Embracing Urban Youth Culture in the Context of Education

Abstract

The rise of post industrial urban centers and global communication technologies has created a distinctive Urban Youth Culture (UYC) with roots in Black history and social activism. In the discourse on education and Black youth, UYC is rarely seen as a positive force promoting academic achievement and self esteem. Drawing on the voices of Black urban youth in an all-male high school mentoring program, this article offers an affirming view on the significance and pragmatism of UYC to a group of young men at an East Coast high school. Findings reveal that the young men related to and relied on UYC to help them negotiate school and establish positive academic and social identities for themselves.

Integrating Hip‐Hop Culture and Rap Music Into Social Justice Counseling With Black Males

“…Despite having overcome countless hurdles to achieve demonstrable successes in virtually every American institution (e.g., education, politics, business), Black males, on the whole, remain a highly stereotyped and stigmatized American subgroup (Dancy, ; White & Cones, ). This stigmatization is rooted in hyperbolic, stereotypical tropes of Black males as hypersexualized and menacing individuals biologically predisposed or culturally inclined to engage in criminal, nihilistic behavior (Alexander, ; Collins, ; Jackson, ; Sealey‐Ruiz & Greene, ). The criminal proclivity narrative is ascribed onto Black male bodies early in childhood and intensifies markedly as Black males mature through adolescence and transition into adulthood (Dancy, ; Duncan, ; Ferguson, ; Henfield, ; Noguera, ).…”

“…During the initial session, one of the presenters, Michael Brooks, a Black male counselor educator, made an unsolicited reference to Kendrick Lamar's rap song “Alright” (Duckworth, Spears, & Williams, ), a song that had become an anthem of dissent in response to a crescendo of xenophobic political rhetoric and recurrent police brutality within Black communities (Love, ). Brooks's spontaneous reference to Lamar's song highlights the cathartic role Hip‐Hop culture and rap music has played in articulating the frustration Black males experience because of long‐standing social inequalities and wanton, racially motivated violence (Collins, ; Love, ; Sealey‐Ruiz & Greene, ; Washington, ). Hip‐Hop culture and rap music resonate with many Black males because they encapsulate the aspirations and frustrations of Black males who have had to confront sociopolitical disadvantage and marginalization (Greene, ; Kitwana, ; Land & Stovall, ; Levy & Keum, ).…”

Hope and Despair: Southern Black Women Educators Across Pre- and Post-Civil Rights Cohorts Theorize about Their Activism

“…Collins' proposal resonates with recent perspectives from Hip-Hop educational researchers that have called for a more serious commitment to scholarship and research in this area (Alridge 2005;Dagbovie 2006;Green and Runnell 2006;Petchauer 2009;Sealey-Ruiz and Greene 2010;Yasin 2009). Alridge (2005) and Dagbovie (2006), in particular, have advocated for pedagogical strategies that bridge 19th-and 20th-century Black intellectual thought and practice with the contemporary realities of Black youth.…”

Cultivating Digital and Popular Literacies as Empowering and Emancipatory Acts Among Urban Youth

“…So, this class works to empower students to express who they are, in their own language, and in ways that are authentic to them (Sealey‐Ruiz & Greene, ). I think it is the pedagogy and the medium, but mostly the mindset of how we approach how they are thinking, composing, and sharing.…”