Keefe-Harris_Midterm
Cat Keefe – Harris
Gender and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Dr. Jessica Pabon
Annotated Bibliography for Hip Hop Feminism Wiki Page
Love, Bettina L. “Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop and the Black Ratchet Imagination.” Educational Researcher, Vol. 46 No. 9, 2017, pp. 539-547. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0013189X17736520
Understanding the etymology of the word ratchet itself and its relationship to not only hip-hop culture more broadly, but the binaries and oppositional paradigms that ratchet presents for Black women’s identity is imperative to understand hip-hop feminism. Especially, considering the various hip hop feminist theorists arguments this article cites on understanding ratchetness. This article utilizes the theory of a “Black ratchet imagination” as a “messy” methodological research perspective, in order to humanize not only Black women, but young black queer folks engaged in the ‘Bounce’ subset of Hip Hop culture in New Orleans. The lense of a Black ratchet imagination is imperative to the Hip Hop Feminism Wiki Page because it provides a research method informed by academic and hip hop generation feminism which includes “intersectionality, agency, fluidity” and acknowledges the struggles of studying not only Black women, but Black queer youth who participate in and contribute to the cultural production of Hip Hop. I will utilize this research in my editing of Princess Nokia’s wiki page as well, for my discussion of the necessity of artists to create safe spaces for women of color and queer people as a form of agency and resistance in Hip Hop.
Cooper, Brittney C. “Disrespectability Politics: On Jay-Z’s Bitch, Beyonce’s “Fly Ass and Black Girl Blue” Crunk Feminist Collection, edited by Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris and Robin M. Boylorn, Feminist Press, 2017, 181-184. https://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/disrespectability-politics-on-jay-zs-bitch-beyonces-fly-ass-and-black-girl-blue/
The complex argument that Brittney C. Cooper presents in this entry on (dis) respectability politics, the politics of desirability, and hip hop generation feminism via using “the first family of Hip Hop” the Carter family (Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Blue Ivy), as a case study is imperative to Hip Hop feminism. Jay-Z and Beyonce’s roles in mainstream culture challenge the nuclear family, “baby mama” and “baby daddy”, considering Jay-Z and Beyonce both have their own dynasty’s as individual artists. This analysis also makes an interesting comparison uplifting the Carter family to the status of the Obamas, citing that Jay-Z said that without the multiracial fan base of Hip Hop the election of the first Black president would not have been possible. Jay-Z and Beyonce made frequent appearances and performances at the White House, for the entirety of the Obama Presidency and participated in promotion during both campaigns. Surprisingly, this analysis also engages in a critical understanding of Hip Hop generations love affair with respectability politics, considering one could argue that Beyonce and Jay-Z are THE prime representation of the Black nuclear family, and thus, the epitome of Black excellence in not only the United States, but globally as well. Understanding the role of the Carter family in today’s Hip Hop world is imperative for the Wiki page, especially Hip Hop’s role in world politics. Lastly, Brittney C. Cooper also talks about Blue Ivy, the youngest person in the world’s voice to be on Billboard charts (thanks to Jay-Z), yet asks the important question is this accessible to other black girls? By delving into the politics of desirability; Blue Ivy has already been attacked by majority of the internet, for her dark-skin, full lips and kinky hair. These attacks are similar to how Michelle Obama got called an Ape on live television by Fox News, “even the first lady can’t get no respect”. Therefore, Black women are disrespected just as much as they attempt to adhere to respectability politics, this is the ‘Crunk’ space that Black women occupy not only in Hip Hop, but also in the mainstream. I believe that this discussion of (dis)respectability politics, desirability, and black excellence within the context of studying the Carter family, can be used as a nuance counterargument to apparent lack of Black families on the Hip Hop Feminism Wiki Page.
Rebollo-Gil, Guillermo, and Moras, Amanda. “Black Women and Black Men in Hip Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence, and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space” Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2012, pp. 118-132. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00898.x/full
The last article I have selected provides a historical materially rooted history of Hip Hop culture, it’s subset Rap music, an understanding of the complex relationships between Black women and men in Hip Hop culture and the “spaces” that they must navigate and occupy. Understanding the institutions where the glorification of misogyny, violence, and fetishization of Black women’s bodies roots from is necessary to understanding not only the construction of Black masculinity as well, but also how Hip Hop music has been commercialized. This article also does a fantastic job of analyzing how Black female rappers voices have been symbolically erased within the genres of Hip Hop and Rap, because they often present a revolutionary feminist counter to the dominant racist and sexist narratives, which only aides to the lack of recognition they receive from the industry as a whole and Black men. Naming the Black and Latina female MC’s, DJs, B-Girls, and graffiti artists, such as MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliot, Syd, etc. that have been contributors to the cultural production of Hip Hop is imperative to the Hip Hop Feminism Wiki Page. The analysis of Black masculinity within this article will also be particularly useful for the Hip Hop Feminism Wiki page because feminists must not only study femininity, but Black masculinity and all of it’s forms as well, considering a majority of female MCs, DJs, and rappers enact a very specified Black masculinity in order to be successful and legitimized by the music industry (and more importantly Hip Hop heads).
