For any lover of hip hop it's always difficult to watch writers and artists verbally attacked on "The O'Reilly Factor." But you know it's getting bad when the black community starts to turn against the music. For months now political activists like the reverends Jesse Jackson, Sr. and Al Sharpton have been building a movement against hip hop for its graphic, often sexist lyrics, its glorification of drugs and the frequency of words like bitch, ho and the n-word. But is theirs a reputable cause to save our souls, or is it just wasted time and effort?

Some of the blame goes to Michael Richards and Don Imus, ignorant white men who didn't know where to draw the line. But it doesn't stop there: It's come to the point where hip hop is blamed for any situation where a black person has done something wrong. Michael Vick fights dogs; it's hip-hop culture's fault. Teenagers involved in shootings; they got it from rap lyrics. There is basically no separation between messages in the rap scene and the customs we have taken from black culture.

Vick wasn't involved in dog fighting because of hip hop; he was taking a sport common to the rural south and making money for him and his friends. Black youths aren't in gangs and shootings because rap music tells them to do it; both have been a component of urban communities for decades.

These are negative aspects of black culture that needed to be stopped a long time ago. Rappers aren't the only ones calling women bitches and hoes. These words were common speech long before hip hop was mainstream, but no one ever told other people to stop using them.

Thus hip hop has become a scapegoat for the problems that have plagued black culture for decades, and if you want to change what's in it, you have to start at the source. It's not as simple as rappers, athletes and pop figures dressing more professionally and young black men squeezing polos and button-ups into their wardrobes.

I don't believe this is the fault of rappers, because I see them as nothing more than pawns that fit into the music industry's image of an acceptable black man. They've got money, expensive cars and homes and are easy for kids in urban neighborhoods to relate to. But few of them have stepped on a college campus except to perform, and when they talk, you hear mostly nonsense - and everyone loves it.

"Rap artists have come to me with lyrics about history, politics and the environment, but they do not get a contract," Jesse Jackson told the Michigan Chronicle. "Unless they go into self-denigration, they can't get a break."

For the most part, Jackson is right. And Sharpton pushes the issue even further, calling for the withdrawal of public funds from entertainment companies that "won't clean up their act," as reported by The Washington Post. It's not the rappers who need to change, but the industry and its consumers.

As long as a certain subject sells albums, rappers will include it in their rhymes. But while we're waiting for rap to find a new interest, let's try and fix the issues in the black community. There are plenty of instances where black women degrade themselves. Kids don't embrace the idea of selling drugs just because a rapper told them about it; many are uneducated about real-life issues and need guidance. And odds are a rap song isn't the first place a child has heard "bitch," "ho" or the n-word. Taking it out isn't going to stop people from saying it.

Kids can't see R-rated movies under the age of 17 or buy "Grand Theft Auto," so if you can keep these video games and movies away from your children, why can't you stop the music? At least share some insight with your children about what they might be hearing. Tell them a woman is not an object, that there are plenty of legal ways to make money, that there are offensive words you shouldn't use and that half of the rappers they listen to are just lying to make money. If you think kids are adopting rappers as role models, step in and show them another option.

The worst part of this is that the political leaders in the black community have other things that should be their focus. Figureheads with so such media influence should support mentoring programs in urban communities so kids are in class preparing for college and not in the streets pretending to be thugs. In fact, for those who really want to make change, start with Jena, Louisiana, and fight for the six black students who are about to spend up to 20 years of their lives in prison for basically nothing. Google it.