Source: www.theatlantic.com - Thursday, March 19, 2015
Hip hop has always been in my classroom as have other forms of figurative expression. Its most recent appearance was unplanned and surfaced last Wednesday during a discussion of “ A More Perfect Union ,” a speech delivered in 2008 by Barack Obama wherein he sought to define and defend his character during his initial campaign. This semester I’m teaching speech as a spoken art form in conjunction with poetry to examine, among other aims, how allusion, imagery, and narrative persona interact. Hip hop found its way into the discussion as my class and I explored Obama’s reflections of America’s racist character when a student—I’ll call him Kwame, a black musician in his late 20s—alluded to the SAE fraternity video as an example of modern racism. Kwame wondered if the students were really racist or if they were simply aping the language of America’s long tradition. Racism was a learned disease and not the sole determinant of a person’s character, Obama seemed to say as he described his love and acceptance of his white grandmother despite her racist tendencies. “The students were probably unaware of what they really were saying and just silly,” Kwame concluded. “None of them would dare say those things to a black kid on the football team.” Almost every hand shot up at this suggestion. What then ensued was one of those fascinating, honest conversations students have with each other during class, when your job as a teacher is to get out
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Hip hop has always been in my classroom as have other forms of figurative expression. Its most recent appearance was unplanned and surfaced last Wednesday during a discussion of “ A More Perfect Union ,” a speech delivered in 2008 by Barack Obama wherein he sought to define and defend his character during his initial campaign. This semester I’m teaching speech as a spoken art form in conjunction with poetry to examine, among other aims, how allusion, imagery, and narrative persona interact. Hip hop found its way into the discussion as my class and I explored Obama’s reflections of America’s racist character when a student—I’ll call him Kwame, a black musician in his late 20s—alluded to the SAE fraternity video as an example of modern racism. Kwame wondered if the students were really racist or if they were simply aping the language of America’s long tradition. Racism was a learned disease and not the sole determinant of a person’s character, Obama seemed to say as he described his love and acceptance of his white grandmother despite her racist tendencies. “The students were probably unaware of what they really were saying and just silly,” Kwame concluded. “None of them would dare say those things to a black kid on the football team.” Almost every hand shot up at this suggestion. What then ensued was one of those fascinating, honest conversations students have with each other during class, when your job as a teacher is to get out
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