Kyle Chu Wins 2010 Mr. Hyphen Contest | Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics
my friends are tops. i’m so excited to see this special one THIS WEEKEND HOLY SHIT.
it hurts to watch this movie twenty one years later know that there’s still so much work to be done. the hurt is a hard thing to move on from. i think we often get caught up in a sense of fear and hopelessness, but that only perpetuates the issue of hate supposedly “winning.” we forget why it’s important to have documents like do the right thing not only to remind us of how things once were, but so that we may measure up our own times and see if much really has changed.
the scene where the white guy in the larry bird jersey scuffs buggin out’s air jordans is especially alarming to watch retrospectively. they are fighting about gentrification in bed stuy before it became as prevalent as it is now. hipsters and yuppie families taking over old brooklyn neighborhoods feels like an afterthought these days.
i felt really uncomfortable the first time i watched this movie, when i was about 11 or 12. i also thought it was archaic, that i couldn’t identify with the blatant racism it portrayed. that maybe it was just something particular to new york. nine years later and living here now, i know that’s all bullshit that i was inundated into believing, for a lack of real racial politics being discussed in the public school system and in our post-civil rights era society as a whole.
i still feel a lurch in my stomach at the end of the film though, when for mookie, hate overcomes love and the riot starts. where do people find the power to withhold hate that has been imposed on us by systematic oppression from institutions designed to pit people against one another and live in fear and ignorance, and to meet other peoples’ hate with love? how do we construct a community where we all take care of each other, rather than only look out for ourselves? the film poses this paradigm, and concludes with two very different (though not entirely oppositional) approaches, as quoted from martin luther king, jr. and malcom x, figures who pose together in an image that, through the character smiley, are recurrent throughout the film.
i don’t know who i agree with more, martin or malcom. i don’t always find pacifism to be effective, but at the same time, violence often only perpetuates an issue. i believe in radicalism, but i can’t entirely stand behind militancy. i think spike lee doesn’t necessarily stand by one or the other, either, which is why the perspective of the film is both affirming and painful to me.
Hip-hop grows in mostly white Portland | OregonLive.com
“I think there’s this sense of ownership by white people here, as far as hip-hop is concerned, that’s a little unsettling,” says KBOO DJ Deena B., of the “Soundbox” on Saturday night, who moved to Portland about 12 years ago from Ohio. “It can make you really lonely for your culture again.” Hip-hop and hip-hop culture have their champions in the city, but they can’t make up for the lack of a foundation for the culture, she says. The city needs a club that does “hip-hop, period,” not just occasional shows. One night something conscious, the next night gangsta boogie, another night maybe some turntablism. A place to nurture the genre in all its forms. “I think that if there were more black people here, I think the culture would be here,” she says. “That’s what’s missing. I think there’s the authenticity inside the culture that’s missing.” kind of an old article, but still relevant. deena b’s statement stood out to me the most from the whole piece. having gone to one of the most class/race -polarized high schools in portland exposed a lot of this sense of entitlement and ownership of hood culture in northeast portland. the reason my high school was so divided had to do with its location in northeast, where predominantly white upper middle class to middle class neighborhoods (irvington, laurelhurst, alberta; though the last one is contendable considering how much gentrification has altered its economic and age demographic) fed their kids in, but the next closest school in north/northeast was jefferson, a performing arts public magnet school in an area more populous with black families and businesses that has been failing for years, due to budget cuts. many families who were/are in the jeff district opted to send their kids to grant, my high school. the racial/economic polarization of the campus doesn’t just stand on its own, either- consider the privilege divide- jeff kids having to commute via bus farther to school every day where the irvington kids all had cars, for example. it’s not to say that students were self-segregating, at least not directly. in fact, there seemed to be the greatest harmony over sports- players on the teams, and students in attendance at games were far more integrated than in the classrooms. it was a big sports school, too, and students have a lot of grant pride, which was kind of nice, even though in my own personal experience i didn’t have many friends and i hated sporting events the most. however, the sense of ownership of black north/northeast culture became most apparent to me in my advanced placement classes. classes that were almost always entirely white, upper