Cultural Criticism of Rap

 

Rap has persevered in the decades since the decline of its predecessors, the end of what used to be called Black music, in the 1980s, in conjunction with the predominance of pop music, which had been manufactured and sanitised to maximise sales. Only once the music scene became totally dominated by music which had no relation to anything outside of its bubble do we find rappers could lay claim to authenticity. The success of so-called 'Gangsta Rap' comes down to its drawing upon a certain view of the lives led by the Black American under-class. The fact that these rappers then go on to celebrate their success in a rags-to-riches narrative meshes well with the false promise of meritocracy. We now live with the worst of both worlds, where it seems no one is pushing boundaries far enough.



Womb Wars.

Since the beginning of 2012 we have heard the usual blather about welfare 'reform' (a most dodgy word in political language) with the defenders of family values reserving a particularly cold place for single-mums. The Conservative Party have pushed for a cap housing benefit at £26,000 on commonsense grounds of "fairness". Of course, this isn't nearly enough for the gutter-press which would like to see the whole benefits system scrapped followed by the swift return of workhouses. It would hit large families hardest even if they have managed to find cheap housing outside of London. There are now pushes in Newham to boot the poor out of London altogether. Clearly the London City-State is just for the ultra-rich to swan around in limousines. The next kick was to single-mothers in a bid to make them pay for trying to get child support from their former partners.

Even though it makes far more sense to cap private rents in London, at least in the short-term, as everyone knows that the rent is too damn high! Of course it isn't enough to cap rents, there needs to be serious public investment in affordable housing. And yet the Conservatives have no time for this discussion. It's just assumed that the problem is that they haven't gone far enough. But there's plenty of ink and phlegm to be wasted on calls for an end to dependency culture. There's even been time to entertain nonsense about morality legislation. We've seen Nadine Dorries, that arch-custodian of the sacred foetus, go after sex education in the wake of failure on her campaign to sledgehammer the right to choose. This is the politics of reaction at work again, it has nothing to do with any moral values. Whenever politicians talk of 'family' you should expect an attack on women to follow.

This is where class and sex converge, where feminism and leftism are conjoined at the hip. Everyone knows the word "proletariat", but not every rascal with a Marxian phrase book know that the term is derivative of the Latin for "offspring". Terry Eagleton reminds us that it referred to those who were too poor to serve the state with anything other than their wombs. Too deprived to contribute to economic life in any other way, these women produced labour power in the form of children. Society demanded reproduction, not production from these women. The proletariat was originally outside the workplace, not within it, just like the single-mother living on benefits. But the work these women endured was a lot more painful than breaking boulders. The average worker is a woman in the world today, as it was in the days of Marx and Engels when Britain was the workshop of the world.

As the workers' movement suffers in this time of regression, so do women. We can see this in America. The Georgia House has passed a 'foetal pain' bill that stipulates women must continue to carry to term a stillborn baby as pigs and cows do. The lot who think its proper that a women should die in back-alley abortion clinics to save a foetus have seen victories recently with 'Let woman die' bills. There are businesses spying on potential employees and judge them in accordance with their use of birth-control. This is the nation partly founded by Aaron Burr who hung a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft in his office and insisted that his daughter be educated at the same standard as a man. And we expect this of women for no reward. It's not like we recognise motherhood as work, so many of us don't think the raising of children has any worth at all that we support cuts to child benefit. It's just something women do for free, like a lot of wonderful things.

We've seen people like Rick Santorum pop up, an Opus Dei Republican who believes that life begins at erection. The sort of lunatic who is opposed to abortion in cases of rape. This comes from a man with no kind of social conscience at all. He wants to legislate what consenting adults do in the bedroom. The state can intrude into that area, but not emancipate individuals from wage labour. Santorum's rotten mind fixated on the rigidity of hierarchy and the strength of authority. It is no coincidence that Santorum's politics consist of a return to theoconservative values with the state as a nanny for the rich, a bludgeon of the poor and of the foreign. It isn't coincidental, the opposition to the vital freedom, for women, over their rate of reproduction fits neatly into this platform of sadism. It's about making sin fun again for a privileged few in a way.

