MSNBC Show Suggests Rap Music Led To Racist Chant

Mika, Joe

MSNBC's Morning Joe sparked an online backlash yesterday (March 11th) after charging that the language in rap music is partly to blame for the videotaped racist chant by members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon's since-shuttered University of Oklahoma chapter.

Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said, "The kids that are buying hip-hop or gangsta rap, it's a white audience, and they hear this over and over again."

His co-host, Mika Brzezinski, weighed in on rapper Waka Flocka Flame's canceling his plans to perform at the school, saying, "If you look at every single song -- I guess you call these -- that he's written, it's a bunch of garbage. It's full of n-words, it's full of f-words. It's wrong. And he shouldn't be disgusted with [the students], he should be disgusted with himself."

Conservative columnist Bill Kristol chimed in, saying, "Popular culture becomes a cesspool, a lot of corporations profit off of it, and then people are surprised that some drunk 19-year-old kids repeat what they've been hearing."

However, MSNBC's Willie Geist pushed back, saying, "There is a distinction between a bunch of white kids chanting about hanging someone from a tree using that term and Waka Flocka Flame using it." Twitter users responded with the mocking hashtag #RapAlbumsThatCausedSlavery, which started trending in the U.S.

Later in the day, Brzezinski made an appearance on MSNBC to clarify, saying, "There is no moral equivalency between rap music and what happened on that bus. The students in the video are responsible for what happened. It's beyond appalling -- its disgusting, actually. In no way is anyone else to blame."