Deal with It We Must: Education, Social Justice, and the Curriculum of Hip Hop Culture

Abstract

Although hip hop culture has been one of the most significant urban youth movements over the last three decades, it has only recently gained attention within the educational literature as a force to be reckoned with. And even then, much of the literature seeks to understand how hip hop can be used to engage students in the official school curriculum. In contrast, in this paper, the author looks critically at hip hop's curricular dimensions; that is, what hip hop might teach educators not only about the way in which the last three generations of young urban dwellers negotiate identity and difference across cycles of urban blight and ongoing educational disenfranchisement but also about the limitations and possibilities of our work as educators. Drawing on curriculum theory and critical race theory, the author contends that an important part of re-imagining the relationship among education, social justice, and hip hop culture is beginning with a critical awareness of how the curriculum of hip hop culture counters the hegemony of the official school curriculum.