Pimp Pop Culture Brushes Aside Girls' Fate
The recent conviction of Jaron R. Brice for pimping could have been accompanied by the Oscar-winning song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." Except that only the most depraved audience would have sung along.
Brice, 27, of Northeast Washington recruited girls as young as 14 with promises of friendship, family and security. According to a news account Monday by Washington Post staff writer Debbi Wilgoren, Brice then groomed the girls into a "stable of sisters" and sent them off to have sex for cash with men in alleys, cheap motels and the back seats of cars. Every dollar went to Brice.
Some of that also occurs in the movie "Hustle and Flow." But this latest black pimp tale has been artificially sweetened for crossover appeal. With the song as an accomplice, the audience gets tricked -- or pimped, if you will -- into feeling his pain.
Of course, songs and stories about black pimps are nothing new. But never before has the degradation of black women at the hands of stereotypically thuggish black men been so deeply engrained in popular culture. Through internationally marketed music videos, especially, African Americans have emerged as the only people on Earth who immortalize their mothers and sisters in the worst derogatory ways.
Brice now faces decades in prison after his conviction for sex trafficking of a minor, transporting prostitutes across state lines, pandering and child sexual abuse. Hard being a pimp. But what about the girls whose physical and emotional abuse condemns them to a life of bondage on the streets?
"So many of them are lost souls," Lillian M. Overton, commander of the D.C. police youth division, told me. "They can only take so much abuse before they give up. It's like a form of suicide, because, for all intents and purposes, they are dead inside."
The faces of missing children are posted on a bulletin board at the youth division headquarters. Some of the girls are believed to be what Overton calls "wanna-be-gones," runaways seeking the love and affection that was missing in their homes.
"They leave home, but often after they've already been discarded," Overton said. "Some don't even have missing-person reports on them because nobody cares."
This is nothing to be celebrated in song.
Several girls testified at Brice's trial in federal court that they met him at parties or through friends and that he'd buy them short skirts and revealing tops and instruct them on how to wear makeup and troll for "dates" near motels in the District, Silver Spring and Capitol Heights.
Joyce Ayers Nixon, mayor of Capitol Heights, told me that she brought up the Brice case during a class at Parkdale High in Lanham, where she is a special education teacher.
"A lot of young girls are getting into trouble by not listening to their teachers, counselors and parents," Nixon told me. "Many parents are trying to do the right thing, but the children sometimes mistake discipline for meanness and run away. I have pleaded with them not to run, because there is so much trouble just waiting for them.