middle class kids. a place where, perhaps, white kids felt more comfortable appropriating black culture because there was no threat of authenticity to call them out. there was a heightened interest in these kids with the hyphy movement more so than portland’s own hip hop culture, which was also true across the racial/economic board at my school. but it always bothered me in a certain way that these white kids in my classes thought they were the shit with their lacoste polos with the popped collars, and their sidekicks and sedans, and how they would only ever buy weed from other white kids. and just this total sense of entitlement to claim identification with the NEP that they never really grew up with, and owned this privilege of pursuing a stronger formal education without experiencing the struggle that real NEP kids have gone through to even be at grant. it was like the rich kids had gone “slumming” at grant. at least until they graduated and got to go back to the world of white elitism at fancy northeastern schools. i dunno where i am going with all this. i could write tomes about racial inequality in portland and the racial politics of the NEP. and about my own privileges i had growing up in portland (and disprivileges as a radical woman of color in so many all-white, centrist situations). i do think that people need to think about it more, and i do also agree that portland really needs a hip hop venue. i think that we need to maintain the economic viability of north/northeast neighborhoods and keep the little diversity we have closer to the center. i think that jefferson high school needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. i think ap classes need to strive for more integration. i think there needs to be more counseling/outreach towards people of color at my high school. i think the privileged classes need to recognize their own sense of entitlement and learn more about the systems of oppression to which they belong. i also am hopeful though, that things may get better as the city gets bigger. i can only hope that the city’s racial and economic diversity will grow with it. the hip hop scene is getting more national credit these days, too, which is something else to be hopeful about.
i recently started listening to lyrics born. it’s part of my overall current obsession with quannum projects (originally spurred by my love affair with pdx’s own lifesavas, whose new album i’ve been anxiously awaiting). in any case, i am so appreciative of lyrics born because it is always so inspiring for me to see successful and talented asian americans in popular culture, especially popular music. more specifically, i find it admirable when i see asian americans that are not tokenized by the media, and in the case of lyrics born, it’s especially inspiring to see an asian american man in a position of power, creativity and swagger, rather than feminized/emasculated, as is sadly such a prevalent stereotype of the asian male. regardless of its basis in heteronormativity, i stand by the idea of a strong, masculine asian man because the whole concept of the asian man as emasculated is rooted in the emasculation of an entire race, a multiplicity of cultures and traditions which have been orientalized, and a people who have been made to feel a sense of self-hatred for being the “other.” the reclaiming of racial pride and power, including its masculinity, is integral to the esteem of an oppressed people.
there’s also something outstanding to me about l.b. because, like myself, he is half japanese, half white. i feel strongly that bi/multiracial individuals are not given enough visibility in mainstream american culture, or at least in the sense that typically when you see a bi/multiracial person in the media, they are treated as though their racial identity is still somewhat singular (in the case of half-white individuals, either their whiteness/westernness/assimilation is exaggerated, or they are exotified/orientalized/otherized for their other half). it’s refreshing to see someone who carries his entire self through his creative endeavours. i appreciate that he chose to change his name from asia born to lyrics born, “citing the desire to have his career based on his merits as opposed to his ethnicity.” i have the feeling his politics would probably complement mine well.
l.b. is also married to joyo velarde, who i know less of, but seems to me another potential role model. she is a classically trained filipino american soul/r&b singer, also on quannum projects. there appear, to me, to be even fewer asian american women in hip hop, soul and r&b than men, so it’s kind of awesome that velarde is signed to a pretty renowned label. and uh, her music is good, too, duhr.
i’m just really thankful to be finding out about these artists, even if it maybe would’ve been more powerful had i discovered them in my more formative years. it’s also just really refreshing to take a break from the other hip hop i’ve been listening to these past few years and immerse myself in all these fucking amazing sounds and lyrics that all the quannum artists seem to pull out of thin air.
been meaning to write a somewhat intelligent review of lifesavas’ albums (pitchfork got it ALL WRONG, as usual). might have to wait til after study days.
