Hasan Minhaj’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner Address
The Intersection Between Hip Hop and the Public Conscience
Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America. Imagine that. As a result, anything even remotely political in the past year, from the National Anthem to “clean coal” has been controversial and delicate. Every single thing journalists or influential figures do in the public eye is scrutinized to an unprecedented degree.
In his White House Correspondents’ Dinner Address, Hasan Minhaj speaks to journalists in America, creating a hypothetical imperative of his view on the current state of affairs.
In the age of Trump … you guys have to be more perfect now more than ever. Because are you are how the president gets his news. Not from advisers, not from experts, not from intelligence agencies, you guys. So that’s why you gotta be on your A-game. You gotta be twice as good.
Minhaj then carefully parallels these rich white journalists to the immigrant experience where “when one of you messes up, he blames your entire group.” Hasan Minhaj has decided to use this opportunity and this platform to broadcast his views to American journalists rather than only cracking jokes and roasting the current administration like the WHCD typically goes.
Let’s back up for a second. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was originally founded in 1921, and beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, was annually, traditionally attended by the president. The dinner began with 50 white male journalists, White House aides, and cabinet members. Men of color weren’t allowed to attend until the 1950s, and women weren’t allowed to attend until 1962. Even now, the event is still dominated by rich, white journalists and celebrities — a demographic much different than the first generation Muslim, Indian, 32 year old American Hasan Minhaj.
Donald Trump is the President of the United States, but he’s not at the WHCD. The last time that a president did not attend the event was in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recovering from an assassination attempt. Partially because of this and partially because of essentially guaranteed controversy, many comedians and talk show hosts refused the speech, leaving it upon Hasan Minhaj, who himself said, “no one wanted to do this. So, of course, it lands in the hands of an immigrant.” Typically, the WHCD speaker just rattles off joke after joke, roast after roast without much of an underlying purpose. Minhaj, however, saw this as an opening to send a message to the entirety of American journalism.
Hasan Minhaj crafts his entire speech with this in mind. In one interview, Minhaj says,
If I can construct the arc of the whole speech to get to that point, by the end, hopefully they’ll have realized that I’m not coming from a place of malice.
He understands that if he is to get this room of some of the most influential figures in the country to listen to him, he has to create ethos and credibility. That’s done by saying something meaningful and not just blasting Trump, because if he does that, everyone would view him as that typical young left-wing comedian immigrant. His message itself is layered and complex. Minhaj’s goal is to have his audience understand that because of Trump and fake news, journalists must work harder and be more perfect in order to avoid public scrutiny. He delivers this message through the analogy of an immigrant experience.
That’s the humor in it. Contrary to Thomas Hobbes’ superiority theory of comedy, where we laugh at our inferiors, Minhaj flips it. Instead of making fun of immigrants, he makes fun of journalists by making them into immigrants. Further, he puts the power into his hands, because the playing field is now even. It’s no longer a mentality that the journalists have so much more experience than this young brown dude does. On the other hand, perhaps it still follows superiority theory, because the joke inherently assumes that white people have to be lowered into the status of an immigrant, thus laughing at immigrants — inferiors. His main point with this is that
When one of you messes up, [Trump] blames your entire group … everyone is going to expect you to be a mouthpiece for the entire group.
This plays into the concept of outgroup homogeneity, “whereby outgroup members are perceived as more similar to each other than ingroup members.” This phenomenon is the reason why people tend to use one prototype as representative of an entire group, contributing also to poor facial recognition of other races, which are often coupled with negative implicit emotions. Despite journalists being an incredibly varied and diverse group across every single point on every demographic spectrum, Minhaj asserts that Trump, and thus his supporters, will lump them all together as “fake news.”
Now, however, he has to make his audience really understand his point, further his joke, and “stay in the bit,” as Louis C.K. and Jerry Seinfeld put it. The way that he does this is relating things that every journalist would understand to being represented by a single entity. Notably, he does this with the example that “all of you are being represented by Geraldo Rivera.”
