Doing Their Own Thing

Abstract

The term political activism would seem, on the surface, to be relatively straightforward. Employed in casual conversation (certainly among those on the political Left), its implicit meanings encompass ideological commitment to social justice and equality issues, community-based outreach, organizing skills, and an unrelenting desire, as Andreana Clay suggests in her exciting new publication, to “do something for a cause” (176). With an array of prior examples and generations of models available for emulation, the common assumption when speaking of activism is that we simply know it when we see it.In her eminently accessible book The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post–Civil Rights Politics, Andreana Clay revisits the concept of activism, critically engaging the commonplace assumptions about what it is and how contemporary sociopolitical conditions require distinct community organizing practices. Clay, an associate professor of sociology, based her project on two years of field research in Oakland, California, a city that stands out for its complicated geosocial segregation (Tilton 2010) as well as its renowned legacy of political struggle. The political legacy is significant in Clay's study, as she frequently cites the iconic resonance of the Black Panther Party (which was founded in Oakland in 1966) and other local activists, noting that the horrors and the glories, as well as the defeats and victories, associated with past political struggles can both overwhelm and inspire the activist initiatives of contemporary youths.The historical specificity inscribed in the book's title (in fact, there are two temporal constructs in play) is crucial for, as Clay emphasizes, “each political generation has its own definitions of what it means to be an activist” (9). Her interests lie with young people in their mid- to late teens who, while on the cusp of greater autonomy, are still positioned within the authoritative domains of schools and families and who confront the repressive might of sanctioned state power, as well as critical scrutiny, definition, and often demonization by the media. As Clay illustrates, the activist motivations of these young people are often a direct result of age-based circumstances that are fused with other social variables (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) and, importantly, the kinds of activism they enact are also interpreted and expressed through the lens of age, experience, and ability. Clay explains: “In particular, I am interested in how youth understand and navigate the violence of institutionalized racism, sexism, and classism and the methods they use to address it” (56).The book title's employment of the term hip-hop generation may be a bit confusing. Age-based designations can be complicated; they are often imprecise, and though they are intended to provide a general frame to help us understand what social cohort we are discussing, slippages occur. For instance, Bakari Kitwana (2002) defines the hip-hop generation as those born between roughly 1965 and 1984; Jeff Chang (2005), too, uses the term to refer to hip-hop culture's earliest participants and practitioners. More recently (Asante 2008), the term post-hip-hop generation has been coined to identify youths who are further removed both from the civil rights and black power movements and from hip-hop's originary moment in the 1970s. They grew up in a historical era shaped by significantly different structures and political forces than those that shaped the era of the 1960s through the 1980s. With hip-hop's existence extending past forty years, many youths in Clay's study are surely the offspring of a prior generation of hip-hop-aware adults (if not outright aficionados), and their comprehension of hip-hop's influence on society and politics is surely different than that of their parents or older relations; Clay's informants, thus, conform more accurately to a notion of post- (or perhaps late) hip-hop sensibilities.Focusing on after-school groups and the roles of two nonprofit youth advocacy agencies, Clay delineates the processes through which young people of color identify social ills worth combating and the means through which they establish coalition alliances. The book details the training that youths undergo in order to work collaboratively on public events and projects, exploring the principles of trust and compassion that bring youths from various contexts and with differing political agendas together within loosely cohesive causes. The generational element emerges in numerous ways, such as when we learn of the involvement of slightly older, experienced organizers and activists (older than the teens, younger than those whose political identities were forged in the 1960s or 1970s) who play an important role, supporting youths as they develop their political consciousness, hone their strategic thinking, and improve their own organizing skills.The numerous quotes from Clay's young informants indicate that, for them, political consciousness emerges from individualized experience and the tangible realities of everyday life. In their view, anyplace where discrimination occurs can be a site for activist confrontation, but discrimination requires multiple modes of response, and no two battles require precisely the