Sacramento Area Youth Speaks: If You Got Something to Say, SAYSomething!

• In Event: Living Hip-Hop: The Community-Based Organization as a Space for Educational Liberation

Abstract

The incorporation of Hip-Hop in SAYS is about the incorporation of people. Paulo Friere continuously reminds us in his work that teaching is a human act. Hip-Hop is a reminder, for many of our students, of their humanity. It reminds them of all the things that makes us human. Both the beauty and the ugliness; it's all on display (Hill, 2009a). As Tupac says, “we are cursed, that is why we curse.”
As a model, SAYS is perfecting how to operate in the Socratic cycher. The impact of the PMEs cannot be simply reduced to the notion that the students see themselves in the PMEs, but that through representation, PMEs and students can painfully examine their lives “within an unjust society and share the sensibility that pain may pave the path to justice” (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, p. 188). This is the essence of SAYS and its embracing of Hip-Hop.

Author

• Patrice M. Hill, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author