Fear of a hip-hop planet

The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture by Bakari Kitwana Basic Books. 230 pages. $24.00.

The critics of hip-hop continue to be relentless in admonishing it for its transgressions. Hip-hop has been accused of it all: glorification of violence, misogyny, commercialism, sexism, and homophobia. Indeed, hip-hop may have surpassed rock-`n'-roll as the greatest example of America's moral decay, according to conservative cultural critics.

Yet, despite this constant assault, hip-hop is at the height of its influence in America and the world. Its cultural and social ripples spread beyond the CD deck: clothing, dance, theater, television, film, advertising--few things are beyond the influence of hip-hop in the new millennium.

Bakari Kitwana, former executive editor of The Source, believes in hip-hop. And like a hip-hop M.C. stepping strong to the microphone, Kitwana tries to make the case for hip-hop as the successor to the postwar "baby boomer" crew. The Hip-Hop Generation is not really about the music. Rather, it is a look at, as Kitwana writes, "African Americans born between 1965 and 1984." Kitwana's offering is a nonreactionary attempt to provide definition to a generation of young people who are regularly accused by their elders as having little to show beside high rates of incarceration, unemployment, homicide, and births out of wedlock. This is also the first generation that came of age "outside the legal confines of legal segregation." This is important because unabashed hip-hoppers like Kitwana oftentimes criticize the civil rights establishment for its failures over the years to deliver black people to the Promised Land. Kitwana says the movement's progress today is "nil."

In the 1920s, '30s, and even the '60s, black youth were likely to derive their value system from "traditional community institutions such as family, church, and school," Kitwana points out. But the hip-hop generation gets its values from "pop music, film, and fashion," he says. These are, of course, market-based institutions that exist outside the black community. Thus, it is no accident that black youth have major issues to sort through today. Though the market has created possibilities for entrepreneurship, employment, and increased creativity within the hip-hop generation, there is less control and concern for negative or exploitative imagery within these institutions due to capitalism's bottom line-profit. Since violent and sexist music sells well, supply is meeting demand.

Kitwana's chapter on sexism--"Where Did Our Love Go?"--is stirring. Rap music is one of the "few existing arenas where the full range of gender issues facing young blacks is documented in the voices of black youth themselves," he writes, noting that the lyrics "reflect the extent of the tension brewing between young black men and women." But Kitwana is not an apologist for rap's sexist content. He acknowledges that rap is "misogynist" and full of "antagonistic depictions of young black women." Perhaps the multitude of young black male artists, record producers, and radio programmers who continue to try to defend the lyrics will take note of Kitwana's condemnations.

Kitwana also devotes a chapter to recent black film. He notes how its aesthetics and techniques--from script to costuming to marketing--are being informed by hip-hop culture.

But The Hip-Hop Generation makes some assumptions that are problematic. These include Kitwana's remark that "of the U.S. military, 275,000 are black and 219,000 are hip-hop generationers." Are you a hip-hop generationer if you are in the military, are black, were born in Kitwana's time frame, and despise everything about hip-hop music and culture? And, of course, millions of nonblacks, rich and poor, born between 1965 and 1984, who grew up under crack, Reagan-Bush, HIV-AIDS, globalization, and who love hip-hop will likely want to ask Kitwana: "Am I a member of your so-called generation?"

Similarly, when Kitwana boldly predicts that hip-hop will expand into the political arena, he doesn't make clear what would make a politician a hip-hop poi. Simply date of birth? How about the young black conservatives waiting in the wings of the Republican-dominated government? Are they part of the hip-hop generation's political movement?

"Hip-hop generationers do have a concrete political agenda," he writes. Yet most of the issues he cites are of concern to the vast majority of black Americans. Reparations, education, employment, economic problems in the inner city, and anti-youth legislation are all part of black America's political agenda, despite Kitwana's assertions that these issues haven't been "integrated" into the mainstream.

And though Kitwana is correct that the baby-boomer-dominated civil rights establishment continues to hold black leadership, this is mostly a function of the after-effects of integration and America's two-party system, not a deliberate slight. Has he checked lately? Black America doesn't have much power and influence anyway, so there isn't much power and access to split up.

Instead of lamenting the political domination of Black America by the traditional civil rights leadership, members of the hip-hop generation should prepare themselves for the day when they will have no choice but to assume leadership roles in America. Its leaders will have to appeal not only to Black America but also to progressives, liberals, and other political activists if true success is to be achieved.

Brian Gilmore is a lawyer and poet from Washington, D.C. His latest book is "Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington" (Karibu Books, 2000).

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