Editor’s Note: Part 3 in our pedagogy mini-series comes to us from Elon University student Arianne Payne, an African-American woman who reflects on taking a course on rap, one which touches on racism and black culture, from a white male professor (that professor authored Part 2 in our series, while a stand-alone piece was Part 1). In particular, she discusses her reservations about this course being taught by a white professor, at all. Ms. Payne is a rising junior at Elon University double majoring in Communication Design and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Arianne has a passion for art and creativity, which have both been impacted and affected her academic career. As a 2018 recipient of Elon’s Lumen Scholarship, she will begin a two-year creative research project on Native American and African American communities this coming Fall.
“I met this girl when I was three years old, and what I loved most, she had so much soul”
These are the opening lyrics to Kanye West’s “Homecoming”: a song in tribute to Chicago. They pay homage to fellow Chicagoan rapper, Common, who used similar lyrics in “I used to Love H.E.R”. As problematic as Kanye is, which I won’t get into here, these lyrics welcome me back to Chicago on every flight home from college. On every school break, they roll off my tongue as I reconnect with high school friends and the lights of my glowing city. I don’t know when I fell in love with hip hop, but I know these memories are one of the reasons why.
This image shows a screenshot from Kanye West’s “Homecoming.” A man, with face half-covered, stands in profile in front of the iconic “bean” (AKA Cloud Gate by sculptor Anish Kapoor) located in downtown Chicago at Millennium Park. The sculpture is a gigantic mirror-surfaced fluid object shaped roughly like a kidney bean. It reflects the city skyline and its people, including the observer, from any angle except directly below. From underneath the bean, one sees oneself and the people who are also below it.
Hip hop originated in the Bronx, New York City in the 1970’s in a postindustrial urban landscape. Hip Hop Scholar, Tricia Rose, describes hip hop as an “Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African-American history” (Rose, 71). Postindustrial conditions, such as the formation of new international divisions of labor and new migration patterns from developing nations, have contributed to the economic and social restructuring of urban America which can still be seen today. In the 70’s cities experienced the loss of federal funds for social services, the displacement of industrial factories, and the conversion of real estate into luxury housing, leaving working-class residents with a diminishing job market, social services, and affordable housing (Rose, 73). Hip hop emerged as a way for black youth and youth of color to create identity and social status in a structurally changing community. Rappers, DJs, break dancers, and graffiti artists were facets of what is now known as hip hop. Artists in these realms not only elevated black youth identity, but also articulated approaches to art that were found in the African diaspora.
In the 80’s hip hop saw a shift from being community and DJ based to being emcee based, which was a result of commercialization as it moved from the Bronx and spread to Manhattan and other major cities across the country. This changed the consumption of rap music to be largely consumed by white audiences, which we still see today. Although historically and artistically hip hop is a black art form, this shift allowed space for white people to engage with and contribute to the evolution of hip hop.
I saw a first-hand example of the ways that white folk can engage with hip hop as I took a class called Rap, Race, Gender, and Philosophy this semester. Unlike most classes that you check off as a requirement, I was truly excited about this one. I have loved hip hop for as long as I can remember. From watching 106 and Park as a child, to listening to my older sister’s mixed cds, the legitimacy of hip hop was never a question in my life. Hip hop music is on the soundtrack of my life, as well as the soundtracks of many other black youth. Learning about it in an academic setting seemed like an experience that would enhance my understanding of the music.
When I walked into class on the first day, I was initially apprehensive. I had heard amazing things about this course, the material, and the professor, but the professor was a straight white man. I didn’t know if this was going to go great or Dear White People bad.
As we students piled in and took our seats, our professor began to discuss the syllabus for the course. After he went over that, he asked us to come up with class expectations. This turned into a 10 minute discussion about who could say the N-word. As a class we came to the consensus that no one in the class would use the word.
While this was a nice introduction to the overall class and its dynamics, I don’t think it was a conversation that should have been had. I appreciate our professor addressing this undeniable issue, but I think it could have been done better. As a black student, I don’t believe in giving non-black people permission to use the n-word in any capacity. The use of oppressive terminology and discriminatory explicatives by non-black students in a very black space shouldn’t have even been a question on the table. In fact, if the professor teaching the course were black, I doubt it would have been a question asked of us. It probably would have been a standard expected of us.
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As the course has just recently ended and I reflect on the semester as a whole, I am really glad that I decided to take this course. It has given me new theoretical frameworks, theories, and practices to engage rap music with. Not only that, but it has cemented the importance of hip hop music as an aspect of black culture and by extension American culture. It has also cemented the necessity for a class like this one to be taught. But, I think the experience I presented above raises the question of who should be teaching the course.