As noted by Peter Singer if abortion was illegal then it would be poor women who die from botched abortions in droves whereas well-off women can travel to another country in search of the treatment. Think of the number of people who travel to Switzerland in order to commit suicide. Clearly, the value of life only applies to some in the world of Nadine Dorries. The sacred foetus trumps mummy almost every time I'm afraid to say. Of course, when mummy can fly out to another country and hire a doctor to perform the procedure without a coat-hanger then a blind eye will be turned. Furthermore, as women gain greater control over their lives economically then they're less likely to get pregnant. In a society where there are greater opportunities, better education and better pay for women there will be less children born but there will be less abortions too. Primates like Mr Santorum are unable to see this, men like this have no right to claim to be "pro-life".

The Debt of Self-Made Men.

An American Mythology.

It was an interesting sight earlier this year to see Newt Gingrich rail against the "vulture capitalism" of Mitt Romney. The insinuation is that the Massachusetts moderate was in on gobbling up the profits gained out of laying-off thousands of American workers in the 1980s. It was a welcome criticism frankly. But it was also bizarre to hear this coming from a prominent conservative Republican. A Democrat could not take such a stance on a Republican opponent and be left standing without being dubbed a 'socialist'. Certainly the Republicans do not oppose such rapacious market forces that allowed Romney to enrich himself. Not just because the notion of a free-market is what flows through the veins of American conservatism. But it has to be stressed that each of the candidates for the nomination are essentially parasites. And this is actually representative of the primary constituents of the Republican Party - specifically, the filthy rich.

You have to remember that the United States of America would not exist if it weren't for a process of genocide, slavery and war which laid the groundwork for capitalism. The apologists of the free-market paint a picture of a society of self-owning individuals who earn in proportion to their own merits. So the capitalists are the people who have risen to the top of the system through their own efforts. This is a picture which conveniently excludes a lot of history. The system of private property was established through theft and violence. This is what the supposed market society of meritorious men is built upon. The legitimate right to property is predicated on an illegitimate and immoral act. No account of the exchange and accumulation of private property can justify the transformation of what was unowned into what can be owned. If the system was established through theft, rape and murder how can decent conduct justify that system later on?

The expropriation of the commons laid the ground for the accumulation of wealth. The workers are the creators of wealth which is then expropriated through the capitalist system, accumulated in far fewer hands and concentrated in property. This is the process which enriched Mitt Romney and has been defended by every Republican and Democratic administration. The average worker is effectively rinsed dry by these people over the course of a life time spent slaving away at work. It is in the workplace where they slave away to amass the revenue which will eventually compose the profits for the boss and the wages of the workers. This is exploitation at the fundamental level, the workers toil so that the bosses don't have to. You'll find this demystifies the notion of 'job creation' that politicians often talk about, really the word they're looking for is 'profits'. The worker will be lucky to hold onto something worth saving as they are rinsed further through passive consumerism.

You will know the justifications for all of this off by heart. You might tell yourself that this is just the way the world works, it's human nature. Supposedly, after thousands of years we discover our nature is best expressed in a system we've only just discovered in the last 200 years. You will tell yourself that if the poor didn't have to work then they wouldn't. If this were true, as Karl Marx would remind us, "bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work." The workers must work for a wage, so that the rich don't have to. Capitalism requires poverty then, not to make sure people work hard but to keep one class working for the gain of another class. The system is indebted to feudalism and slavery, which provided the material conditions for its prosperity. Even if the capitalists are 'self-made' the end of capitalism and class are still justified.

What the Schmoo?

I'm going to start with a story which was told by the American cartoonist Al Capp. The story is about a creature called the Schmoo. The Schmoo was 10 inches high and something like a pear in shape and a beautiful creamy white in colour, it had no arms, tiny feet and big whiskers under it's nose. The Schmoo had only one desire, to serve the needs of human beings and it was well-equipped to do so. Its skin could be made into any kind of fabric. Its flesh was edible. Its dead body could go brick-hard and be used for building. And its whiskers, well its whiskers had more uses than you can imagine. If you looked at a Schmoo with real hunger in your eye it dropped dead in rapture because you wanted it, after first cooking itself into your favourite flavour.

Well, since they multiplied rapidly there were plenty of Schmoos for everybody and they even looked good in the environment. Almost everyone approved of the Schmoos. But some people weren't keen on them. The rich capitalists hated the Schmoos. Since Schmoos provided everything people needed nobody had to work for capitalists anymore because nobody needed to make the wages to buy the things capitalists sold. So as the Schmoos spread across the face of America the capitalists began to lose their position and their power. And this made them take drastic action. They got the government to tell the people that the Schmoo was un-American, the Schmoo was causing chaos undermining the social order, people weren't turning up for work and they weren't going to the department stores to buy anything.

