"identity is formed and renegotiated in everyday interactions with other Black
youth and how this negotiation is mediated through hip-hop culture"
American Behavioral Scientist Page 1347
"I examine the negotiation of Black youth identity as it relates to the process of inclusion and exclusion within groups"
American Behavioral Scientist Page 1347
"By examining the knowledge, behaviors, and necessary credentials in one Black
youth setting, I contribute to the discussion of cultural capital as it relates to race
and identity"
Hip-hop music exploded onto the music scene in the late 1970s, a significant
moment in African American history
“deindustrialization, economic restructuring and a resurgence
of racism”
Cultural capital is used to position people in a particular status hierarchy
among their peers
Most of the youth did engage in the performance of hip-hop at some level on a
regular basis
My assumptions about the popularity of these youth as well as their different
ways of performing also were evident from the performances of other youth at
the center.
Keepin it real
identity is formed and renegotiated in everyday interactions with other Black
youth and how this negotiation is mediated through hip-hop culture.
I agree with Lamont and Lareau’s (1988)
claim that cultural capital as a basis for social inclusion and exclusion is one of
the most important aspects of Bourdieu’s theory.
In the first half of the article, I review the theoretical contributions and
address the question of why hip-hop at this particular historical moment
Hip-hop music exploded onto the music scene in the late 1970s, a significant
moment in African American history.
The late 1970s marked a time when both
the Black middle and working classes had been moving out of poor, segregated
Black communities for two decades (see George, 1999).
It was rap music and particularly rappers’ ability to write stories from personal
experience that helped capture their target audience—Black youth (Rose,
1994).
Hip-hop’s use of samples from previous rhythm and blues (R&B) songs
as well as excerpts from political leaders such as Stokeley Carmichael and
Malcolm X also created a “text of freedom” for Black youth caught up in the
search for identity (see Gilroy, 1997).
The purpose of this struggle is to construct
a cohesive identity, which in turn, defines the community. Hip-hop, as
Lipsitz (1994a) suggests, “brings a community into being through performance
Cultural capital as a basis for exclusion from a social group is arguably one of
the more important aspects of Bourdieu’s theory. As Lamont and Lareau (1988)
suggest, looking at the relationship between cultural capital and the process of
inclusion/exclusion allows for a better understanding of the process of distinction
and social marking among groups.
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST
Furthermore, when discussing race and ethnicity, his
quote again suggests that a person’s identity (or authentication of that identity)
may not be based simply on personal attributes such as skin color but rather a
person’s performance of an intra-ethnic construction of that identity and music to express a Black identity to other youth.
As Blacksmoved out of
the inner city, drugs such as heroin and crack moved in. The introduction of hiphop
also marked the beginning of the Reagan/Bush era that governed for the next
decade and into the 1990s.
This combination of both individual and
group experience was prevalent in early singles such as The Sugarhill Gang’s
“Rapper’s Delight” and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five featuring Melle
Mel’s “The Message.”
This authenticity helped position rap music as the new voice of
young, Black America, epitomizing Gilroy’s claim that hip-hop is “the very
blackest culture—one that provides the scale on which all others can be evaluated”
(Gilroy, 1997, p. 85).
Theorists in the humanities and social sciences
have concluded that the production of culture is useful in determining how
meaning is exchanged between producers and consumers (see Gottdiener, 1985;
Hall, 1997).
Of particular importance in this dialogue are theways that consumers
then use meanings in relation to the construction of identity and community.
Several representations of the production of Black culture conclude that there is
an ongoing identity struggle within the Black community.
the group. John Hall’s (1992) examination of the process of distinction and status
rankings and markers within groups elicits a better understanding of the formation
of and struggle for collective identity.
Furthermore, when discussing race and ethnicity, his
quote again suggests that a person’s identity (or authentication of that identity)
may not be based simply on personal attributes such as skin color but rather a
person’s performance of an intra-ethnic construction of that identity.
her discussion of gender and
female identity, she claims that “there is no gender identity beyond the expression
of gender. . . . Identity is constituted by the very ‘expressions’that are said to
be its results” (Butler, 1990, p. 17). I use this definition in conjunction with
Goffman’s (1959) understanding of performance as part of everyday life to
explain Black youth’s performance of hip-hop, Black culture, and racial identity.
I intend to
explain one way that Black youth use hip-hop based on ethnographic data collected
from a teen center in Northern California.
some of the conversations I had with youth at the center. For instance, when I
asked Corey, a 16-year-old boy at the center, if he listened to hip-hop music, he
said, “at home, at school, I go to sleep with it.”
Similarly, when I asked Linda and
another girl what they thought of Black youth that didn’t listen to hip-hop, Linda
responded by saying, “They ain’t ’bout it if they don’t listen to it.”
“When I speak, people always ask me where I’m from,” she said. “I’ll say 'London,' but that’s never enough.”
Black men’s dismal college enrollments, disengagement and underachievement, and low rates of baccalaureate degree completion are among the most pressing and complex issues in American higher education.
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