The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up Its Sons

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701087_2.html?nav=hcmodule


By Natalie Hopkinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 18, 2006; Page C01

I walk into a restaurant for the reception welcoming my classmates and me back to graduate school. I am holding our 10-month-old daughter, Maven, on my left hip, while my right hand clasps the hand of our 3 1/2 -year-old son, Maverick. As soon as we enter, Maverick spots Norm, a 40-something white guy who is in my PhD cohort. Though my son has never seen this man in his life, Maverick runs toward him as if greeting a long-lost uncle. Norm stoops down to accept the hug, grinning back.

While I'm being introduced to a few professors, I look up and Maverick's working the room like a gubernatorial candidate -- "Hi. My name is Maverick, what's your name?" -- and offering students and administrators a tiny caramel hand.

The next afternoon, my classmates and our professor, a 50-ish white woman, remark about what a great kid Maverick is. "You have a fine boy there," Norm says. My chest puffs up with motherly pride. My professor agrees, adding: "I just can't wait to watch him grow up, and see his wonderful career as a rap star."

Eeeeeeeuuuuuurrrrrk?

Stop the record. Rewind: "Rap star?" Did I miss something? Like Maverick break-dancing behind my back? No, that would only come months later, thanks to the soon-regretted purchase of the DVD "You Got Served." Had he burst into rhyme during dinner? Nope, Maverick had long since grown bored of his favorite rap song, a Black Eyed Peas hit he turned into a potty-training anthem.

So where, pray tell, would our professor have gotten the idea that my son would have a future as a rap star? I don't know which increased my blood pressure more: the assumption that a rap career was an aspiration we'd dream for our son, or my own deep embarrassment for the comment, and the urge to shield my son from such a core part of my own identity as a member of the hip-hop generation.

It's a tricky paradox. As parents, we see it as our job to make sure our son doesn't live down to fake notions of black masculinity that too often are epitomized in rap music. But we find it equally important for him to be unapologetically proud of the ingenuity, strength and vitality of black culture, which of course includes hip-hop.

My husband, Rudy, and I were born in the mid-1970s and are part of the hip-hop generation of parents. Cynicism is our biggest enemy. Rudy is that 30-plus-year-old who spends hours playing video games, watching the Cartoon Network and elbowing the teenagers in line each Tuesday for the latest hip-hop release. He's the lawyer going to work in jeans and T-shirt, blasting hip-hop in his windowed office. Me: I've built my career writing about black youth culture and music, and still take pride in getting my groove on at the club.

Our kids go pretty much wherever we do, except the club, from the classroom where I teach college students, to Rudy's office, to Sunday football with Uncle Celo, fight parties, housewarmings and barbecues. They are used to being the only kids there.

We named Maverick after an early 19th-century Texas cowboy, attorney and politician who refused to brand his cattle. He said if anyone found a cow without a brand that meant it was a "Maverick." That's what I want for my son: to resist all the voices urging him to pick a brand -- whether a brand of politics, of black masculinity or of sneakers. I want him to live up to his name and forge his own path -- whether as a scientist, race car driver or MC.

To be fair, the professor who commented on Maverick's future turned out to be someone who knew enough about hip-hop to understand that it can be an art and an honorable career path, despite the icky way the culture is depicted in mass media. But that still doesn't explain how she calculated Maverick's prospects based on his behavior at that dinner.

File it under further confirmation of what author and educational consultant Jawanza Kunjufu calls a "conspiracy to destroy black boys." That's the power of black masculinity, a force that is skewed and amplified before being broadcast by media. It's potent enough to cloud anyone's vision, even those who should know better. We have our work cut out for us.

I was nearly nine months pregnant six years ago when we moved into a Victorian rowhouse in the transitional neighborhood of Bloomingdale in Washington.

Unlike our parents, who chose mostly white, suburban districts with top-notch school systems, Rudy and I wanted to live in a black community in the Chocolate City, in part to shield Maverick from the psychological trauma and alienation that Rudy and I both knew from growing up in white suburbia.

We admittedly had a lot of romantic notions about being role models and helping a city rebound. When I aired these notions in a 2001 article in The Post's Outlook section, my cynical views about the racial implications of gentrification drew a great deal of controversy. (That cynicism turned out to be well founded; according to the latest housing data, blacks are no longer the majority of homeowners in D.C.) But back then, the direction the city was going in wasn't as clear. Soon after we moved, we met some of the young black boys in the neighborhood. "You're a lawyer?" our sweet neighbor Brandon, about 8 at the time, asked Rudy. "Why would you want to live here?"

We have never regretted our decision, but some days, the choice feels a lot like class suicide. Both Rudy's and my parents hadn't fled poverty in the Caribbean, made it through college and the corporate world only to have their grandchildren dodging crumpled Red Bull cans and crack baggies on the sidewalk.