Well the government propaganda convinced the people and the President ordered the FBI to gather the Schmoos and gun them down.

          GA Cohen, Against Capitalism

Race and Private Property in Clybourne Park.

Clybourne Park begins in 1959 just as Russ and Bev are selling their desirable two-bed room house in a respectable neighbourhood for a knock-down price. The low price offered by Russ enables the black family to move into a predominantly white area of Chicago, which alarms the neighbours and Russ finds himself arguing with Karl over what should be done. As the play was written in reaction to A Raisin in the Sun and that would lead us to conclude that the family about to move into the neighbourhood are the Youngers. The Youngers had come into a great deal of money and decided to move into a better neighbourhood, which just so happened to be white only to find they're not welcome. Clybourne Park then jumps forward 50 years to 2009 and the tables have been turned. Now it is a white couple, about to have a child, looking to move into the same neighbourhood, which is now predominantly black, with the intention of knocking down the same house to build their own family home.

America changed a great deal from 1959 to 2009, particularly in regards to race and property relations. In 1959 the conflict was still raging between the US and the Soviet Union and the "red scare" McCarthyist witch-hunts were still in the back of people's minds. Typically Karl invokes the Soviet Union when Russ tells him to leave. JFK, the first Catholic President, was about to be elected. The Civil Rights movement had just got started, segregation was still in place in the US and African-Americans were still deprived of the right to vote. Fast-forward 50 years and there is a black family in the White House, a presidential palace built by slaves. The references to the Korean war are swapped for references to the war in Iraq, from the Cold War to the "War on Terrorism". Kevin has three relatives fighting abroad and has a support the troops attitude to the war. Russ and Bev left Clybourne Park to get away from the house where their son Kenneth hung himself after coming home from the Korean war.

Since 1959 the US has become ever-increasingly unequal as the social democratic policies initiated under Roosevelt have been eroded. The brief opening of jobs and rights for African-Americans began to be closed in the 1970s when job opportunities dwindled as finance has replaced manufacturing in importance in the economy. Formally rights remain intact, but for millions of blacks these rights have been stripped away in the judicial system. The election of the first Black President has been construed to represent America's shift to a post-racial era. Thus, the elephant in the room in Act II of Clybourne Park is race and racism. The eruption of racist jokes represents just how real issues of race still are in America, whilst the patronising tone of liberals towards black people is depicted very well with hammed up acting, absurdly euphemistic language and the way characters generally avoid the elephant in the room. The flaw of liberal multiculturalism comes across clearly, we officially accept the non-invasive Other so we can go on ignoring the Other in our daily lives.

It is typical of American conservatives to advocate a meritocratic attitude of colour-blindness on matters of race, which provides a convenient platform from which affirmative action can be shot down as "racist" to white people. Note that the conservatives are colour-conscious enough to spot a black person calling for affirmative action or dares to remind white people of the injustices of the past. There are some conservatives would go even further to increase the constraints on Blackness, opposing the label 'African-American' and instead arguing that the label 'American' should be used to describe everyone. The invasive Otherness of slogans like "Black Power" unsettle conservatives, because it makes reference to black people and not coloured people, the immediate reaction is to pin the label "racist" on Malcolm X. The "colour-blindness" of the American conservatives like Ronald Reagan has space to revoke the Civil Rights act and place Nelson Mandela on a list of "terrorists".

The importance attributed to home ownership in American culture is related to liberal notions of meritocracy and private property. It's a contradiction of middle-class aspirations, colour-blindness and classlessness which collide in Clybourne Park. There is a correlation between race and class in the US: 50% of white children in the US will live on food stamps at some point in their lives whereas 90% of black children will live on food stamps. Discrimination hangs in the background of the American Dream, with the white urbanites act to "protect" the interests of the community when a black family move in next door. It was the aspirations of the family which led them to take up the opportunity of an affordable house in a respectable neighbourhood, it was a chance to make it up the ladder from one social class to another. American meritocracy was only intended to allow white people, if anyone at all, to rise up the ladder. It provides a retrospective justification for white privilege, a meritocracy in which the meritorious are almost all white by coincidence.