same resistance strategies. Clay notes how contemporary youths, reacting perhaps to the weight of large-scale movement politics and activism associated with their parents' and grandparents' generations, “describe their activism as rooted in their everyday activities and practices, rather simply than large-scale strategies…For them, interrupting homophobia or racism in the places with which they were most familiar—at school, home, and in their neighborhoods—was the most meaningful practice and was linked to how they thought about social change, their role in it, and their overall identity as activists” (178–79). One challenge identified by these youths is how to isolate the sources of the wrongs done against them and their age cohort and remain vigilant on behalf of others in the community who might also suffer from the corrosion of bigotry or intolerance. Clay analyzes the ways in which youths prioritize and channel their responses, in some instances addressing racist encounters and in others challenging expressions of homophobia or sexism. In their meetings and speak-out sessions, these are among the core concerns that young people believe most directly affect their collective well-being, and Clay accordingly provides detailed chapters for each.As Clay and her teen informants make clear, the forces of threat or discrimination are ubiquitous, arising in numerous permutations in public contexts such as schools, malls, and neighborhood streets, as well as in the private enclaves of the home where lifestyles and social practices are often openly castigated and a child's sense of worth and self-esteem can be seriously undermined. These are the spaces that are linked through patterned mobility, and the book emphasizes the pervasive perils, conflict, and violence that permeate the daily existence of urban youths, whether in the form of gang activity, police harassment, or unwarranted surveillance in retail outlets. On the evidence of teen testimonies here, these forces erode hope and displace other possible realities and expectations for a fulfilling future.The youths in this study are not ignorant of the ways in which they are often constructed as social pariahs, as a site of crisis, or even as a generation of “waste” (as one neighbor in the study referred to them). They recognize how they are frequently regarded negatively by adults and authorities, and they subsequently fight to confront and reverse these attitudes, focusing on conditions within their immediate locale while endeavoring to enact social change on a much broader scale. It was a pleasure to see how several key informants and others in the project rise and thrive, overcoming adversity without compromising their political values or activist principles.Throughout the book, the youths admirably articulate the stigmatizing power of social stereotypes that undermine their sense of self and that functionally contain the range of options that they can imagine, let alone act on. Clay properly foregrounds their voices as they explain and explore their internal/personal and external/social efforts to thwart negative discourses and images in order to revive optimism for a more positive future. The notion of activism that often emerges involves discursive and ideological articulations of change and challenge, adhering to familiar (and not entirely unproblematic) themes of resistance and empowerment that are introduced within the formal structure of the youth agencies themselves.1The activist and organizing strategies prominently embrace hip-hop as a means of articulating political sensibilities, and it soon becomes clear that, with the evident diversity within this youth cohort (encompassing different cultural identities, different political orientations, different locales), hip-hop provides a common foundation. The language, style, and flow of rap and hip-hop culture facilitate shared communication in what amounts to a lingua franca. Clay explores “how youth use hip-hop music and culture in their activism on their high school campuses, in their everyday settings, and at the organizations they work with,” employing hip-hop “to intervene in dominant understandings of youth culture, resistance and identity” (94). In this sense, the notion of improvisational “freestyling” and a radical remix logic prove to be useful in an activist framework, as young people adopt an impressively flexible approach to local activism while reflecting the core attributes of hip-hop culture. The adoption of hip-hop as a central aspect of their political expression and identity formation is no small thing, especially considering the widespread and caustic vitriol against hip-hop and the young people who love it (see, for example, McWhorter 2003, 2008). The agencies in Clay's project are ultimately an extended case of Participatory Action Research (Powers and Allaman 2012) that is aimed at helping young people realize their own capacity to effect sustainable social change. I call this “’Hood Work” (Forman 2013) to identify urban, locally responsive youth advocacy agencies and initiatives that explicitly employ hip-hop in their internal workshops and planning sessions as well as introducing hip-hop arts in their outreach initiatives.2 Clay isolates hip-hop culture's elaborated values that extend beyond mere entertainment, noting: “Some youth