Week 8

How can hip hop be used as a tool to promote social justice and youth activism in the classroom? What is the relationship between hip hop culture and the development of critical consciousness amongst students?

As an extraordinarily awkward and uncoordinated person, hip hop would have been the last thing I would have thought of using to incorporate social justice into the classroom. I found this article very interesting because it is a new way to teach such an essential topic in the classroom! As stated in the article, hip hop has a long history of “black freedom struggle, and self-determination of oppressed communities worldwide” (53). Hip hop can be used as an insightful path to learning about “poverty, police brutality, patriarchy, misogyny, incarceration, racial discrimination as well as love, hope and joy” (55). This opens so many doors for incorporating how society is inherently unjust and challenges students to realize the possible oppressive world we live in. Using hip hop as the path to learn about these things pushes the “pale, male and stale” perspective out of the classroom and is overall an interesting subject that students will likely remember long past their school years. Not only are students learning about the history of hip hop, but they are constitutionally learning about oppression. This education is the first step in which will lead to the abolishment of a superior eurocentric world.