I want to start off by sharing a story. Picture me walking into a 300 level university course. I would walk in late on a routine basis; pants sagging, headphones still in blasting music just loud enough to cause a minor distraction, hat on, staring directly into the teacher’s eyes. It was as if I was daring my professor to address my demeanor. But something happened that day, in fact, it had been happening for a while now. In fact, it had been happening ever since I stepped into university.

You see, my ‘performance’ was merely a repetition of my tried and tested high school routine; a routine that I would use to illicit some type of attention from the authority in the classroom. And at that time, in the space of schooling, any type of attention was better than no attention, or validation, at all. So naturally, the attitudes I embodied and negotiated usually came from a place that would garner me negative attention. However, this no longer occurred in university. Thus, began my journey into exploring how urban Black males experience schooling practices with an explicit interest on how that experience is different in the high school setting compared to the university one.

Growing up in a so-called ‘at-risk’ community, I was heavily invested in hip-hop culture. I would even venture to say that I learned more from Nas and TLC than I did from my textbooks. The issue I experienced, like many other urban Black males, was that the hip-hop cultural aesthetics and vernacular I learned from and ultimately appreciated were the furthest thing from being valued in the traditional school space. As a result, the space of school and the space of my community grew to the point where they became two mutually exclusive environments. Subsequently, my identity was also in constant negotiation.

Fortunately, Black masculinity has also survived in the space of negotiation. In today’s terms, that negotiation translates to an ability to be adaptable. This ability to become adaptable through identity politics converges on an understanding of how aesthetics, vernacular, and space all either resist or reciprocate Power. Ultimately, an examination of how urban Black males, especially ones espoused by a hip-hop culture, work with these interrelated networks can be used to comprehend how urban Black males experience school while simultaneously pinpointing why schooling pushed some intelligent urban Black youth out of education while retaining certain others.

To close, one needs to look no further than the 90’s hit TV show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Two of the main characters, Will Smith and Carlton Banks, represent the essentialist discourse around Black masculinity. On one hand you have Will, the nonchalant, easy-going, suave, Black male who tries to “slide through” school by maintaining a quasi hyper-masculinity. On the other hand, there’s Carlton Banks, the young, intelligent, “square” Black male who places success above all else. Some may even say that Carlton represents that Black male who has been “white washed”. But maintaining and perpetuating these sole tropes of Black masculinity is troubling. It speaks to the problem of discourse pertaining to urban Black males that either pathologizes them or attacks hegemony. If this is the only dichotomy that exists, Black males will continue to find themselves in a lose-lose situation.

This speaks to the need to challenge our current understandings of Black masculinity and how school operates as a cleanser of sorts; always trying to sanction the attitudes, behaviors, and skill-sets of particular bodies. I have no problem with the ideal of a ‘universal student’, but whose model of ‘universality’ are we following? And who has to make the biggest alterations to their being when we decide upon this? Both school and student must work to challenge the common stereotypes that are placed on Black males by providing opportunities for them to be seen for their complexity as people. I can be both Will Smith and Carlton Banks and that does not sacrifice any type of ‘authenticity’ I am aiming to achieve. Our students can wear Jordans and sag their jeans and even come to class late, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they understand the importance of education. Our Black males are not lazy, underachievers, or at-risk. It is the box placed upon them that demarcates them as such and subsequently makes them feel like that. When we analyze the complexity in which urban Black males experience school settings and discuss the ways that some have become successful at doing so without placing polarizing tropes of identity on them, maybe then we can say, “we’ve made it”.

[share title=”Share this Post” facebook=”true” twitter=”true” google_plus=”true”]

The post Shattering Black Male Stereotypes appeared first on Matthew R. Morris.

I feel that all the hip-hop albums I have ever listened to, from Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle to Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly have taught me more valuable life lessons and offered more insight into my world than any public school educational resource I was ever handed. School taught me how to read, write and do math. The questions and challenges I was required to complete taught me how to problem solve to a certain extent. History and Geography textbooks allowed me to understand my situational context. Through these resources, I learned that the world was bigger than my block, bigger than the east end of the six, and bigger than North America. Art and French class flaunted me with the realization that I could not excel in all things. Or rather, they made me appreciate the talent that came to others naturally. But music, man o’ man, music taught me life. Even at school, the hallways and everything while transitioning from one “class” to another was in itself a classroom. It was classroom hip-hop. There were mistakes that I didn’t dare make thanks to listening to Ready to Die or watching videos like TLC’s Waterfalls. English class taught me how to write properly but I would argue that hip-hop music taught me how to articulate meaning. So why do we not learn from this valuable resource in school? Why are our poetry units crowded with dead white men? Learning is more than a regurgitation of information. And schools should start to adopt a form of knowledge production that brings information to life.

For the life of me, I could not care to remember mundane facts, no matter how many times I read over the reasons or causes for some historical event. But in high school, ask me the latest Nas track or R.Kelly ballad and I could recite it word for word! The fault in our education lies somewhere along the traditional pedagogical practices we still try to shove down our children’s throats. Most of our conventional methods of teaching are slowly dying. Many are dead. They especially find themselves numb to a group of bodies that have the ability to, and would much rather, learn in creative and spirited ways.

Do I want to go as far as saying an urban hip-hop way of knowing runs contradictory to traditional schooling methods? No, I don’t think I do. The negative insinuations of such a statement could easily be used by any intellectual positivist to further espouse some incorrect nihilistic association regarding the Black urban culture. But I will say that if we add a little vibration and energy to our teaching practices, the sky is the limit for all learners. No one can argue that hip-hop is the fastest growing music form of our generation. Everyone knows Jay-Z, Kanye West, and now Drake. Thanks to the likes of Blondie, Rick Rubin and Mick Jagger, Black music has slowly and steadily inched its way into mainstream pop culture and has subsequently blown the hinges right off that door. And yes, I say thanks to the likes of those people (know your music history). For a long time, it took the co-sign of prominent white musicians in order for Black music to earn its place in the mainstream that it properly deserved. Now that we’re here, on the very fringe of appropriation, what do we do with this tool? What do we do with a tool not made by the master now that we are in the master’s house?

That question is rhetorical. At least for me it is. I am not shaky in my stance. I am prepared to put my head on the line for a just cause. A right cause. A role model (and hopefully a future mentor), Chris Emdin, professor at Columbia University has sparked a movement in Hip Hop Education, tagging the line, “on with the revolution.” If we move correctly and can straddle the Ivory Tower and the bricks appropriately with enough soldiers, we will indelibly be on with this revolution in education.

The only thing stopping us is ourselves. We must demonstrate conviction in believing that Hip Hop is one of the greatest forms of self-reflection, soul searching, communication, and learning. I am here to testify that hip-hop has taught me more than any book I read in high school. Rappers, and not any standard lesson, have shown me how to convince, charm, and articulate. I pulled my pants up and took my hat off when they told me to. This was out of respect. But did their words change me?No. I changed on my own, through mentors and models that opened a door, or rather a bridge that I could walk across, understanding that both the conventional world and the urban world could be one in the same. If more of us teachers start to realize this, pedagogy can be put into practice. That information we are supposed to remember for History or Science class will be as easy as remembering the lines to Juicy. So, on with it.

[share title=”Share this Post” facebook=”true” twitter=”true” google_plus=”true”]

The post Classroom Hip-Hop appeared first on Matthew R. Morris.