Geraldo Rivera is famously sampled in Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. , of Rivera’s reaction to Lamar’s politically charged BET performance, stating that “hip hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism.” Rivera is criticized for being extraordinarily sensationalist with outlandish opinions, often in regards to race relations, noting both the Kendrick Lamar example as well as when he said that “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”
Hip hop has clearly forced journalism to acknowledge, even if pundits like Rivera see the genre in a negative light. Even Minhaj is heavily influenced by hip hop because he relates so closely to it.
What I love about hip hop, it’s an immigrant’s story. You think I won’t amount to anything, and you’re wrong, and no matter what systems you put in front of me, I’m gonna get mine. It’s gotten me through being bullied on the bus, through breakups, through racial slurs, through people saying “you can’t do this thing because you look this way.” I see all of that in Biggie’s music or in Tupac’s music.
Hip hop has acted as Minhaj’s motivator, his inspiration because he can see how a group, so systemically oppressed come through with their own art and demonstrate their resiliency. And hip hop influence permeates not only Minhaj’s life, but also the public conscience with political pundits and journalists even outside of Geraldo Rivera weighing in with their opinion on hip hop. These opinions come not just from talking heads like Rivera.
Top-level politicians all hold their own views on rappers, regardless of political affiliation. Obviously, there are those like Trump who denounce hip hop, notably with his tweet challenging Jay-Z, stating “Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!” On the other side of the coin, Obama has constantly praised hip hop, referencing lyrics and artists in his speeches, and even inviting artists like Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, and J. Cole to perform at the White House. Even conservative politicians have been drawn towards hip hop, like Marco Rubio who once released a Spotify playlist including Kanye West, Tupac, Sugarhill Gang, and Pitbull.
The #FreeMeekMill campaign has seen incredible, unprecedented public support not just from hip hop artists but also from athletes and public figures alike. This has just come to fruition, with his release mere hours before his hometown Philadelphia’s series-clinching victory in the NBA playoffs, allowing him to ring the ceremonial pre-game Liberty Bell. In case you don’t know, I’ll give you a crash course on #FreeMeekMill.
In 2008, Meek Mill was convicted of gun and drug charges, was sent to prison, and was released on 5 years’ parole. During the 5 years, the star rapper violated his parole a few times, leading to a few more prison stints and further extended parole. This all came to a head when in August of 2017, he was sentenced to 2–4 years of prison for doing wheelies on his dirt bike without a helmet. So why is everyone so mad? The rub lies back in the original 2008 conviction, wherein the intersection of racism, corruption, and mass incarceration lies. The presiding judge, Genece Brinkley, has been looked into by the FBI and has been accused by numerous figures of corruption as well as a personal investment and interest into Meek Mill’s case, even going so far as to order him to re-record a song. Further, she showed up at his community service to check on him, something which no Philadelphia judge has ever done.
Because of this alleged corruption, here’s a short, non-inclusive list of public figures, athletes, and celebrities who have come out in support of Meek Mill: James Harden(Houston Rockets), the entire Philadelphia 76ers team, Malcom Jenkins(Philadelphia Eagles), Vinny Curry(Philadelphia Eagles), Robert Kraft(Owner of New England Patriots), Don Lemon(CNN Anchor), Jim Kenney(Mayor of Philadelphia), Kevin Hart, Jay-Z, Drake, and the Philadelphia’s DA Office. This public support and outcry against the fraudulence and discrimination from the legal system would never be in place without hip hop. Here’s the rub: black Americans have to be more perfect than ever just as Minhaj calls on journalists “to be more perfect now more than ever.” Because if they’re not, if they make one single, tiny mistake, it’ll trigger an avalanche leading to unfair judges and unjust extended prison stints and parole dates.
In his White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech, Hasan Minhaj has created waves in the journalism sphere, urging American journalists to be on their toes in this age of Trump that’s dominated by fake news and cynicism of the media in general. Further, hip hop has acted as an outlet and a mirror to journalism that has proven to be extraordinarily influential in affecting public policy and in diffusing through the public conscience.
