What I took away from the reading was specific of page 23. Space is taken up by people of different backgrounds and sometimes we have to co-inhabit those spaces regardless of background or where we come from. Our background tends to determine where we fit into society and how we feel having a certain claim to certain spaces. Hip hop was created by people creating their own spaces where they were able to claim and represent themselves and people like them. Rain of Terror by The Last Poets talks about how our country of America itself is a terrorist and that has a deep meaning behind it because whenever the status quo of whiteness has been threatened to be over taken by any sort of marginalized group, white America has lashed out. Black people and black artists had to create their own spaces to have a claim to a space that wasn’t already over taken by white people. Connecting with their own culture, having claim to their own space to create, and finding success in the filters of this “white society” has always been a major threat to white people (unless they can make money off of it — which we talked about in class). These two things tie into each other because the importance of space and having a claim to your own matters and can really determine where you fit into society.

[ LYRICS: https://genius.com/The-last-poets-rain-of-terror-lyrics ]