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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

Reclaiming The Black Personhood: The Power Of The Hip-Hop Narrative In Mainstream Rap, Morgan Klatskin Apr 2018

Reclaiming The Black Personhood: The Power Of The Hip-Hop Narrative In Mainstream Rap, Morgan Klatskin

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Hip hop, as a cultural phenomenon, leverages rap as a narrative form in periods of acutely visible political unrest in the Black American community to combat pejorative narratives of Black America as revealed in the American criminal justice system’s treatment of Black Americans. Hip-hop themes were prevalent in golden-age rap of the 1980s in response Regan-era war-on-drugs policy, which severely disadvantaged the Black community and devalued the Black personhood. Hip hop used narrative to reclaim the Black personhood while it served to encourage political involvement in the Black community, urging Blacks to participate in rewriting the narrative of Black America. …


Through The Looking-Glass: Conceptualizing Narratives Of Race As Mimetic Non-Narratives, Cody Chun Mar 2016

Through The Looking-Glass: Conceptualizing Narratives Of Race As Mimetic Non-Narratives, Cody Chun

Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice

I frame a discussion of narrative based on its position between mimetic and diegetic poles. I argue that narratives of race are mimetic non-narratives in the sense that they attempt to narrate (false) realities of race and racial difference without acknowledging their narrativity. I examine various narratives of race and the ways in which they perpetuate ideas of race and racial difference. I end by looking at the relationship between narrative and reality and by suggesting that, given their ability to narrate meaningful realities, mimetic non-narratives can narrate a “reality” more reflective of the unreality of race and racial inequality.