Then, of course, there are the local public schools. I was pushing baby Maverick around the neighborhood in a stroller one day when I decided to check out the local elementary school, Gage-Eckington. I walked in and asked for a tour from the vice principal.

She wearily led me around and answered my questions. No, she told me, there is no PTA, but if you're interested, we probably could use your help to get one started. She pointed out that I didn't have to enroll my son in this school: In Washington, you can apply to go to any school in the city through a lottery. "Do your homework," she advised me. Look at test scores, and demographics of the schools. She had just left a teaching job at a highly functioning school "across the park" -- that's Washington's euphemism for the white part of town, west of Rock Creek Park. The difference between the educational experiences was stunning. "These kids here have real problems," she told me.

When I shared the exchange with Rudy, he was apoplectic: Well, if they keep chasing off motivated parents, no wonder the school is in trouble! Right, I told him. We can get some of our neighbors together, write some grants and push through a specialized Spanish bilingual program. We don't have to chase the white folks to provide a good education for our son.

Three years later, our lofty goals became a casualty of busy work schedules. We didn't have the time to overhaul a school! I acted like a good buppie and followed, to the letter, the advice of that vice principal. I got on the Internet. Scoured test scores. I searched for addresses that were west of Rock Creek Park. I looked for an enrollment with a relatively low free-lunch (read: poverty) rate, and at minimum, a sprinkling of white students, so Maverick would know what they look like.

Phoebe Hearst Elementary, the school we were admitted to via the D.C. public school lottery, draws kids from all over the city to form a student body that is almost 70 percent black, with the rest Latinos, whites and Asians. Test scores are top-notch, and it is quasi-privatized by a PTA that raises tens of thousands of dollars to hire art, music, dance and science teachers and do school repairs -- perks that are scarce in the rest of the traditional public school system. The day I went to visit, I saw two of Rudy's former law school classmates doing the same. We immediately agreed to try to get our sons into the pre-K class of Mr. Jenkins, a dynamic young brother who'd been highly recommended to me in one of my annoying-but-informational mommy listservs.

Being middle-class parents in a highly competitive place like D.C. often means that we treat our children like NFL free agents, constantly on the hunt for a better deal. Despite all this hand-wringing, angst and endless research, not a day goes by that I don't question the decisions we've made about Maverick and threaten to bolt in an entirely new direction. Educational experts disagree about what is the best school setting for black boys. From untested charter schools to traditional public schools to private schools, the plethora of choices can drive you crazy.

Each day, ours looks more and more like a neighborhood our parents would want for their grandchildren. Our block has always been quiet, and we are extremely close with our neighbors, with a running club, garden club and barbecues. Each day, the streets get cleaner, crime decreases.

The dilemma in raising our black son remains: What if our culture is the problem? It's like the artist Mos Def says, We are hip-hop. It's our attitude. It's where we choose to live. It's the music we listen to, the values we raised ourselves on. Every day, we lament the current state of hip-hop, but even more, we lament the sad state of black reality that it caricatures and reflects, especially when it comes to black boys. I see hip-hop as a cry for help, for direction.

A year ago, during a visit to Indianapolis, where I lived as a teenager, I decided to stop by to see my old high school principal, Dr. Eugene White, a black man who is an educational rock star in Indiana. He had become an award-winning superintendent of the wealthy suburban Washington Township school district where my high school was located. A few weeks before my visit, he had decided to take a job as superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools. He had overseen unparalleled gains in black achievement in Washington Township. Now, he said, he wanted to go to the larger, less affluent urban district "to help them out." He had just sent out letters to the parents of low-achieving black boys who'd been plucked to be part of a specialized academy.

When we talked in his downtown office about my own experiences with Maverick, Dr. White could sense my wistfulness about not going through with the plan to stick with our neighborhood school. He quickly set me straight. "You never get a chance to do this but one time. This is your chance," he said. "You have the means to give him the best, whether that's in a school that is public or private. You've got to send him to a place that's ready for him. You've gotta find places that believe that he can be a Master of the Universe. If you are lucky enough to live in a community where you don't have to pay for that, good for you. If not, make that investment, it will pay you right back. You cannot feel guilty. You are not selling out. That's the American way."

Exactly. And that's also the American problem. Much of the hip-hop generation has been about remixing, restoring, renovating. We have an opportunity to do something that goes beyond our own children and our bragging rights. For the sake of all black boys floundering in public schools, I hope we can shed our own cynicism long enough to figure out a plan to rebuild.

Adapted from "Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip Hop Generation" by Natalie Hopkinson and Natalie Y. Moore (Cleis Press).