The Red and Black

Issue date: 10/13/08 Section: Opinions

ZAID JILANI

Last Monday I was at a dining hall and overheard a few guys talking at the table next to mine.

They were discussing ways to "get girls drunk," and you don't need me to explain where the conversation went from there.

I didn't say anything to them. I thought what they were talking about was disgusting and dehumanizing to women, but I just kept my mouth shut.

The next morning I opened The Red & Black and found the headline "Student reports rape in downtown Athens."

I know it wasn't those guys at dinner who raped the student, but I also know that me not speaking out against a culture that allows women to be objectified helps create the conditions that causes girls to be raped.

Our society doesn't like to talk about sexual violence; it's a taboo we leave to the police and politicians to deal with.

That's really the root of the problem of rape - and many other social ills, such as poverty and crime in general - we fail to see our own role in these issues. We tend to pass the buck; if it's not affecting us directly, it must not be our problem.

However, by not acting, we are responsible for making things worse.

For example, rapper T-Pain is coming to the University this week.

I think it's ridiculous someone like T-Pain even can become successful in this country; the lyrics of his songs could probably be written by a 5 year old who has access to Black Entertainment Television.

And why exactly is someone who claims to be a Muslim encouraging meaningless sex and binge drinking, anyway?

Yet the kind of culture mainstream rap music has created is one that is driving millions of inner city kids to abandon their dilapidated schools and take up lives of drugs and crime.

In that respect, T-Pain's music is decidedly destructive. Here's the important part: 75 percent of rap music is consumed by suburban white teens, according to the PBS documentary "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes."

Yes, that's the demographic of most University students. If we refused to buy this garbage, it wouldn't exist anymore.

If we decided to pour as much of our dollars and time into organizations such as Americorps or Habitat for Humanity as we do into rap music, we could fix our inner cities.

What if no one came to T-Pain's concert on Wednesday? Maybe he'd decide to start glorifying getting a four-year degree instead of violence against women.

Returning to the issue of rape, if young women at this University started looking out for each other more, and young men like me started speaking out against the objectification of women, we could strike a huge blow against sexual violence.

From rape to rap music, it often can be intimidating to get involved personally in righting social wrongs. My reply to that is the more you don't get involved, the worse things will get.

People on Wall Street who knew their bosses were getting too greedy and lending to desperate people who couldn't pay back their loans were too scared criticize them.

Now we have a global economic crisis that a relatively small number of people could have stopped had they decided to speak up.

So don't be like me.

Next time you see something that's wrong, speak out loudly.

You know what happens when you don't.

- Zaid Jilani is a junior from Kennesaw majoring in international affairs.

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