1885 Is it crabs?

That's what comes to my mind as I click through the channels and come across young black rappers grabbing their crotch and dancing around with their legs spread and pelvis lifted. (Should crotch be plural? Groups of grabber-rappers mean more than one crotch, but each grabber only has one.) It apparently has a hostile meaning. Rap groups actually hire "hand gesture" experts to help them look more intimidating, and I'll bet you a cup of coffee they are women. So much for authentic culture. I went to a poetry reading at the public library and a perfectly nice white boy could hardly keep his hands decent while performing.

"Why do white liberals accept the “gangsta” persona as a perfectly legitimate expression of black culture? . . . Hopping around and making violent hand gestures, their long gold chains swaying, pants drooping low and eyes shaded, backed by adoring, barely-clad, pelvis-grinding young black women—with the sound off, the thuggish menace of these performers was unmistakable. The sensibility reverberates across the globe at present, from urban Morocco to the burning suburbs of Paris. [French Muslim rappers use the same moves]

Black parents have decried to me the presence of such trash on BET, but liberal white America, especially its suburban progeny, tends to see black gangsta imagery as culturally authentic—to be respected and understood rather than subjected to the condemnation or mockery it deserves." Read the whole article here: 10 November 2005 Thugs on Parade, City Journal

There's a lot of guilt in liberal white America and it's making a lot of entertainers rich.

crabs
gansta rap
hand gestures