Abstract
The global presence of hip-hop stands as a serious challenge to existing power structures despite its commercial viability. Hip-hop started as a response to a number of policies that directly impacted young people of color—especially people of African descent in the United States—but grew to become a culture that is practiced by youths throughout the black diaspora. People of African descent have been forced to respond creatively to policies related to shifts in global capital, economic restructuring, and the maintenance of neoliberal policies that essentially privatize spheres of civil society.1 In this context, the realities of many young people who consider hip-hop as their main cultural outlet, especially youths of color, have been placed in tenuous economic and political positions.2 Issues such as the mass incarceration of black youths and the lack of access to employment, quality education, social justice, political participation, and cultural representation have had a direct impact on those youths of color who create hip-hop and make up the hip-hop community. In this sense, the creation and practice of hip-hop is a direct reaction to and a product of structural racism.3
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Notes
K. M. Clarke and D. Thomas, eds., Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). See also A. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and H. Winant, The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
Economic restructuring in the 1980s created harsh conditions for young people. In Los Angeles, the strong core of manufacturing jobs was dismantled, while the number of high-tech jobs that were that were based in suburban areas was expanded. Young blacks were shut out of this expansion because of lack of training and geography. At the same time, funding for parks, affordable housing, and forms of recreation were drastically cut. See R. D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New York: Free Press, 1994), 192.
Structural racism defines many factors that contribute to and facilitate the maintenance of racial inequities in the United States today. A structural-racism analysis identifies aspects of our history and culture that have allowed the privileges associated with “whiteness” and the disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. It points out the ways in which public policies and institutional practices contribute to inequitable racial outcomes. It lays out assumptions and stereotypes that are embedded in our culture that, in effect, legitimize racial disparities, and it illuminates the ways in which progress toward racial equity is undermined. Keith Lawrence, Stacey Sutton, Anne Kubisch, Gretchen Susi, and Karen Fulbright-Anderson, Structural Racism and Community Building (Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, 2004).
J. Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005). See also I. Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); and C. S. Watkins, Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005).
C. L. Cheney, Brothers Gonna Work it Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 2005). See also J. D. Eure and J. G. Spady, Nation Conscious Rap (New York: PC International Press, 1999).
See also Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); S. Fernandes, Cuba Represent: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); and Timothy Mitchell, ed., Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (Wesleyan: Wesleyan University Press).
G. Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (New York: Verso, 1994).
Ibid., 34.
P. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness London: Verso, 1993).
Ibid., 115.
M. E. Dyson, Between God and Gangster Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
J. Leland, “The Pinnacle: 1988,” in The Vibe History of Hip Hop, ed. A. Light (New York: Three Rivers, 1999), 192–93.
M. Marable, The Great Wells Of Democracy: The Meaning Of Race In American Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002).
As quoted in C. S. Watkins, Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 180.
A. De la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
A. De la Fuente, “The Resurgence of Racism in Cuba,” NACLA Report on the Americas 34, no. 6 (May–June 2001).
P. Perez Sarduy and J. Stubbs, eds., Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000).
S. Fernandes, Cuba Represent: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 120.
S. Afiefdien and N. Abrahams, “Cape Flats Alchemy: Hip-Hop Arts in South Africa,” in Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, ed. Jeff Chang (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 262–70.
D. Coplan, “God Rock Africa: Thoughts on Politics in Popular Black Performance in South Africa,” African Studies 64, no. 1 (2005): 9–27.
I. Chambers, Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience (New York: Methuen, 1988). See also B. DeMott, “The Future Is Unwritten: Working-Class Youth Cultures in England and America,” Critical Texts 5, no. 1 (1988): 42–58; S. Jones, Black Culture, White Youth: The Reggae Tradition From JA to UK (London: Macmillan Education, 1988); and N. Smash, Hip Hop 86–89 (Essex: International Music Publications, 1990).
R. Codrington, “The Homegrown: Rap, Race and Class in London,” in Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 299–315.
S. Hall, Policing the Crisis: “Mugging,” the State, and Law and Order (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978).
F. Gibbons, “Minister Labeled Racist After Attack on Rap ‘Idiots.’” Guardian (UK), January 6, 2003.
Y. Bynoe, Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership, and Hip Hop Culture New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004).
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© 2009 Manning Marable and Leith Mullings
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Codrington, R. (2009). New Forms. In: Mullings, L. (eds) New Social Movements in the African Diaspora. The Critical Black Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104570_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104570_14
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