Does hip-hop hate women? A panel discussion
A DJ set featuring current hip-hop and R&B music prefaced a panel discussion of the question “Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?” as students gathered and took their seats in the HCB lecture room on Feb. 18.
Rap Sessions, a national tour led by CEO Bakari Kitwana that brings hip-hop activists, scholars, and artists to cities across the country in hopes of presenting dialogues of difficult issues facing today’s hip-hop generation, organized the event.
“This is the first time that we’ve done something of this magnitude,” said Sakeena Gohhgen, a Florida State University senior and Master Coordinator for the Black Student Union. “We’ve had small seminars, but to actually bring some professionals out, it hasn’t happened.”
Several cooperating campus organizations hosted the event, including the Black Student Union, the Hispanic/Latino Student Union, the Women’s Center, the Center for Multicultural Affairs and the Center for Liberal Studies.
A discussion among the panelists, based on questions posed by Kitwana, took up the first 40 minutes. Topics of conversation included Reggaeton and its lack of popular female artists, as well as professional criticisms of the recent film “Precious.”
After that, the floor was opened up to the audience and students were given the opportunity to ask the panelists their own questions. The final question of the night was “Does hip-hop as a culture hate women? Or, is it a lack of education on the history of hip hop that contributes to the apparent hate of women?”
Joycelyn Wilson, a member of the panel, and Scholar of Humanities, Leadership, and Hip-Hop Studies in the Morehouse College African American Studies program, gave the final response of the evening to that question.
“I don’t think that hip hop hates women,” said Wilson. “I think that hip-hop just provides a space to diagnose issues that exist outside of hip-hop.”
Wilson explained that in answering the question, one must first define what hip-hop is, already a complicated and problematic endeavor.
“Hip-hop for me might be something different for another generation that see themselves as hip-hop,” said Wilson. “When you look at hip-hop as a community of practices, rather than just a culture, then you’re able to look at different people, and what they do, how they practice, how they do hip-hop.”
Wilson also recognized the important role hip-hop plays in providing African American culture with means for dealing with gender issues.
“If you look at gender politics among a community, you’re going to always have, in any community, that space where you want to have men and women negotiating themselves, negotiating their space in a very complex way,” said Wilson. “Hip-hop does that, so while we have this situation of issues between black men and black women, we have issues between black men and black women in hip-hop because we have issues between black men and black women in the African American community.”
Students also found the topic more complex than it first seemed.
“When I heard the question, I was kind of like, it’s an unfair question,” said Briana Henderson, an FSU senior. “If you ask, ‘Does-hip hop hate women?’ then you have to ask, ‘Does society as a whole hate women?’ And ‘What is hate?’ There are so many sub-questions that come off of that.”
Overall, the event was received well by the attendants.
“It opened up my mind that [hip-hop] is a platform, because hip-hop is a way of expression, and through hip-hop, you can express how you’re feeling,” said Chazmen Geames, a graduate of Florida A&M University. “I think it really does open up a platform to address the social issues that we have.”
Others saw it as an opportunity to soak up the wisdom of the experienced.
“I loved it,” said Henderson. “I mean, our generation needs to learn how to sometimes just sit and listen and learn, instead of trying to talk all the time and trying to do stuff. We’re the microwave generation, we want everything done right now, right now, let’s do it—no. Take your time, listen to what people who have been there before you have done, dissect it, and then move forward.”
The other members of the panel included Raquel Z. Rivera, a writer, professor and current researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, New York City; Tim’m West, a black, gay and feminist artist, author, and producer; and Joan Morgan, an award-winning journalist and author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist.
The diverse opinions and backgrounds present mirrored the diverse audience in attendance.
“I was very, very, very impressed with the crowd,” said Gohhgen. “It was a diverse group of people—all ages, all races, genders. I was amazed at how many people stayed until the very end.”
To absorb the insight and experience presented by the panel and wrestle with them through the tough questions facing today’s hip-hop generation was an opportunity not taken for granted.
“Rarely do we have a panel discussion of people who have been in the trenches, who are literally dropping knowledge,” said Henderson, who herself is a past member of the BSU executive board. “It’s just nice to hear what people outside of this ivory tower called college have to say about what people are saying, up the street, on the other side of the country. It’s nice to hear that.”