Interestingly, it is only after the explosion of racial tension into racist jokes and a full-blown fight that the spirit of Kenneth can leave the house. The suicide note he left for his parents remains a mystery to us. We might interpret the events in between as a vanishing mediator. From the black family moving into a white neighbourhood up to the white family moving back into the neighbourhood, which is now predominantly black, all of this had to happen in order for Kenneth's letter to be read and understood by someone. Though not by the audience. The letter is confessional in content and might offer up a catalogue of atrocities which he committed in Korea. From the thematic focus on race and private property we might surmise that the crimes in Korea may be a stand-in for a submerged history of violence in the US. Then we might infer that it is only after tensions, along the lines of race and class, have been resolved can Americans understand the past without the nostalgic filters of self-serving apple pie and freedom-loving rhetoric.

A Colour-Blind Society?

Rush Limbaugh once listed individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a colour-blind society and national security as the core tenets of the American conservative movement. Despite the claims that the American Right are "colour-blind" and are proponents of a colour-blind meritocracy - in which those most deserving rise up the ladder and the unworthy remain at the bottom of the heap - race baiting remains a tool of vilification on the Right. The American Right are "colour-blind" until a black person raises the issue of racism or past injustices suffered by African-Americans in the United States. Because in a so-called "colour-blind" society it is racist to even acknowledge black people as African-Americans, as opposed to Americans, and the same method is used to shoot down arguments for affirmative action.

Just as in the case of Reverend Wright, in which the words of a black preacher were taken out of context and used against the Obama administration, liberation theology was turned into racist psychobabble to justify raising the possibility that Obama might be a racist. It was the same right-wing commentariat that were vilifying Wright and Obama as racists, who supposedly adhere to a "colour-blind" vision of America. Of course, it was "colour-blind" conservatives like Ronald Reagan who opposed the Civil Rights act on the grounds that it infringed on the civil rights of businesses and property owners. Reagan went on to be dragged kicking and screaming into voting for a day honouring the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. But that did not stop him from putting Nelson Mandela on a list of "terrorists" in 1988.

Last week the issue of race has once again resurfaced in American politics, in a similar manner to the ACORN scandal last year, this time it was Shirley Sherrod who was the target of vilification. Andrew Breitbart, a leading conservative blogger, posted a selected excerpt of a speech by Shirley Sherrod at the NAACP (see here). In the clip it appeared as though Sherrod admitted to discriminating against a white farmer on the basis of his skin colour. Soon after right-wing pundits like Bill O'Reilly leaped on the clip as evidence that Sherrod should resign from her position in the Department of Agriculture. The clip was posted on BigGovernment.com, the same website where the selectively edited videos that brought down ACORN last year were posted. The American Right had it in for ACORN ever since the organisation endorsed Obama in 2008, the Right has propagated conspiracy theories that the election was stolen by ACORN for Obama.

Even though in the full video Shirley Sherrod tells a story of the way she felt when first worked with a white farmer - back in 1986 when she worked for a non-profit organisation - and how her immediate reaction to him was wrong. The point of the story was that she should help white farmers, because "the struggle is really about poor people" in Sherrod's own words. The fact that Sherrod's initial reaction was down to anger going back to the murder of her father in the 1960s is also ignored by the conservative media. But in the end her reaction to the white farmer, who she perceived as "talking down to her", did not go as far as outright discrimination. Sherrod actually saved the man's farm, because solidarity among poor people should transcend the "boundaries" created by centuries of racism in the US.

Sadly, it's too late as the Obama administration forced Shirley Sherrod to resign. The Democrats could be facing a rebellion by voters in November, and Obama is also looking to secure a second term, so Sherrod had to go to avoid any allegations that the Democrats are racist. Breitbart's video did it's damage and the administration looks even more vulnerable to the Atwater tactics of the Republican smear-machine. Unfortunately, the idea of a "colour-blind" society is still prevalent among white Americans and the conservative movement. This is unfortunate as such a vision would ignore past injustices, instead of compensating for them, and would exacerbate the condition of namelessness experienced by African-Americans - as a direct result of slavery which stripped them of their culture and history.

In this vision of a colourless society in which people rise in accordance with their effort there would be no room for addressing the crimes of the past. This would make this an ignorant society, one which carries no guilt and no desire for redemption to resolve the crimes on which a high standard of living enjoyed today is partly built on. It would be a society in which indifference to minorities, women and the poor as a whole would be nurtured. In a sense, it would be affirmative action for rich-white-men who have not gained their position out of effort. Very few would rise up the ladder, as they already do, and the vast majority of people would remain at the bottom. Tensions along racial, gender and economic lines would be concentrated and would fester for years to come. In short, it wouldn't be much of a society to live in if "colour-blindness" were the chosen method to deal with racism.

