000ooo000ooo hooks

bell hooks ideas about the commodification of race were very interesting. Many of them reminded me of the ideas of Dick Hebdige. On page 375, talking about young black people in the early 1990s emulate the black youth of the 1960s, hooks explains: "When young black people mouth 1960s black nationalist rhetoric, don Kente cloth, gold medallions, dread their hair, and diss the white folks they hang out with, they expose the way meaningless commodification strips these signs of political integrity and meaning, denying the possibility that they can serve as a catalyst for concrete political action." This is very similar to Dick Hebdige's idea that there are two ways to deal with counter culture, either exoticize it or commodify it. In this case, protesting black youths are the counter culture and hooks explains how many of the signs of the original political movement have been commodified so that they remain today only as symbols, devoid of the context that gave them meaning. Reading this, a few of the particular examples stood out to me. I was surprised to see gold medallions as listed as something that has a connection with any sort of political movement. That just goes to show how far the commodification has come and how fully this symbol has been enveloped. I always thought big gold medallions were just something rappers wore to show off how much money they had. The only statement I ever knew existed in these gold medallions was, "Look how much money I have that I can afford to waste it on this giant gold thing." I am guessing that many contemporary rap artists are just as naive as I am on this subject.
In the particular example of commodification mentioned above, it is very easy to look at contemporary culture and see how far this has all come. hooks was actually talking about gold chains, dreaded hair, Kente cloth, and dissing white folks in the context of Public Enemy's song, "Fight the Power". I can't imagine what she would make of many modern rap songs. If she thought Flava Flav was bad in Public Enemy, I can only imagine her disgrace at Flavor or Love.