It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation (10 page)

“But today, it comes at us from all angles. Plus, we ain’t unified,” one keen student observed. On one hand, nothing says “let’s unify
against this bullshit” like screaming fire hoses, rabid police dogs, and
WHITES ONLY
signs. However—

“There’s definitely the necessary criteria for unity, though,” someone called out. “The question is what agenda are we unifying around?” I paused, panning the sea of sepia-colored pupils that formed my class.

One of them stutter-stated: “The … first thing is the schools. How many of y’all went to a school in Baltimore city?” he asked. Hands flung skyward. “Okay, so y’all know that our schools are horrible. We’re not even supposed to be here—in college—given where we came from. We need textbooks, working bathrooms. The basics.”

Another student called out, “What about these Black-people-hating redneck cops from the country who come in and beat the shit out of us in our hoods—and never get tried or punished?”

“Instead they get promotions,” someone else threw in.

“Then you got so many people dying and it’s because there are absolutely no—I mean
no
—opportunities out here. They want to lock everybody up before they create jobs in Baltimore and I’m sure it’s like that in other places.”

“It definitely is the case in other areas,” I responded, reflecting on my experiences living in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Harlem. As the students lunged into more agenda points, I realized that we, part of a new generation, needn’t look beyond ourselves to see and set our agenda. Indeed, each of us represented many of the great challenges that face young Blacks in America and beyond.

“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age,” declared Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his last book
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Today, exactly forty years later, too many of us suffer, because of our hue, from the ills of poverty and are forced to struggle against the desolation and despair that is pumped “into the spiritual bloodstream” of our lives. The reality that 60 percent of
America’s poor youth are Black and that 50 percent of all Black babies are born into the pitiful pits of poverty, in the richest nation in the history of the world, is a national, international, and human tragedy. The post-hip-hop generation faces the challenge of following through on Dr. King’s call for the “total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

In my first semester, one of my students—an Iraq War veteran and an immensely gifted poet who wrote “My generation has been destroyed by guns, drugs and violence”—was shot and killed in the streets of Baltimore. Black-on-Black violence is a symptom of the violence of poverty and should not be looked at in a vacuum. Instead, one must, from a place of love, ask “Why are young brothas killing each other?” In inner cities across America, Black-on-Black violence arises primarily out of the crack-cocaine economy, an economy that not only exists, but flourishes because of the scarcity of sustainable employment options and the reality of inadequate educational facilities available. Consider that gun-related homicides for Black males shot up 79 percent between 1980 and 1990, while unemployment for Black males in inner cities fell to all-time lows and, most poignantly, crack cocaine was introduced (administered) to the ghettos of America. Today, with very few options still available, Black men between fifteen and thirty-four are most likely to be killed at the hands of other young Black men over crumbs. To take it a step further, the gun my student held in Iraq is a reflection of his limited opportunities. Violence against people of color, it seems, is endorsed both directly and indirectly by the state. More funding for schools and training programs,
increased access to qualified teachers and educational resources, drug rehab programs, more employment opportunities, as well as an end to the racial discrimination seen in these institutions are essential to putting an end to the unnecessary violence that riddles our communities.

“How many of y’all have immediate family in prison?” I curiously asked my class one day after a student rushed out of class, hurriedly explaining to me that her “brother just got knocked.”

“What for?” I let out in a concerned whisper.

“He has a drug problem,” she said, shaking her head and drifting away.

Although I shouldn’t have been, I was surprised to see one-third of my students’ hands spring up. Again, these skyward mahogany hands reflect the reality that on any given day in America, more than a third of Black men in their twenties are in jail, on parole, or on probation. In northern cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia, this number often grows to two-thirds. Although most of the attention is usually given to Black men in prison, Black women are among the fastest growing group to be incarcerated. Most of the imprisoned Black women and men are poor and are in jail for nonviolent drug offenses. However, because of the War on Drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing, they serve cruel and unusually long prison sentences for possessing small amounts of narcotics. In addition, the racism in sentencing has been well documented. Consider the disparity in federal sentencing laws between crack cocaine (primarily used by Blacks) and powder cocaine (primarily used by whites):

Despite the fact that crack and powder cocaine are pharmacologically the same, crack cocaine is the only drug that the first offense of simple
possession can trigger a federal mandatory minimum sentence of five years. Yet possession of any quantity of any other substance by a first-time offender—including powder cocaine—is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a maximum of one year in prison. Most of America’s drug users are white, yet most of those incarcerated for drug use are Black. The injustices surrounding the prison industrial complex represent one of the most urgent motivations for this generation to become engaged with organizing around issues of social justice.

These prison policies have an incestuous relationship with the corporations that use prison labor (tantamount to slave labor) and the private companies who build, maintain, and operate prisons. Prison labor also takes jobs away from poor and working-class communities as corporations will always opt for the cheaper labor. In the next two decades, my students’ relatives (and mine!) will be released from prison with no voting rights, no job prospects, no education, and no welfare—a repulsive, premeditated recipe for recidivism.