Ultimately, the three articles that I have selected “Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop and the Black Ratchet Imagination” by Bettina L. Love, “Disrespectability Politics: On Jay-Z’s Bitch, Beyonce’s “Fly Ass and Black Girl Blue” by Brittney C. Cooper, and “Black Women and Black Men in Hip Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence, and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space” by Guillermo Rebollo-Gil and Amanda Moras present arguments and counterarguments to highly debated aspects of Hip Hop culture such as the; oppositional paradigms of Black womanhood, Queer times and places in Hip Hop, and the question of being legitimized and recognized within Hip Hop culture if your identity is anything other than the “hype fantasy image.” In the first article, I was surprised that the researcher did not decide to study a group of queer youth in the South Bronx for example, where Hip Hop culture originated and continues to thrive, but then I realized that the case study at hand was particular in its efforts to evaluate and humanize and entire subculture thriving on the margins in New Orleans, Bounce! I actually found the “Black ratchet imagination” a highly interesting methodological messy research perspective, and plan to cite this research perspective in any and all future academic feminist pursuits of mine. The aim of humanizing Black women and queer youth, whose bodies are too often victimized, dehumanized and sites of state sanctioned violence, within Hip Hop culture that has been deemed violent, homophobic and misogynistic itself presented the very nuances that Hip Hop Generation Feminism embodys. Until I found this article, I had not read any academic scholarship on the “Black ratchet imagination” nor a research perspective created specifically for Black queer youth of color, however after reading this I have realized the grave necessity of creating specific a research methods that cares more about the humanization of it’s subjects rather than the data. Furthermore, while a body of feminist scholarship on “safe spaces” does exist, which the text Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence by Christina Hanhardt speaks for (who I was fortunate enough to converse with during a visit to SUNY New Paltz), it does not necessarily do so from a racialized perspective. When reading the case study of ‘Bounce’ it became so apparent how the segregated the nightlife culture actually is for queer folks not only in New Orleans, but elsewhere as well, so much so that us queer youth of color literally have to create our own spaces, especially those of us who enjoy twerking to hip hop because of the homophobia we experience in the club scene and the racism from white queer folk. I began thinking of the behavior of “ratchetness” that unnoticed young Black queers enact, but the hyper visible ratchetness of Black women in Hip Hop culture which is embodied by stars like Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, and Lil’ Kim. Ratchetness and (dis)respectability) politics are extremely important in terms of understanding Black women’s roles not only in Hip Hop culture, but also in feminist spaces and mainstream culture. When I picked up my copy of the Crunk Feminist Collection (the series of blog posts that single handedly changed my entire perception of feminism) this reading on (dis)respectability stood out to me more than anything, because it really is feminism “turnt all the way up!” As I was reading this argument presented by Brittney C. Cooper I was thinking critically about the main focus of course, the parallel of the Carter family in Hip Hop to the Obamas in world politics, but also how everyone is always looking for the one who looks like a Black girl, but no one is looking out for THE black girl. A quote that stood out to me the most from this reading was that “disrespecting Black women is as American as Apple Pie and Nike.” Then, I thought about how Hip Hop culture is merely a mirror or a microcosm of mainstream America, so I began to do my research on the material conditions that set the relationships between Black men and women, and the spaces that Black women’s voices are alloted in Hip Hop culture, which ain’t much as many male DJs, radio hosts, and rappers have proclaimed that “there can only be one woman in Hip Hop”. This line of thought is how I came to find my last article on negotiating the relationships between Black men and women, and spaces within Hip Hop culture. One of the main issues that these articles highlighted was that the scholarship about Hip Hop culture, and race in general that has emerged from people outside of the culture is always a negative one, because these perspectives do not do the work of understanding the historical conditions of Hip Hop’s emergence. Similar to research and studies on Black women and the Black family, like the heavily cited Moynihan report, researchers and scholars outside of a Hip Hop or Hip Hop Feminist perspective have been lazy, because they have failed to do the work of understanding the perspectives of their subjects by making universal generalizations about them based on white supremacy, capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy. Lastly, my hope is that the Hip Hop Feminism Wiki Page will explicitly say that Hip Hop Generation Feminism is indeed a feminism that fucks with the grays, and a feminist perspective that is being growingly utilized by Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies scholars, complete with a methodological research perspective that is most definitely, ratchet.