While I don’t think that my experience rules out white people from being able to teach about rap, I do think that it should be the exception not the norm. In the course, we did a unit on white rappers. White rappers like the Beastie Boys and Eminem have been influential in the development of record labels, rap trends, and aspects of rap culture. As white folk began working in the rap industry, they had to think about how they would leverage their white identity and their white privilege in a community that wasn’t built for them. Mickey Hess, an author and Professor of English at Rider University, outlines the ways that white artists have tried to create authenticity in the hip hop culture traditionally. Artists like the Beastie Boys immersed themselves in the culture. They cloaked their whiteness unintentionally in order to fit into the scene. Artists like Vanilla Ice practiced imitation of black culture while highlighting the trope that acting “ghetto” is a source of authenticity and coolness for hip-hop artists. Aside from Eminem’s contribution of strong lyricism to hip hop, he also inverted “the narratives of black artists to show whiteness hindering his acceptance as a rapper” (Hess, 381). By embracing and honestly examining his white identity, Eminem engages in white hip-hop authenticity that eclipses hip-hop as explicitly black-owned. White artists and musicians have been allies to rappers of color. In this, we see that white folks occupy some space in the rap world. Therefore, completely removing them from teaching about rap serves to erase the positive role white folks have played in hip hop. However, hip hop is black. It was made by black people, for black people, and is a staple of black culture. If anyone should be teaching a course about rap music, it should be a black professor.
However, as a student of color attending a predominantly white institution, I understand why this isn’t possible. We have a minuscule number of students of color that attend my university, and an even smaller number of faculty of color teaching at my university. While black faculty might see the importance of this course and celebrate it, they may not have the academic capacity or experience to teach it. I hope that we can move toward a place in academia where courses like this one are the norm and are staffed with teachers who have the proper life and professional experiences to ethically teach rap music.
Just as there are better and worse ways to be a white rapper, there are also better and worse ways to teach hip hop as a white faculty member. I think that there are three strategies that white faculty can practice in order to teach hip hop as well as they can. In the same way that Eminem does, I think that white faculty should recognize their whiteness, their white privilege, and the barriers both can create for them in teaching hip hop. By doing this, I think that they will bring authenticity to the classroom that students will respect, while also realizing how their white identity might offer them unique ways of experiencing hip hop culture and in result, teaching about it. I saw my professor engage in this practice regularly. He constantly checked his privilege and addressed how it affects not only the way he is treated, but also the way he is encouraged to view the world.
White faculty teaching hip hop have a duty to check non-black students that practice behavior that may be harmful to black students and hip hop culture. That means that white faculty have to pay heightened attention to how black students react to statements in class, as well as be socially conscious enough to understand what situations and content may be deemed harmful or culturally insensitive. As a white person, this means that they may have to address uncomfortable topics with students as they come up in class, as well as after. As a faculty member, who happens to be white, this means that they should always initiate these conversations from a place of respect, while understanding that they may not end up there. There were some problematic students and comments made in our class, as would probably be expected. Our professor let us engage in the conversations and disagree with each other, but he always intervened in order to address those problematic comments made. The reason that these moments stand out to me is not because of the fact that my professor addressed problematic students. It was the way that he did it. He almost never lost his temper or yelled at the students, which I recognize isn’t always possible in discriminatory situations. My professor addressed my peers as students who had a lot to learn about racial inequality and the lived experiences of people different than them.
By serving in this role and capacity, white faculty members are acting as allies to the black community. By doing so, they must understand that the work of diversity education and social awareness are never done and can never be too understood. There is always room to grow in one’s social justice work and advocacy. By being an ally, white faculty members must come to terms with the fact that they might get some things wrong, they might offend students. That is the nature of allyship. However, they must also understand the importance of owing up to those mistakes, addressing them with students, and moving past them. Another important note about being an ally is that it is imperative to seek out the advice and be open to critique of black students while teaching this course. My professor did this by way of an end of the year reflection about the class as a whole. White faculty members need to use their allyship to create space for black students to articulate the ways that they experience the world. By doing so, I believe that white faculty members will understand their students and the subject matter better. This may even look like asking a black student to TA the class to offer a concrete way that white faculty members can listen to black students in a serious way. We, black students, have immense knowledge about the black experience and about how that is both a product and influence of hip hop culture. Black students will prove to be white faculty member’s greatest ally in the quest of understanding how to teach hip hop responsibly, consciously, and from a place of love.
Articles Referenced
Hess, Mickey. “Hip-Hop Realness and the White Performer.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 22, no. 5, 2005, pp. 372–389., doi:10.1080/07393180500342878.
Ross, Andrew, and Tricia Rose. Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture. Routledge, 1994.
