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"We come out in response to that with movies like (the 2005) "Hustle and Flow" and tell our kids that the personification of black men is a black pimp of a white prostitute that wants to be a rapper who shoots the rapper and at the end of the movie, [a] black woman he had as his prostitute has his baby and the white prostitute becomes the head of the record company and makes the money while he's in jail. That don't make sense," Sharpton said to applause.

"People emulate what they see ...We cannot succumb to a generation that acts like it's all right to celebrate being down. It's one thing to be down, it's another thing to celebrate being down," he explained.

Referring to gangster rappers, Sharpton said, "We've gone from 'black and proud' to groups now calling themselves "Niggers with an attitude."

Sharpton told the panel discussion of how he has confronted rappers about their lyrics only to be told that the rappers simply "reflect the times." Sharpton said black art and culture used to project its "hopes for the future."

"In slavery we wasn't singing, 'you a low down cotton pickin ho.' That would've reflected the times," he said to more laughter and applause.

"In the civil rights era, we sang "We shall overcome" we didn't sing 'You in the back of the bus, got gum on your show, no good MF.' I mean we've been down before. We never romanticized it and put melody to it and acted like it was all right," he added.

Sharpton concluded his discussion with a call for the black community to help itself and return churches to "the center of our community."

"Even if we [are] not responsible for being down, we [are] responsible for getting up," he said. "And if we wait on those who knocked us down to lift us up we'll never get up 'cause if they wanted us up we would have never been down," he said.

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