There is a crisis when the people profiting most from the prison industry are the same people who make the laws that dictate who goes to prison and for how long. It will be up to the new generation to thrust our “bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus,” as Mario Savio once proclaimed, and “make it stop.” For folks both on the inside and outside to indicate, by any means or medium necessary, to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that without justice, “the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Although it’s still very taboo to discuss in many circles within the African-American community, I had one student inform me that her inconsistent performance in class was because she was battling HIV. We know, of course, from statistics and special reports that she wasn’t alone. It’s a national crisis that Black teens represent 60 percent of all new HIV cases. For Black men and women ages twenty-five to
forty-four, AIDS is the first and second leading causes of death. This, combined with the AIDS epidemic that is ravishing Africa, is the greatest both domestic and international threat to Black health.

The cumulative effect of all the poverty-related challenges, coupled with a racist, pervasive media that tells us we are not beautiful, not intelligent, is often overwhelming enough to cause serious identity issues, depression, anxiety, physical sickness, and suicide. Consider that two of the hip-hop generation’s greatest icons—Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie)—both rhymed often about “ending it all.” The chorus for Biggie’s “Everyday Struggle” is: “I don’t wanna live no more / Sometimes I see death knockin’ at my front door.” Similarly, on “So Many Tears,” Tupac rhymes: “Now I’m lost and I’m weary, so many tears / I’m suicidal, so don’t stand near me.” Despite knowing this, I couldn’t help feel startled when a student divulged to me, through e-mail, that her “heart was breaking every day,” that she was “sick of crying,” that her “life has been hell on earth,” and asking, “so why not cut out the part about being on earth.” She was as certain as Biggie or Tupac that taking her fledgling life would drive away the pain that ran through her frail frame. According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide is now the third leading cause of death for young Blacks between fifteen and twenty-four. In addition to access to mental health resources, our survival will depend on how well we are able to instill genuine values of love, compassion, and worth in our communities and among our peers.

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been harassed on numerous occasions, too many to name, by Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and even London police. The vast majority of my students, when I asked them, confirmed that they’d been on the receiving end of some form of police brutality.

One student, after missing several classes, asked me: “Have you seen the lady on the news? The one who was killed by the police? Electrocuted by the police? In her house?”

“Yeah, I did see that,” I responded.

“That’s my aunt,” he informed me. His aunt was Uywanda Peterson, a forty-one-year-old unarmed Black woman who, at five foot one and one hundred pounds, was Tasered to death by the Baltimore police department. This incident, just one out of hundreds that occur daily, is causing a new generation to not only challenge, but find ways to radically transform the current system in which a rural, predominantly white police force, reminiscent of the slave patrols of the nineteenth century, patrol Black inner cities, criminalizing young Black men and women.

And finally, despite the enormous domestic problems we face in the inner cities of America, there is an overwhelming opposition to the new strain of American imperialism that is hell-bent on waging war on other nations of color around the world. In fact many make a connection between American imperialism and the oppression they face domestically.

“It’s the same shit, ‘scuse my language,” a student shouted.

“What’s the same?” I asked.

“Okay, what they’re doing in Iraq, with the occupation, is the same thing that they do over here, in our communities. It’s not right. When I see a U.S. soldier in Iraq, I think of the cops, because both the soldier and the cops usually aren’t from the community, and they
are sent there supposedly to protect or ‘liberate’ but they really just make things worse,” he explained as his classmates nodded.

Due to the Bush administration’s overt disregard for international law and human rights, many in the post-hip-hop generation are becoming increasingly aware of the harsh injustices their country is engaged in enforcing overseas. Technology, specifically the Internet, has broadened our worldview and made global information more accessible. As a result, young people, my students and myself among them, can be a part of international movements, not just antiwar efforts, that seek to restore justice and reveal the possibility of another world.

Perhaps the largest consensus among the post-hip-hop generation class was the notion that our lives and, in fact, our unborn children’s lives were dependent upon the preservation and nurturing of the earth, our common mother. Environmental issues such as climate change are increasingly becoming a part of our discussion. It is clear to us that the people in power now have not inherited the world from their forefathers, but rather have borrowed it from us and our children. It’s time to free her from the toxic grips of corporate greed and callousness.

I anticipated
, at some point during the class, a student asking, “Where does hip hop fit in to this?” I anticipated acknowledging the sweeping power of hip hop, particularly rap music, and using it as the spark for ideas to mobilize around. Affixed to that power, however, is great danger. Although artists have traditionally been able to rally masses of people, the reality that hip hoppers don’t own or control how the culture is disseminated complicates the efficacy of using hip hop to implement social change. The hope here lies in the underground, as the mainstream has hijacked ideas like Malcolm X’s “by any means
necessary” and applied it to guerilla capitalism, hence:
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
. This lack of ownership has caused hip hop to be transformed into a consumer movement dictated primarily by an affluent base of whites who purchase and distribute it.

The post-hip-hop generation shouldn’t wait for mainstream musicians to say what needs to be said. The most important component is taking what is said—wherever it may come from—and converting that into positive social and political action. At the same time, since we live in a celebrity culture, it’s essential to leverage the voices, however few and far between they may be, of those icons willing to place their endorsement deals, record contracts, and status on the line for a greater cause. As the media literacy increases among the new generation, we will begin to realize that leadership and being on TV are not synonymous. That strong leadership is not about fiery rhetoric or nice punch lines, but a commitment to doing the work that needs to be done.