By Michael Eric Dyson
Michael Eric Dyson has written 14 books on issues that include race, war, violence and Hurricane Katrina. An ordained minister, he is university professor at Georgetown University where he teaches theology, English and African American studies.
AFL-CIO Now Senior Writer James Parks interviewed Dyson about his latest book, Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop.
Question: Your latest book talks about the political consciousness of hip-hop artists. But the image we get from the media is that it's all about the bling and the sex. Who are these artists and what are they saying?
Dyson: We should not make an unnecessarily hard and fast distinction between rappers who have a great deal of political consciousness and those who don't as a way of measuring the political impact of rap. Even when rappers don't intend political meanings, the very art form they engage in is unavoidably political. It's been so controversial because it involves issues of race and class and generations.
Even when you talk about the explicit expression of politics [in rap], that has to be qualified. A rapper like Jay-Z, who is known to sing about—in the minds of many people—the bling and the women also sings about the hustling life and what it's like to be a reformed dope dealer. On his latest CD, he has written what to my mind is the best song on Hurricane Katrina in the aftermath of that horrible devastation on the Gulf Coast—"Minority Report." Some rappers who are consistently political are Talib Kweli, Common and Immortal Technique, who hardly gets any commercial radio play, but is one of the most brilliant political analysts within hip-hop, Dead Prez, Mos Def and The Coup out in the Bay Area.
Question: Why aren't we hearing what these socially conscious artists are saying on our radios?
Dyson: Media consolidation is one thing—fewer companies owning more and more real estate in cyberspace and in the airways. Also, the radio stations won't play the socially conscientious rappers because they claim they play the hits and they play what people want to hear and people haven't clamored for this. But that's a chicken-egg argument. If these artists could be played more on the radio, there would be a creation of a desire to hear them and therefore they would do better commercially and their albums would sell better and there would be a demand for them.
Question: How can the progressive movement join together with these socially conscientious artists to foster change in America?
Dyson: These socially conscientious artists are cognizant that they are citizens. They join their art to their civic participation, sparking new forms of consciousness and engaging people to come together to raise awareness of something like police brutality as Talib Kweli and Mos Def once did. If they do their jobs right as artists, they can raise our awareness by speaking out on police brutality, social injustice, economic inequality. All of this comes through their art and doing their art form well.
There is a great role for conscientious rappers, in particular, and conscientious artists, more broadly, as they join with leaders in the civic realm to speak out against the war in Iraq, against the worst elements of the anti-immigration mind-set, or speak out against how New Orleans has not yet recovered.
Question: Next month is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In your book Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, which we excerpted on our website, you talked about how the country failed the poor in New Orleans. Has anything changed?
Dyson: They did fail them and they continue to fail them. That's why we're going down there with Susan Taylor of Essence magazine and Essence Cares. All of us have to march down there on Aug. 29, the Day of Presence. Hopefully the AFL-CIO and the great unions will join us. [Ed. note: The AFL-CIO and the Louisiana AFL-CIO are participating in the Day of Presence. Keep watching AFL-CIO Now blog for details.] We've got to go there and demand that the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in general be treated as human beings. The federal government has scandalously neglected its obligation to help the most vulnerable citizens in this nation. It is a mark of our national shame that we have not lifted those human beings who suffered. They say a rising tide lifts all boats, then where's the tide of compassion and economic support that should characterize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast nearly two years after Katrina? So I think we need to make a drumbeat about Aug. 29 the same way we do Sept. 11 and generate enough outrage about the surrender to the status quo by many of our political leaders on the national level.
Question: Hip-hop has become one of America's biggest exports. Is there a potential for hip-hop to be a catalyst for global change?
Dyson: When the partition in Poland was coming down and being protested, many of the people were playing "F--- the Police" from [the rap group] NWA in 1988 and 1989 when the song was made. So here are a bunch of guys from Compton, Calif., who were part of the burgeoning hip-hop community known as "Gangsta Rap"—they weren't even socially conscientious rappers. But that just shows you how you can't make these neat divisions. But their song got global recognition and they were playing that in terms of rebelling against a repressive police state. The global dimensions of hip-hop are huge. Black people have inspired indigenous and native peoples to take on the art form to protest against social injustice and the demoralizing practices of a tribe or state that refuses to acknowledge the fundamental dignity of the people who are protesting.
All over the world, from Israel to Soweto, there are images of hip-hop stars. Arguably the more explicit political expressions of hip-hop come when a global art form that emerges from the South Bronx is able to be applied on local situations. This art form has revolutionized the consciousness of many, many young people across the globe and also made possible the expression of rebellion against certain forms of domination.