Related Links:

Rachel Maddow blasts Fox News over Shirley Sherrod Part 1/2

Rush Limbaugh on Sherrod with his eyes wide open 

Fault Lines: Cornel West

Cornel West on Obama and Race Part 1/2

The Willie Horton Ad and the Revolving Door Ad

Generation GTA?

The Grand Theft Auto is by far one of the most popular, if not the most popular, series of video games produced over the last 15 years. The games typically follow a male anti-hero on his journey through the underworld of an American city. Character motivation varies from revenge to greed. Common motifs include narcotics, prostitution, murder and car theft. The setting is usually a satire of a major American city like Miami, New York or Los Angeles. Of course, the games are a conservative's wet dream as the player is placed in a semi-autonomous environment where they can indulge indulge in various acts of crime, ultra-violence and general depravity. Though conservatives focus in on the violence as training children to be cold-hearted murderers. Despite the fact that 500 million copies of GTA 4 were sold in the first week of it's release and very few violent incidents have been linked to the game since it's release 2 years ago.

The self-proclaimed "culture warriors" of the United States are ignoring the exploitative aspect of the character's criminal career in relation to capitalism. This should be expected from modern conservatives in a way, as they are typically conservative on social issues. So economic exploitation and devastation would not interest the majority of them. The fact that the player takes on the role of the Randian hero, an exceptional and creative individual who will rise above the passive conformist masses. This is so because the player is more intelligent than the game and can pass the missions using their capacity to thrive in a predictable and controlled world. The player-character has an advantage over the "herds" around him, as he is not held back by simulated emotions and can plan how to dispatch pedestrians at random. This is even more true if the player has access to cheat codes, in which case not even the game's police can interfere.

The game play is characterised by a degree of "freedom" not available in most games. But this should not be mistaken for true liberty, as the freedom accessible to players is merely the ability to act autonomously in constructed environments and situations. Like with the freedom to choose, the options have already been made for you and all you have to do is take your pick. So the universe of Grand Theft Auto is one in which you can act in ways which you cannot in reality, but only as far as the game allows as part of a constructed scenario. It should be noted out that games are an unusual medium of entertainment as they actually deprive the consumer of content. This functions to keep the consumer playing for longer, in order to complete the game and acquire the desired abilities. Though once the consumer has completed they often don't want to play the game any more, as it was the competitiveness built into the game that was truly thrilling and not the "carrot" they were chasing.

After all, once the game is completed the character has gained millions of dollars, and participated in a few thousand murders, but has nothing much to spend it on except guns, prostitutes, alcohol, food etc. In a sense, the game play reveals the limits of negative liberty - the freedom from constraint - by leaving a player with meaningless choices. The consumer choices a player is confronted with are even more meaningless in a gaming environment, where one is engaging in a simulation of consumption. In many ways the games are libertarian, you are free to make choices and indulge. Ultimately, the games do not judge the player in a strictly neutral and permissive manner. But if you violate the Harm Principle - you can do what you want, so long as you harm no one - the police might come after you. In some of the later games, like GTA 4, the police even go after pedestrians and petty criminals who have attacked you. This notable advance in technology is only the step forward made by classical liberal thinkers in the 19th Century.

Despite the barrage of satirical messages in the games, the specifically political messages are often ignored by critics and reviewers. Even the "culture warriors" of America have failed to notice the "anti-American" sentiments embedded in the games. Because it is easier to accuse a game of "corrupting" the youth and instigating violence than it is to analyse its political idiosyncrasies. That takes work and may not be easily "linked" to extreme violence. It could also easily turn into a debate on American politics with liberals and conservatives engaging in the acceptable dialogue over whether or not the game is "anti-American". A debate which would not amount to much even in the likely outcome of a victory for conservatives. It would be difficult to ban a game on the grounds that it is "anti-American", whereas if the game is overly violent and sexually deviant a case can be made. The video games are works of satire in a way.

In the games American politicians are presented as sleazy, corrupt, opportunistic and cynical figures. Like all satire it carries a greater truth about politics than we can see in our day-to-day lives. It highlights what we see in politicians at the most basic level, they are all the same, liars, thieves and murderers etc. There are references to a "Jingoism act" being rammed through Congress by the government, which is an obvious allusion to the USA Patriot act. Early on in GTA 4 the bridges of Liberty City are closed off to combat terrorism. Passing pedestrians can be heard calling the government "fascist". The games even include parodies of it's critics, in GTA 4 the "culture warriors" are amalgamated into an extreme right-wing radio-show host named Richard Bastion while Jack Thompson is turned into a do-gooder lawyer who expresses a disdain for computer games claiming that "Guns don't kill people, video games do" - before being murdered by the protagonist.

