Critical Noir: The Hip-Hop Generation's Voice of Hope
By Mark Anthony Neal, AOL BlackVoices columnist
Rarely do we hear terms such as brave, thoughtful and spiritual used to describe the hip-hop generation, which partly explains who so many people were caught off guard this past year when hip-hop displayed aspects of itself that were warm and fuzzy (Jay Z’s ‘December 4th’), political (Jadakiss’ ‘Why?’) and deeply religious (Kanye’s ‘Jesus Walks’). Many of us within the hip-hop generation (really two generations now) have long understood hip-hop to be complex, paradoxical and deeply immersed in the existential conditions that confront youth culture in America, and increasingly the world, during the past three decades. Perhaps no one person embodies this particular aspect of the hip-hop generation more than political commentator Farai Chideya, whose new book, ‘Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters,’ gives voice to those locked out of the political system.
Chideya has been involved in political commentary since she was 19 years old, appearing on-air for CNN, BET, MSNBC, ABC and MTV. She has also written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, Essence, Vibe, Spin and Time. In addition, Chideya is the author of ‘Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans’ (1995) and ‘The Color of Our Future’ (1999). In the aftermath of the recent presidential election, many of the issues that Chideya raises in ‘Trust’ resonate even more powerfully, particularly for the hip-hop generation. According to Chideya, “my whole argument in the book is that we can’t claim we have a democracy, if half the people don’t vote.”
Despite overwhelming voter turnout in the last election, Chideya still believes that “We have a deeply flawed system, flawed in part because of issues of race and class that have never been resolved in this country and the only way we can change it, is by first acknowledging that it has these deep problems.” Chideya has been committed to rectifying some of those flaws via PopandPolitics.com, the Web site she founded in 1995 and relaunched this past June with Jean Chen, and ‘Your Call Radio,’ a call-in talk-show she co-hosts from San Francisco. Indeed, many of the essays that appear in ‘Trust’ were originally published at PopandPolitics. Like the work of her contemporary Davey D, Chiedya’s projects have provided a space for the grassroots elements of hip-hop generation activism to have more visibility.
Though Chideya is excited about hip-hop’s willingness to get involved in the political process she is very cautious of efforts like Sean Combs’ Citizen Change. “[Diddy] is a marketer,” Chideya observes, adding that Combs has chosen a fairly empty vessel -- using a flashy slogan and promoting voting as this sort of thing in itself, without a lot of education. Ironically Chideya found Eminem’s ‘Mosh’ a more compelling effort, acknowledging that while Citizen Change likely got more people out to the polls, “Eminem’s video actually gives people a context to understand why they are voting. And that’s something I think has been missing a lot.”
It is the context of celebrity efforts like those of Combs, Russell Simmons and others to help get out the vote that Chideya offers a challenge to the hip-hop electorate: “I think that a lot of the flashier hip-hop activism really lacks a framework to help people understand what the heck they’re doing when they vote.” Chideya insists that there “needs to be more of an alliance between the people who have the money, the power, the celebrity and the people on the grassroots, who are really educating people about things like the Prison Industrial Complex and how education funding affects neighborhoods.”
Chideya had the privilege of moderating one of the Democratic presidential debates in 2003 and thus as a black women, finds a kindred spirit in black television journalist Gwen Ifill, who moderated the vice presidential debate during the 2004 election season. The debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards held special interests for black women, because of the candidates’ admission that they knew very little about the AIDS crisis that confronted black women in this country. But Chideya sees a broader issue in their admissions, arguing that it was “a bare-faced acknowledgement that the actual needs of black Americans were not understood and not acknowledged.” And again, it’s in this context that Chideya urges the hip-hop generation -- her generation -- to step up: “There has to be an evolution, not only in … how the hip-hop generation votes, but also what kind of the demands the hip-hop generation makes.”
Dec. 8, 2004