After making a strong statement in her memoir and sparking a twitter war by claiming that hip-hop artists promote ‘rape culture’, Ashley Judd is now treading a little more carefully.
Reaching out to friend Russell Simmons to try and make some sort of peace, Judd said on his Global Grind blog, "My intention was to support artists to know that they have so much power, that they make incredible life-changing impressions, particularly on the young. And we have choices every day with our expressions, we either empower and celebrate unity or to re-enforce inequality and degradation. We are either part of the problem, or part of the solution. There is no in-between."
Elaborating further, Judd added "What I'm being accused of is condemning rap and hip-hop as a whole, and the whole community and when they say community, they mean the fans, and African-Americans, it's become so generalized. My intention was to take a stand to say the elements that are misogynistic and treat girls and women in a hyper-sexualized way are inappropriate."
Though she did apologize for making vastly general statements, the feud between her and the hip-hop world is definitely not over. Though the two people that she did specifically point fingers at, Sean "Diddy" Combs and Snoop Dogg, have both maintained their silence on the issue - quite dignified for proponents of rape culture huh!
