Speaker, Bakari Kitwana, examines conversion of white kids to hip-hop gospel

2006-02-20
By Angelina Rito
Athens NEWS Campus Writer

Bakari Kitwana, an author and expert on youth culture, hip-hip politics and activism spoke at Ohio University’s Walter Hall Thursday night, touching on racial and political issues and the effects of hip-hop culture on modern society.

Bakari Kitwana said his latest book, “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop,” looks at how this style of music “has evolved to a point at which it is part of mainstream culture now.”

The book deals with the recent change in hip-hop’s young audience to primarily white listeners.

Kitwana, former executive editor for The Source Magazine, has authored several other similar titles, including “The Hip-Hop Generation” and “The Rap on Gangsta Rap,” and writes a column on hip-hop and youth culture for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

He has lectured at various universities across the country including Harvard and Columbia, and teaches a course called “The Politics of the Hip-Hop Generation” at Kent State University.

Kitwana said it’s wonderful for hip-hop to expand its audience.

“To demean and belittle white people who are getting into hip-hop and developing a racial and a political analysis of it doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. The author maintained that a distinction exists between white youths who merely consume hip-hop culture, and those who are activists for its cultural and political cause.

Kitwana said “white hip-hop kids” play a significant role in society. “Political issues that matter to white kids are not very different from that of their black, Asian, Latino, and Native American counterparts,” he said.

The author talked about the idea of race, arguing that the American media don’t know how to handle it any more. “They’re scared,” he said. “People get freaked out when it comes to racial issues.”

Kitwana said some filmmakers are on the forefront of successfully analyzing the issue of race, citing such films as “Malibu’s Most Wanted,” which the author called a “brilliant satire.” He also talked about television shows that touch on racial issues, such as “The Chappelle Show,” “The Boondocks” and “The Simpsons.”

The author urged students not to be paralyzed by mainstream hip-hop’s mixed messages of luxury and riches, and to focus on its more important political message.

“(Hip-hop) is only as important as it empowers you to change the world, as it empowers to make your life better and to make your life more meaningful,” he said. “Otherwise it’s not relevant.”

He maintained that hip-hop images received from today’s media are sometimes misinterpreted.

Kitwana mentioned a “Pimps and Hoes” theme party put on by white students at Hope College in Michigan last year, offending black students on campus, along with several “Strictly Thuggin’” theme parties that took place at the University of Chicago, where white students dressed up like their favorite hip-hop icons from BET and MTV.

“By now we should all be sophisticated enough to know that what is on BET and MTV is a corporate distortion of hip-hop,” he said.

Kitwana maintained that such corporations have immense power and influence in American society. “Just read the headlines in the newspaper and you will see how much power and influence corporations have over our government,” he said.

He traced the development of hip-hop based on political ideals, from its beginnings after the Civil Rights Movement. “Hip hop has always been political,” he said, citing examples such as the 1980’s rap group Public Enemy.

The author said political messages are present in mainstream hip-hop of today even though they are sometimes clouded over with misogynistic lyrics and violent images. He cited Jay-Z as an example of a hip-hop artist who incorporates racial and political messages into his music.

Kitwana examined hip-hop’s humble beginnings in the northeastern United States, and its evolution into the mainstream culture it is today. According to Kitwana, not many people identified with the hip-hop cultural movement in the 1980s.

“People knew who Run-D.M.C. were, but that was it,” he said.

Today, Kitwana said, people all across the country associate with hip-hop culture, through break dance collectives, hip-hop activism, and adopting the hip-hop style.

“It’s a recent phenomenon,” he said. “A lot of kids today are dressing hip-hip and using the hip-hop language. It wasn’t like that in the 80’s.”

The author said that because of hip-hop, the current youth generation is beginning to live out the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. “Young generations of America are accepting and processing race in radically different ways than their parents,” he said. “Race is changing because of hip-hop.”