Read Online It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation by M.K. Asante Jr - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: M.K. Asante Jr
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to resign at the governor’s request, McGreevey, lacking the power to fire Baraka, opted to abolish the position altogether, thus giving Baraka the distinct moniker as the first and last poet laureate of New Jersey. On a similar note, I felt I was destined to become the first and last twenty-three-year-old professor ever appointed.
Why?
Because most colleges and universities, especially historically Black schools, are conservative institutions. I have the audacity to believe that poverty can and must be eradicated; that health care can and must be made free; that prisons should be converted into schools and rehabilitation centers; and that war is not the answer—thus making me, in the eyes of those that seek to conserve the unjust world as it is, a “radical.” Additionally, I understand that the exercise of education is never neutral. Education, in this turbulent time, is either engaged in integrating and conforming young minds to accept and maintain the world they’ve inherited or it is an exercise in liberation by which young women and men create, imagine, and participate in thetransformation of their world. Because I coveted the latter—
the transformation of the world
—I knew that my job was not secure. For, in order to transform the world, one must challenge and confront the institutions that train and graduate custodians of the status quo.
Despite my skepticism, though, the reality was that I was now a professor. Among the classes I was set to teach was a general studies course entitled “The Post-Hip-Hop Generation.” Months before, I’d published an article in the
San Francisco Chronicle
entitled “We Are the Post-Hip-Hop Generation,” based on conversations I was having with young people around the country who felt that hip hop no longer represented their desire for radical change and wasn’t apt to respond to the critical challenges facing our world. A month later, community organizers in Newark put together “Post-Hip-Hop Generation,” a panel discussion where music executives, DJs, rappers, and scholars came together to discuss, among other things, the ideas put forth in my article. Despite a lively discussion, nothing could match the promise of a class populated and taught by the post-hip-hop generation.
Zora Neale Hurston, who strolled across the Morgan State University (then Morgan College) campus as a student ninety years before I would begin teaching there, once remarked that “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.” As my first day approached, I grew more and more anxious about my role in helping to hatch the future. And then the day came.
The scene: As I barreled down battered North Avenue on my way to teach my first-ever class at Morgan, I wondered if tomorrow would show up today. Then, just like that, I saw something, something in the way of things, a something that was actually a
somebody—
a somebody who nobody else seemed to see. That
body
, stiff and Black, was sprawled on the side of the road, pressed haphazardly against afilthy curb. Thoughts careened through my mind—
Is he moving? Damn, he ain’t moving. Maybe he’s asleep. Nah, he ain’t moving at all. Why isn’t there a crowd huddled around this somebody? How come people ain’t stoppin’? Why aren’t cars pulling over? Why ain’t I pulling over?—
as I sat at a red light. As the light turned, I snatched a glance at the clock: 10:40. My class started at eleven and I was about ten minutes away.
You can’t keep going
, I told myself.
You made an observation, now you have an obligation
.
I pulled over and shimmied out of my car.
With each step toward the body, came a new revelation: Stiff.
Blood.
Damn.
Dead.
Finally, I arrived to find a boy, not a moment older than I, shot to death on the busiest street in Baltimore, lying in a pool of crimson and garbage, as cars and people sped past.
“Sorry… for … being… late,” I huffed to my new students, out
Why?
Because most colleges and universities, especially historically Black schools, are conservative institutions. I have the audacity to believe that poverty can and must be eradicated; that health care can and must be made free; that prisons should be converted into schools and rehabilitation centers; and that war is not the answer—thus making me, in the eyes of those that seek to conserve the unjust world as it is, a “radical.” Additionally, I understand that the exercise of education is never neutral. Education, in this turbulent time, is either engaged in integrating and conforming young minds to accept and maintain the world they’ve inherited or it is an exercise in liberation by which young women and men create, imagine, and participate in thetransformation of their world. Because I coveted the latter—
the transformation of the world
—I knew that my job was not secure. For, in order to transform the world, one must challenge and confront the institutions that train and graduate custodians of the status quo.
Despite my skepticism, though, the reality was that I was now a professor. Among the classes I was set to teach was a general studies course entitled “The Post-Hip-Hop Generation.” Months before, I’d published an article in the
San Francisco Chronicle
entitled “We Are the Post-Hip-Hop Generation,” based on conversations I was having with young people around the country who felt that hip hop no longer represented their desire for radical change and wasn’t apt to respond to the critical challenges facing our world. A month later, community organizers in Newark put together “Post-Hip-Hop Generation,” a panel discussion where music executives, DJs, rappers, and scholars came together to discuss, among other things, the ideas put forth in my article. Despite a lively discussion, nothing could match the promise of a class populated and taught by the post-hip-hop generation.
Zora Neale Hurston, who strolled across the Morgan State University (then Morgan College) campus as a student ninety years before I would begin teaching there, once remarked that “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.” As my first day approached, I grew more and more anxious about my role in helping to hatch the future. And then the day came.
The scene: As I barreled down battered North Avenue on my way to teach my first-ever class at Morgan, I wondered if tomorrow would show up today. Then, just like that, I saw something, something in the way of things, a something that was actually a
somebody—
a somebody who nobody else seemed to see. That
body
, stiff and Black, was sprawled on the side of the road, pressed haphazardly against afilthy curb. Thoughts careened through my mind—
Is he moving? Damn, he ain’t moving. Maybe he’s asleep. Nah, he ain’t moving at all. Why isn’t there a crowd huddled around this somebody? How come people ain’t stoppin’? Why aren’t cars pulling over? Why ain’t I pulling over?—
as I sat at a red light. As the light turned, I snatched a glance at the clock: 10:40. My class started at eleven and I was about ten minutes away.
You can’t keep going
, I told myself.
You made an observation, now you have an obligation
.
I pulled over and shimmied out of my car.
With each step toward the body, came a new revelation: Stiff.
Blood.
Damn.
Dead.
Finally, I arrived to find a boy, not a moment older than I, shot to death on the busiest street in Baltimore, lying in a pool of crimson and garbage, as cars and people sped past.
“Sorry… for … being… late,” I huffed to my new students, out
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