WOMS260 Lecture Notes - Hip Hop, No Homo, Graffiti 2
30 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 1 - 9/6/17
● Hip Hop big 4: (1) Rap (2) Graffiti (3) B-boying/girling and breakdance (4) DJ
● Reading
○ Why scholars talking about Hip Hop and in classrooms
■ Hip Hop can teach us about culture around world
■ See how the big 4 helps us to understand society
● Can see skillset; destruction of property → graffiti
○ Rules in graffiti
● Can’t ignore Hip Hop’s impact
○ Began in South Bronx
■ Expressway in South Bronx
● Problem: built where homes were (displaced to projects)
● Rapping about expressway and the issues (ex of contextualizing)
● Content important in understanding why people loved artists
● QUESTIONS:
○ In what way is the music of hip-hop one of the only expressions of the civil rights
legacy?
○ How is hip-hop's political culture been influenced by its ever present
performances of materialism and violence
○ How does the increase of hip hop-inspired organizers and activists fit into the
world landscape
Lecture 2 - 9/8/17
● Social Construction Theory
○ General idea: we (society and culture and country we live in) define things
○ Gender is a social construct
■ Rules to “be a girl or boy”
■ We learn behaviors and learn to do them
● Essentialism vs social construction
○Essentialism: we are born a particular way
■ Ex: if born female, then you’re gonna behave that way (nurturing,
emotional…)
■ Ex: if born male, then you’re gonna be more aggressive
■ Ignores social factors
● Pros and cons to thinking of gender as a social construct
○ Essentialist: if born female, you’re gonna want to be with man, and vice versa
○ Problem: have to not just think of Social Construction Theory
○ Rap music: fear of being called gay (ex: no homo)
■ Only time women able to be together is for pleasure of man
● Our understanding of sexuality determines how we act with one another
● Race Article
○ Argues race is a social construction because it divides people into distinct groups
based on characteristics such as physical appearance, cultural affiliation, cultural
history, and based on social economic and political needs of a society at a given
point in time
■ Argues definition of race changed over time (race is not innate)
■Miscegenation: (legal form of racism) the mixing of races through two
people of different race or ethnicities by having sex, marrying or
reproducing, or living together
● Anti-miscegenation laws in USA
○ Enforced: black and white people dating (white women
severely punished, because white women were seen as
purity of the race - so deemed as black, or fined)
■ 2000 Alabama took it out of their books finally
○1967 Loving vs Virginia - laws overturned
● Start of hiphop: NYC and Puerto Rican culture
● The Color of Fear Documentary
○ No females, all men
○ Applicable today: stereotypes that we learn
■ Ex: cartoon characters - speedy gonzales
Lecture 3 - 9/11/17 - The Hip Hop Generation, the Bronx, and
Social Construction
●Nelly - Tip Drill (2000) - same year Chickenheads come home to Roost
○ How does gender play a role in the video/lyrics?
■ Objectification of women
● “must be your ass cuz it ain’t your face”
■ Men: money, girls, domination, nice house, lots of guy friends
● “Must be your money cuz it ain’t your face”
● “Paying my bills and buying my automobiles”
○ How does sexuality play a role in the video/lyrics
■ Heterosexuality for the men
■ “I like them girls that like girls” (lesibianism)
○ How can this be tied back to the Vance and Haney articles?
■ Social construction of male dominance
■ Mirror into social dynamics
■ “Not forced” to be in video
○ What’s a tip drill? → passing around a girl; anal sex
○ Started controversy: on BET at night
■ Female song “ride” banned because of complaints of bad role modeling
for girls
● BUT Tip Drill not banned
● Intersectionality
○Crenshaw’s article, “Mapping the Margins
”
: 1990’s → coined the term (But the
idea started earlier and was called other things)
■ Main argument: race/class/gender operate together to place many women
in danger of violence and to prevent them from receiving help
● Need to take intersectional approach to addressing this problem
1. Why does she argue that women of color are less likely to report incidents
of domestic violence?
a. Even though they experience the abuse, antiracist movements
have silenced women’s concerns in order to counter stereotypes
of communities of color; the feminist movement has widened the
public’s understanding of domestic violence, but the movement
hasn’t always given recognition to the communities of color face
2. Why are immigrant women and women of color less likely to report?
a. Linguistic/cultural barriers (Crenshaw argues that centers should
have resources to provide help to those with barriers; distrust of
public officials, so suggest that community leaders should be
involved as well); they fear deportation
3. What would an intersectional approach to domestic violence services
entail for immigrant women? Women of color?
a. Domestic violence counselors should have certain training (have
cultural/historic awareness of communities that they’re working in)
■ Violence against women is pervasive in all cultures
■ Violence and the fear of violence are used to control women’s actions and
bodies
■ Violence against women is produced at the intersections of race, class
and gender
■ Social institutions as well as individual en create and continue violence
against women
■ Violence against women is a hate crime that is encouraged by sexist
ideology
■ Violence also occurs against others less powerful including children and
those who cross gender boundaries
○ People say hip hop provokes and brings on violence
○ Types of abuse
■ Physical/sexual/emotional/economic
■ Domestic violence: A pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that
is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another
intimate partner
