Does contemporary r&b promote racist stereotypes?

Does contemporary r&b promote racist stereotypes?

Quote:

'… a single, menacing question surrounds public articulations of Black sexual desire: How, given the ways that racism and racist oppression manifest in sexual violation, can Black people speak of the erotic? What many [ ] authors and editors repeatedly foreground is the undeniable relationship between the erotic and racist oppression. This connection does not mean that one must take pleasure from acts of racist and sexual abuse, but that Black erotica is concerned with and shaped by Black peoples’ memories, experiences, and narratives of racism. Because sexual violence historically has been a key mode through which bodies are racially marked and subjugated, then the realms of sexual intimacy, bodily pleasure, and love are important places where the struggles over recognition and affirmation

emerge .' Felice Blake , University of California, Santa Barbara , in From Margin to Centerfold: The (Mis)Recognition of Pleasure and Danger in Contemporary Black Erotic Fiction , page 3

Reflection:

Does the portrayed connection between sex and violence prevalent throughout contemporary hip-hop, rap, and even much r'n'b derive from a history of racism, and is this connection actually encoded into the core myth of the Middle Passage? Or, to express it differently, is historical racism so much a part of African-American models of identity that it has shaped what is seen as 'normal' black sexuality?

I am Legend (1954) preliminary review

I'm about half-way through Matheson's 1954 pulp, I am Legend and must say it's very readable racy stuff. It's also rather different than the two film versions I've seen (Omega Man and I am Legend).

Two things are immediately noticeable regarding the plot and the way it's organised: in the novel the character spends a lot of time researching garlic, crosses, etc--the usual vampire props. That might have been interesting in the 1950s but isn't these days: the bio/virus/lab parts of the recent (2007) film are a positive and much more convincing improvement; on the other hand, the protagonist, Robert Neville, is much more of a man in the novel. His wife and daughter are dead, and the creatures who see him as their prey regularly try to tempt him sexually, knowing that he's vulnerable in this regard. In fact, the novel has an eroticism that shimmers below its surface and accounts for much of the characters' tensions. In both films this element is played down almost to the point of extinguishing it altogether. OK, so both Charlton Heston and Will Smith notice shop mannequins but not much is made of it. In the novel, Neville is aching for female company. This human element, this identification with the main character, is one of the reasons why this particular novel has survived. The story is also well-paced and structured, so that reading becomes compulsive-- another plus.