It doesn’t matter that dog fighting has been around since the colonial era. It doesn’t matter that, under the current circumstances, one might just as easily link football playing to dog fighting. It doesn’t matter that, if one were to look with a level head, that dog fighting is probably more closely linked to poverty than any particular culture, or ethnicity, or race. Yet, blaming hip-hop has become as much of a convenient journalistic crutch to explain complex social problems as is, say, getting virtually anyone with a conflicting opinion to discredit a reputable source and make one’s reporting seem “fair and balanced.”
Watch Adisa Banjoko’s sober response to the DMX affair here.
What I want to know is this: If hip-hop is to blame for dog fighting, what music do we blame for cock fighting? Jazz?
