Hip-Hop Civics
Connected Learning in the Rap Classroom
How Hip-Hop-based education can engage Black and Brown students in civic education
Description
In Hip-Hop Civics, Jabari Evans demonstrates how Hip-Hop can be deployed in revamping formal civic education for Black and Brown youth. Based on an original ethnographic study of a Hip-Hop-based education program, the Songwriting and Production Program (SWP), administered by the Foundation of Music in two of Chicago’s lowest performing public schools, Evans argues that Hip-Hop culture is central to students’ lives and can be used as a vehicle for students to engage in civic practices and extract critical lessons about mainstream media, relational currency, identity development, and race/racism within the classroom. Through a compelling exploration of the SWP program, Evans contends that Hip-Hop should be part of formal education spaces and instruction, a conclusion he reaches through his understanding of how Hip-Hop impacted his own life, and by witnessing students discuss, write, and produce Hip-Hop music as part of the SWP program.
Jabari M. Evans is Assistant Professor of Race and Media at the University of South Carolina and Associate Faculty at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Reviews
“Education and hip-hop both have a distinctive rhythm. Hip-Hop Civics questions if the core organizing principles of education are congruent with Black life and sets forth a vision of educational spaces that offer us other ways to hear, move, and feel while doing pedagogical work. I want to say that this book is fresh and updates our pedagogical frameworks through centering the imaginative capacities of Black people. But that doesn’t get to the urgency of Evans’ unwavering desire to create breathable moments for young folks within and outside the classroom.”
- Corey J. Miles
–Corey J. Miles, author of Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South