Hip Hop/Rap Artists Protected From "Hate" Laws

If I had a web site or was a radio personality or a columnist that sent out the same message that much of the hip hop/rap music sends out I would probably, at the very least, lose my internet connection and possibly face criminal charges. Why does the Ontario Human Rights Commission give a free pass to hip hop/rap individuals?

No rap slap
Human Rights Commission disses complaint about hiphop's hate-on for women
By SIGCINO MOYO

No one would have blinked if the complaint brought to the Ontario Human Rights Commission against HMV Canada Inc. for selling rap tunes hostile to women had been overshadowed by a debate on freedom of expression.

But such weighty considerations seem to have been completely lost on the commission.

Along with its recent recommendation that culture activist Valerie Smith's case not be given a full hearing before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, the OHRC rendered a bewildering decision against her charge that Canada's largest retailer is poisoning attitudes against women.

Nowhere in the legalese, which smells a lot like bureaucratic fence-sitting to this gangsta-rap-lovin' scribe, does the OHRC deal with the main point of Smith's complaint: that the sale of offensive rap music constitutes discrimination against an identifiable group, namely women.

The commission did find that the lyrics Smith cited by some of the most reviled purveyors of rap – Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem and Ja Rule – are "violent, hateful and abusive towards women and clearly contrary to the values of the [Ontario Human Rights] Code."

Indeed, the Code itself speaks clearly about discrimination based on sex, which includes "sexual harassment or inappropriate comments and actions of a sexual nature…, offensive remarks…, rough and vulgar humour or language related to gender."

However, the OHRC chose a narrow, and curious, interpretation of its own Code in Smith's case. From the commission's perspective, the manner in which the offending tunes are hawked, not the content of the tunes in question, must "result in unequal treatment to the complainant in services on the basis of her gender" for there to be any contravention of the Code.

Why.......