Get ready for this Sundays 60 Minutes, because there's an intriguing segment: Anderson Cooper interview rapper Cam'ron about the hip-hop community's code of silence when it comes to crimes. In fact, here's an excerpt of their exchange from CBS News:
"If I knew the serial killer was living next door to me?" Giles responds to a hypothetical question posed by Cooper. "I wouldn't call and tell anybody on him — but I'd probably move. But I'm not going to call and be like, 'The serial killer's in 4E.' "
Giles' "code of ethics" also extends to crimes committed against him. After being shot and wounded by gunmen, Giles refused to cooperate with police. Why?
"Because … it would definitely hurt my business, and the way I was raised, I just don't do that," says Giles.
And when Cooper asks if Cam'ron were the victim, would want his attacker to be caught, Cam'ron says no and offers, "But then again, you're not going to be on the stage tonight in the middle of, say, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, with people with gold and platinum teeth and dreadlocks jumping up and down singing your songs, either. We're in two different lines of business." And Cam'ron was the victim - he was shot in 2005 and hasn't said anything.
Cooper also interviews the Harlem Zone's Geoffrey Canada who says, "It is now a cultural norm that is being preached in poor communities … It's like you can't be a black person if you have a set of values that say 'I will not watch a crime happen in my community without getting involved to stop it.'" Back in 2005, regarding Cam'ron's silence, Hip Hop Music said, "For God's sake, start snitching." More: Michael Patrick MacDonald wrote about the code of silence when growing up in white South Boston in the book All Souls and rapper Busta Rhymes has been criticized of not giving information about his bodyguard's death.
Update: The Smoking Gun tells us Cam'ron actually did cooperate with the NYPD back in 1999 after a dispute at a Harlem playground.