embrace hip-hop culture, music, and performances to articulate their ideologies and create political identities, as this genre most accurately reflects the lives, languages, and rhythms of youth of color, particularly in urban areas” (8).One important insight in this project is the degree to which some politicized youths downplay their activist roles; they feel that because time and resources intervene in their capacity to take up the struggle full-time, they have not earned the vaunted title “activist,” as it was defined before them. It is not helpful that many veteran community organizers and activists regularly dismiss the youths' brand of activism, failing to validate their efforts or their causes in the contemporary context. Contemporary youth activists in US urban centers contend with what Clay identifies as “the idealized cultural image of activism” (158), which in her research “was so overwhelming that they could not identify themselves as activists” (160). Today's young people, even those who are most involved in community organizing and political resistance, often deem their work unworthy of comparison with past movements. While they may aspire to the same kinds of progressive change, they commonly regard their own efforts as being insignificant, whether because of the limited time and resources available to them as high school students—they are, after all, students, and many work part-time jobs or assist with other familial duties—or because contemporary political issues seem minor in relation to the monumentality of past political causes. Clay reveals that the labels “activism” and “activist” are not uniformly accepted by young people and, in the process of defining their politicized identities, they often openly reject established terms that they find restraining.The youth of color in Clay's study are “expected to navigate this political, social, and cultural landscape on their own” (57), in various ways fulfilling the grievous mandates of neoliberal efficiency and the evisceration of the welfare state (Forman 2013). The mutual skepticism between youth and older activists arises in multiple contexts, presenting a sense of missed opportunities for cross-generational collaboration and the formation of powerful new modes of activist alliances.As Clay notes, the youth agencies' task of helping to foster “youth empowerment” and producing “good citizens” is intended to assist “young people to survive the ‘risk factors’ in their communities; second, they want to train youth to become responsible adults who participate in civil society” (33). As this suggests, the structured environment of youth advocacy agencies also adheres to preformed ideals of desirable or acceptable practices that channel their activist initiatives. While there may be widespread agreement that such prosocial objectives are laudatory, it is imperative to maintain a critical perspective in order to realistically assess what these programs are for and whether they are achieving what they are intended to achieve. To her credit, Clay does not ignore these questions, establishing a balanced evaluation of agency practices, noting their successes and, in several instances, their shortcomings.Clay's chapter “Queer Youth Act Up” is among the more interesting sections of the book, in part because she offers insight into the role of LGBTQ activist youths within their schools, peer groups, and among their family members. In hip-hop scholarship, the issue of queer identities forged within rabidly homophobic conditions is rarely engaged, and Clay, as an out lesbian of color (127), is careful not to impose her own sense of identity politics and struggle onto her young informants, instead letting their words and experiences emerge. Clay writes: “Queer youth of color, like the ones in this study, must continue to search for images and movements that reflect their experience” (129). As I read this chapter, I hoped for some reference to the influential Oakland-based queer hip-hop group Deep Dickollective and the PeaceOut World Homo Hop Festival that was founded in Oakland and ran between 2001 and 2007. While she looks much further back (to the 1960s and 1970s) in her analysis of Oakland's many political and activist achievements, Clay overlooks a rich and important set of events and participants that were active near the end of her research phase and flourished in the years immediately following her field work. The omission does not negate or otherwise mar what is included here, but it might have provided a relevant update to her subject while educating readers about yet another set of fascinating political and cultural “firsts” for the Oakland area.In summary, Andreana Clay has put in the work, presenting an analytically rigorous study of how hip-hop-identified youths engage with their environment in political terms. She also provides a platform for the voices of young people of color who strive to enact political change and to make a difference in their immediate communities and in the world beyond their own locale. Because similar endeavors involving hip-hop-oriented youth agencies and activist seminars exist throughout the country and, increasingly, in cities of scale around the world, Clay's research is timely and valuable, providing an additional tool in the furthering of progressive activist knowledge.