Hip Hop Subversive Art

Behind the debate of whether graffiti is art or vandalism, there is another discourse, remaining relatively untouched by the popular press, at least in the parts of North America and Europe that I have personally lived in.

Background
Teenagers and adults alike have a need for cultural myths and folktales to provide a storyline, giving families a context of the past from which to draw models and visions for the future. While Claude Lévi-Strauss is falling off in importance for many researchers, he remains a leading theorist and figure for many conservative, traditional researchers in the United States. He states that myths reinforce the solidarity and identity of the group; and he considers myth a universal organizing principle that is a collective manifestation of individual minds within a social group. Consciously or not, high-school academic canon and religious doctrine strips minority cultures of the opportunity to collectively share legends and myths. William S. Simmons, for example, argues in Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984 that although Europeans recorded bits of indigenous mythology, Christianity swept this genre away, or rather, replaced it with Christianity's own biblical equivalents. Myth forms a tiny part of the corpus of this study.

Filtering
Hip hop fans in the United States, when exposed with opportunities to meet minority cultures in other countries, find a conversational link and receive lots of energy from other people who can cite examples of how various dominant cultures strip away and "bleach" the history of minority groups. (See my own personal account of this in my Bobby Digitals, Please Stand Up post, dated Feb 14, 2006, under the Hip Hop International, subhead).

Three examples of American filtering that come to my mind, among others, are the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in concentration camps. Even for families that were American citizens for 150 years or more.

Another is the Tuskegee Study. This is an experiment whereby African Americans - some of Caribbean lineage - were diagnosed as having the syphilis bacteria. The study involved 399 poor black sharecroppers in Macon County, Alabama, who had the disease. And another 201 men without the disease who served as controls. The infected men in the study were not informed of this diagnosis. While they had already contracted the illness, it was wrong to not inform them or treat them. In exchange for their participation, the men received free meals, free medical examinations, and burial insurance.

The lack of public discourse on this topic enabled a popular misconception to propagate in some pockets of American society: Many people spread the rumour that these patients were intentionally injected with syphillis, and thereafter studied by Tuskegee University researchers to trace the disintegration of the body, when it is infected by the syphillis bacteria and left untreated over a period of more than 20 years (at which point it can effect the nervous system and bones).

In reality, the architects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were United States Public Health Service physicians and were primarily responsible for the long-term studies. It is also true that some Tuskegee University staff were involved. Furthermore, the infected individuals were indeed NOT informed that they were being studied in an attempt to learn about the life-shortening disease, at the expense of innocent patients who thought they were coming to receive health care. A sort of human guinea-pig experiment had been performed, breaching elements of the Hippocratic Oath.

And finally, a third is the history and personal narratives of a white subculture in America: Irish-Americans. Today, there are more people in the United States that can claim Irish descent than English descent. But from my personal American education experience, roughly 85% of high school education focuses on the Anglo aspect of America's cultural development. About 1% or 2% of historic discourses are Irish. Furthermore, the prejudice toward the Irish "to keep them in check" is not covered at all. Fortunately, books such as How the Irish Became White, by Noel Ignatiev, address this cultural gap.

Linking the Past to Present-Day Phenomenon
So, filtering is a huge topic worthy of much analysis because it is a reason for many disparities in awareness, when comparing the disaffected or disenfranchised group to the dominant or mainstrem culture. It is also what keeps minority groups from understanding one another and recognizing those areas where they may have common struggles and pain to share, as part of a collective catharsis. This is unfortunate.

Filtering can also be partly blamed for hate talk. Here's how. (More coming soon ...)