The criminal world is not so far from capitalism in its most unconstrained version, there are no regulations and no taxation of illicit profits. In the underworld there are merely costs and revenue, supply and demand - the "invisible hand" - with the state looming over them seeking to deprive the people of their freedoms. The gangs are competing firms in a dog-eat-dog world where the most brutal and ruthless thrive. These organisations are hierarchical and tyrannical as the individuals belonging to them have no say in the decisions made, they are there to follow orders. Of course, this generalises to the real world and not just virtual reality. Organised crime is not that far from the functions of the market, it differs in that it is illegal and viewed as immoral. In the Grand Theft Auto series, the player is selling his labour to various bosses in completing missions for pay which is far less than he could be paid. Eventually the player ascends the ladder, usually by killing a boss and usurping his position. This is the brutal underbelly of meritocracy.

In real life meritocracy is a farce, people do not rise according to merit and nor should they as it is the hierarchy which is fundamentally wrong. We should not seek to rise to the top of the pyramid but seek to level that structure. So the vehement attacks of the games on the American establishment are irrelevant as the games celebrate the essence of what they are mocking. It's as ironic as it is almost self-parodic.

Made in America.

"How many more people have to die for your personal growth?" - Dr Melfi

The polysemic nature of The Sopranos presents the audience with a wide variety of complex and important themes that are relevant in today's America. The Sopranos was created by David Chase, who used his own Italian-American family as the inspiration behind the show, and it spanned several seasons over the period of 9 years. Italian-American identity is a constant motif, particularly in relation to organised crime and food, throughout the duration of the series. But this relates to the wider experience of Americans, given that many are descendent of people who immigrated to the US to escape from poverty, and that the culture of the US is partly derived from the influx of European immigrants in history. Christian practices and beliefs are a typical example of this. For many reasons, the show has been hailed as "the best thing on television today" by critics. It is often said that what made The Sopranos so successful is the fact that it's a show about a deeply flawed man that many Americans can relate to:

Meet Tony Soprano: your average, middle-aged businessman. Tony's got a dutiful wife. A not-so dutiful daughter. A son named Anthony Jr. A mother he's trying to coax into a retirement home. A hot-headed uncle. A not too-secret mistress. And a shrink to tell all his secrets, except the one she already knows: Tony's a mob boss.

This is the blurb of the first season of The Sopranos and is often cited as the source of the show's appeal. Many have said that they have many friends who are like Tony Soprano, except they are legitimate middle-class men. But perhaps The Sopranos was so popular because it served as an allegorical critique of American society, one such has been eclipsed by corporate America. The DiMeo crime family is an allegory for something far less exotic, something far more ordinary and everyday, unrestrained and unregulated capitalism. Certainly in the market, it could be said that growth is for the sake of growth, even if it such growth is at the expense of society and civilisation itself, is the endless task of powerful multinational corporations regardless of the popular will.

The destructive externalities of organised crime are for all to view in The Sopranos. Most notably, are the references to the race riots of Newark in the late 1960s, which were in reality a reaction by the African-American and Latino-American community against racist oppression and exploitation. The Mafia used their influence on politics and business, through unions, to keep blacks and hispanics out of legitimate occupations. Whilst at the same time crushing any competing criminal elements in the African-American and Latino-American community. With nowhere to go and no way of surviving, blacks and hispanics rioted in the summer of 1967 out of a rage with the system. It is appropriate that this history goes ignored by the characters and the true horror of their actions is never fully confronted. Much like in real life, the horrors of America's racist past often go unchallenged and remain just bellow the surface of society.

Tony Soprano, from a particular perspective, could be viewed as a success story. The epitome of the American dream, a man of a humble working-class immigrant background, who has risen to the peak of his industry, he has moved from the North Ward to the North Caldwell suburbs. It could be that his popularity is down to the fact that he shows the audience the emptiness of the American dream, a side not often shown on television. For Tony the life of materialistic success, predicated on violence and a parasitic relationship with the world, leads to nothing but that awful emptiness. Soprano is intelligent enough to understand that there should be more to life than the endless pursuit of wealth and the repetitive satisfaction of desires. The inalienable rights of the American dream are not enough for Tony, it is not enough for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be the only things guaranteed in life. For the Sopranos, the American dream is hollow, a carrot on a stick at best.