Hustlin’ Consciousness: Critical Education Using Hip-Hop Modes of Knowledge Distribution

• In Event: Roundtable Session 100
  In Roundtable Session: Remaking Hip-Hop-Based Education: From a Source for Social Reproduction to a Pedagogy of Liberation

Abstract

In formal education settings, educators have successfully used hip-hop for a variety of purposes. These include developing critical consciousness in English and language arts (Hill, 2009; Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002), social studies (Stovall, 2006), and communications (Alim, 2007) classes as well as teaching HIV/AIDS awareness among adolescents (Stephens, Braithwaite, & Taylor, 1998). The purpose of this paper is to (a) explicate how critical hip-hop pedagogies can take shape outside of schools in settings that are more organic to young people (b) through the sensibilities and aesthetics of hip-hop. To accomplish this, we analyze Stop Coonin’ Movement, a critical media literacy educational movement that operates outside of traditional educational settings.
Our research is grounded in cultural production theory (Bourdieu, 1993; Kelley, 1997) and connects youth’s capacity to hustle to the aesthetics and sensibilities of hip-hop and critical pedagogy. With respect to cultural production and knowledge distribution, hustlin(g), in our analysis, refers to the sensibilities and skill sets by which youth and young adults circulate products such as mixtapes, CDs, mp3s, flyers, and T-shirts throughout informal economies. We argue that hustling constitutes a hip-hop pedagogy that is educative in nature and relies on the natural organizational structures, aesthetics and sensibilities, and modes of distribution endemic to hip-hop and its cultural producers. We use Stop Coonin’ Movement as a case to explore the ways that critical consciousness, specifically media literacy, can be hustled in identical ways through the distribution of products. As such, our analysis centers on the creative sensibilities at work in the larger culture of hip-hop.
Data were collected through semi-structured, conversational interviews (Patton, 2001) with three founders of SCM. We asked them about their experiences and perspectives working with the movement. We probed to understand the successes, challenges, principles, and underlying philosophies that guided the model. Finally, we sought to understand what the movement entailed based on the geographical differences and how it transcended space through the use of technology. We triangulated interview data through an analysis of SCM documents including meeting minutes, planning documents, memos, t-shirt designs, pictures, blog entries, essays, books and website information, financial statements, and invoices.
Our findings illustrate how SCM harnessed new media and worked within hip-hop contexts to promote media literacy among urban youth. Specifically, based upon an historical understanding of minstrelsy (e.g., Lott, 1995), the movement confronted misrepresentations of Blackness in the media through an organic model of hustling controversial blackface “Stop Coonin” products. In this way, the movement fostered critical discussions among youth about the exploitative aspects of the entertainment industry as related to race, gender, and economic class. Overall, our findings push organizers and educators to think beyond the critical content of hip-hop music and to contemplate transformative pedagogies that operate according to the aesthetic forms and sensibilities of hip-hop.

Authors

• Emery Marc Petchauer, Oakland University

• Decoteau J. Irby, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee