with generalization and light on facts. The author attempts to hedge by throwing some blame in the direction of suburban white kids, but ask yourself, are suburban white kids who buy into this “culture of vulgarity” failing to succeed? Are they ending up in prison in record numbers?

And by the way, I sure hope we black people have produced something of importance since jazz.

Alan Johnson

Senior

Computer Engineering