Bling: A Planet Rock or Bling: A Planet Crock?

“Bling: A Planet Rock” is a United Nations Development Program, produced by VH1 and directed by Raquel Cepeda. Kanye West appears in this documentary alongside Judakiss, Paul Wall, Raekwon and Tego Calderon. According to VH1, it was promoted to be “an attempt to educate people about the situation and how it affects the sale of jewelry in the rest of the world (VH1.com)”. Hip hop journalist and former editor of One World magazine, Raquel Cepeda says, “The film is not intended to make people stop wearing diamonds, because if we boycotted them, it would impair the fragile economy of Sierra Leone and would end up hurting these people… We wanted to raise awareness about the whole issue. We wanted people to bling responsibly.”

Hmmm… bling responsibly??

Where do I start? I sat down this evening to watch this with my partner. It seemed like an interesting choice. Perhaps these hip hop musicians would learn how their “blinging” exploits the poor people of Sierra Leone and promotes the sale of conflict diamonds also called blood diamonds. Instead what we found was a UN propaganda piece that quickly turned around any accountability and passed the buck on the poverty issue.

The hip hop artists were taken to an amputee community, to the mines, to the poorest part of Freetown, a house for women who were raped and abused and a diamond clearing house. All of this and yet they seemed to have left Sierra Leone with a more concrete idea that the cause of the war, gangs, rapes and abuses was due to poverty. It was as though Cepeda, VH1 and the UN were trying to purposely skirt the real issue. The connection that the gross amount of diamonds these rappers parade around with was never drawn. It would have been better to make them understand that for each one of those diamonds they strap across their chest, put in their mouth or wrap around their fingers are a life. Someone died for each one of those diamonds. Bling!

Conflict diamonds are those sold in order to fund armed conflict and civil war. Profits from the trade in conflict diamonds, worth billions of dollars, were used by warlords and rebels to buy arms during the devastating wars in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone. Wars that have cost an estimated 3.7 million lives (Amnesty International).

A major milestone occurred in 2003, when a government-run initiative known as the Kimberley Process was introduced to stem the flow of conflict diamonds. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) imposes requirements on participants to certify that shipments of rough diamonds are conflict-free. Despite its pledge to support the Kimberley Process and Clean Diamond Trade Act, the Diamond Industry has fallen short of implementing the necessary policies for self-regulation. The retail sector in particular fails to provide sufficient assurance to consumers that the diamonds they sell are conflict-free (Amnesty International).

And I ask again…bling responsibly? The only way to “bling” responsibly is to not purchase ANY diamonds.

So I ask the hip hop community, did someone die for your bling?

~ by channelingenergy on October 24, 2007.