Pipe Dream sat down with activist and journalist Bakari Kitwana before his TEDx speech. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pipe Dream: Why did you decide to come speak at Binghamton University?
Bakari Kitwana: I was asked, and it sounded like it was going to be interesting. I have heard a lot about TED and TEDx and I just thought I’d take the challenge.
PD: What is the hip-hop generation?
BK: The hip-hop generation is a book I wrote in 2002. Basically the book focuses on young African-Americans born after the civil rights and the black power movements, so people born between 1965 and 1984. It’s a term that I evolved when I was the editor of The Source magazine. At the time people were using the terms ‘generation X,’ ‘lost generation,’ all kind of things like that to define people born in that time period. Since it was the emergence of hip-hop really becoming solidified, I started using the term ‘hip-hop generation,’ and I thought I should do a book on it.
PD: What about this generation makes them the hip-hop generation?
BK: With the hip-hop generation, what I was trying to do was figure out what it is that distinguishes young blacks born after the civil rights and the black power movements. I was looking at some of the trends that were affecting and defining the generation, that made this generation of young people distinctive from their parents’ generation. One of those trends was the escalation of media as a form of transmitting culture. Previous generations’ culture is transmitted through schools, through teachers and through parents. But with the hip-hop generation, people are learning about culture through film and through music. Because parents were beginning to work longer hours and multiple jobs, there was the emergence of [what] people would refer to as latchkey children: kids coming home on their own, parents weren’t there. Often times kids were learning about culture from each other. It wasn’t just a transmitting of culture from the previous generation to the next; it was other things that were informing their world view.
PD: Your talk is entitled “The Ferguson Effect.” What is the Ferguson effect as defined in the media, and what is your definition of it?
BK: The Ferguson effect is a term used in the media from the fall of 2014 until recently. Basically, it was the police chief of St. Louis who used this term, and he was talking about how crime was increasing because the police were afraid to do their job because of what happened in Ferguson. What happens is you start to get this conversation in the media around the Ferguson effect.
What I want to talk about is that phenomenon, and some of the problems with it. My concern with this Ferguson effect is would this term be latched onto in a way to continue more of the same? I think we have the opportunity to take the term ‘the Ferguson effect’ and attach a more positive definition to it. I am defining the Ferguson effect as the decision by a group of young people in Ferguson to stand up to the injustices that they were seeing in their community. And by doing that, inspire an entire generation of young people around the country to stand up en masse, in ways that we haven’t seen since the 1960’s. When Ferguson exploded, it was because people got to a point where they couldn’t take it anymore — the oppression was so much. When I first heard the term [in the media] I was kind of offended by it, because these were young people who had done something courageous and bold and instead of us celebrating it, we were going to use it as a way to demonize them.
PD: In your book you say that the hip-hop movement can be even bigger than the civil rights movements of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. How does this play into your idea of the Ferguson effect?
BK: The hip-hop political movement is a precursor to this Ferguson effect. One of the things that happened with the hip-hop movement is people started to use the power and the influence of hip-hop. When hip-hop was first coming in the ‘80’s there was a huge cultural explosion. A lot of music was being published by independent labels, and this music was selling. By the time it got to the early ’90’s people started selling millions of copies [of their records]. Young people who were into politics at that time, they understood the power and the influence of hip-hop. So what we stared to do was think about how we can take that power and influence and bring it to bare on the mainstream political system. We rely on these old racial stereotypes instead of taking a fresh look at what’s going on. With my work, we ask how can we look at things in a fresh way. I think that the Ferguson effect [as defined in the media] is the same thing; it relies on these old, outdated stereotypes.
PD: Why is it important to talk about these issues on a college campus?
BK: I think that these issues are America. The injustices are affecting people in a society that I think is really out of touch with its citizens who have less money. It doesn’t matter if you are black, if you are white: if you don’t have money in this society you are at a disadvantage. You saw what happened in Flint. Flint is a poor community that can’t fight, so they thought they were just going to run over these people and give them some shitty ass water, and nobody was going to say anything. The idea of government is to protect people. If we don’t have government protecting people, what kind of society do we have?
People are resisting all over the world the corporate power that really is attempting to take over and diminish the power of government. Corporations are not going to protect you. That is the Flint story: the privatization of an industry. I think that is why it’s important here, it’s important everywhere, it’s important for young people who are college students who are going out into the world to work and to have a life. They have to make a decision, what side are they going to be on?