December 19, 2006
Queens, NY (December 18, 2006) – Akilah N.
Folami, Associate Professor of Legal Writing at St.
John’s University School of Law, recently testified at the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) Media Ownership Hearing in
Nashville, TN held on December 11, 2006. Her testimony
related to her recent article titled, “From Habermas to ‘Get Rich
or Die Tryin’: Hip Hop, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the
Black Public Sphere,” which she submitted as part of the
Post-Conference record.
Prof. Folami stated that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has
led to corporate conglomeration in radio and has not encourage
economic competition or diversity in radio ownership or content,
which was the purpose of the Act’s passage. She added that
such corporate conglomeration has led to the proliferation of
Gangsta Rap and the Gangsta image that currently dominates the
nation’s radio airwaves, to the almost exclusion of other Rap
lyrics that would contest such Gangsta image and lyrics.
Historically, radio has played an important role in providing
the Black community with a forum for Black culture and political
expression. In the late 1970’s, through Rap and Hip Hop,
Black urban youth, who otherwise occupied a very marginalized and
invisible existence in the larger American political and economic
discourse, claimed visibility and voiced issues related to police
brutality and poverty.
Prof. Folami testified that corporate takeover of the radio has
contributed to stifling such discourse, since radio airplay is now
driven by attracting a particular listening and consuming
demographic, White male suburban youth--the main purchasers of
Gangsta Rap and the consumer products heavily endorsed in such
lyrics. The social commentary once contained in Rap rarely
gets airplay or the same level of advertisement by corporate
conglomerates that radio air play provides.
In closing, Prof. Folami stated that the FCC should “encourage,
rather than limit, such discourse, particularly as it relates to a
segment of the population that continues to be marginalized by
society. More space needs to be made for a diversity of
viewpoints and cannot turn, as it has with respect to Hip Hop, on
corporate backed marketing and visibility or the consumption habits
of a particular buying demographic.”
Read the full FCC testimony of
Akilah N. Folami.
For more information, please contact Professor Folami at (718)
990-2308. For media inquires, please contact Elizabeth
Reilly, Assistant Director of Media Relations, St. John’s
University at (718) 990-5789, or e-mail inquires to reillye@stjohns.edu.