A Hip-Hop Town Hall

Dr. Chavis says one step to eliminating negative images in hip-hop is to work on eliminating poverty. "I know that we need to solve this problem so that we can treat each other better in the home, in the community," Dr. Chavis says. "What we're saying is you want to sanitize poetry and lyrics and videos and not deal with sanitizing our community and not dealing with the inequities that we have to face every day, then the problem is going to come back. Let's not put a Band-Aid on this. Let's deal with this substantively."

However, syndicated New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch (pictured above) says there's a double standard. "There's an extraordinary double standard here because most of the people who were in the Ku Klux Klan were what they call 'poor white trash,' who were at the bottom of society. Nobody ever … makes an excuse for them blowing up little girls, for them being racist," Stanley says. "When you get these clowns in your guys' arena, then suddenly, oh, these are just marionettes. They can't make any decisions. So the corporation decides society, slavery, all of these things lead up to these people consistently calling peoples niggers, bitches and hos as though they're these helpless guys who can't do anything. And I'm not buying it."

Kevin disagrees. "What I've done my whole life, now that I know, now that I've experienced different things, is to uplift a community, is to teach them to say different things," he says. "Do you think I want them every single day to say bitch, ho, 'n' this, 'n,' that? I don't want them to say that. … I have not told an artist ever, ever to say that. And I have [gone] out of my way to explain to them there's other ways that you can communicate the same message."