Urban Book Feature: The Hip Hop Generation - Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture

By Bakari Kitwana

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The Hip Hop Generation - Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture

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Kitwana turns from "rap music [and] the hip-hop industry's insiders" to "Black youth culture." He designates African Americans born 1965-84--the first "post-civil rights" generation of black Americans--the hip-hop generation. "Although individuals [in that cohort] may point to different defining events, all share a crystal clear understanding of coming of age in an era of post-segregation and global economics." In the face of "great disparities" in education and financial matters (jobs, wages, mortgage opportunities) that persisted beyond the civil rights era, the hip-hop generation has used newfound pop-cultural access and influence to "strengthen associations between Blackness and poverty, while celebrating anti-intellectualism, ignorance, irresponsible parenthood, and criminal lifestyles" and enjoying "a free pass from Black leaders" and "non-Black critics who . . . fear being attacked as racist." Mike Tribby
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