Looks Like Rap Videos Got a Bad Rap

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health stretches to find a link between rap videos and bad behavior in adolescent African American girls.

Sharonda Eggleton Brooks Newkirk

�Risky behavior and a heightened incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among African-American female adolescents may be linked to high exposure to rap music videos,� said a Feb. 28 news release from the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center at Emory University in Atlanta.

The study was originally conducted by researchers, doctors and scholars from Georgia and Alabama in an attempt to determine eligibility for participation in an HIV-prevention program.

The girls were eligible if they were African American, between ages 14 and 18, had been sexually active in the past six months and had the written consent of their parents. They participated from December 1996 through April 1999. The study took a sudden turn when researchers realized that a large majority of the girls who participated were behaving badly and that the common factor was overexposure to rap videos.

The researchers found that black teen girls between 14 and 18 who watched more than the average of 14 hours of rap videos per week were more likely to have problems with the law, to abuse drugs and to contract a sexually transmitted disease.

It also found that these girls were three times more likely to hit a teacher, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested and almost twice as likely to have multiple sexual partners than girls who watched at or below the average amount of rap videos per week.

These are alarming findings, but a few flaws in the researchers' study could mean the difference between rap videos really being a major factor in black teen girls behaving badly, or this study being another case of rap getting a bad rap.

All 522 girls lived in rural, poor neighborhoods.

Could it be that their bad behavior had less to do with the amount of rap videos they watched and more to do with their environment? Or with lack of parental guidance? Or even lack of education? And what about young black females who live in the middle of America, whose parents are car-pooling, PTA-attending lawyers and doctors? Are rap videos causing them to behave badly as well?

The researchers stand by their work and their theory that rap videos cause bad behavior in adolescent African American females.

Gina M. Wingood of Emory University�s Rollins School of Public Health admitted that she didn't know whether overexposure to rap videos caused the girls studied to behave badly or whether the study only reflected interests they already had. But she made clear that there is definitely a connection.

But more research is needed in order for the study to be taken seriously. The idea that rap videos cause black teen girls to behave badly is a pretty big pill to swallow.

Brooks Newkirk is a student at North Carolina A&T State University who writes for The A&T Register.

Posted April 22, 2003