Pan-Ethnic Hip-Hop in Afro-American History Research Paper

El-Tayeb, Fatima. “‘If You Can’t Pronounce My Name, You Can Just Call Me Pride’: Afro-German Activism, Gender, and Hip Hop.” Gender & History 15, no. 3 (2003): 460-486.

El-Tayeb’s article focuses on the phenomenon of “black Germans” -the Afro-German people who acquired a “high-profile” status in the country during the mid-1990s.¹ In the introduction, the author makes a profound comparison and contrast between the treatment of colored people in different historical periods, which helps the audience to realize the importance of the subject. Also, the author emphasizes the focus of the current study, which gives readers the possibility to predict what issues the article will investigate.² However, despite making rather good statements and providing detailed analysis, the author’s approach to creating the introduction has some negative features. The thesis statement is mentioned as far as on the fifth page of the article, which makes the audience considerably confused for some time.³ Despite this structural deficiency, the purpose of the article is defined by the author clearly. El-Tayeb performs the analysis of the current Afro-German hip-hop activism taking into consideration the twenty-year experience of the black German political campaign. Moreover, the author investigates the “pan-ethnic” community view of the old school hip-hop.⁴ Such an extensive field of research raises interest in the article and also signifies the author’s profound knowledge of the subject.

To make the article easier to comprehend, El-Tayeb divides it with the help of several subheadings that make the structure logical and coherent. The author provides an overview of the black German history stating that the theme of exotics associated with blacks has always occupied a central place in German “discourses on race.”⁵ El-Tayeb pays sufficient attention to describing the experiences of German men who decided to connect their fate with African women.⁶ The author provides an interesting comparison between the hardships of African migrants and Afro-Germans, noting that the “very Germanness” of the latter prevented them from many social benefits.⁷ The further sections are focused on the analysis of the beginning and development of hip-hop. The author makes the article more interesting by providing excerpts of narrations made by people living in the mentioned periods. El-Tayeb makes professional remarks about the issue, such as defining Audre Lorde’s trip to Berlin as the “catalyst for events that would radically” alter Afro-Germans’ lives.⁸

In the conclusion, the author underlines the most significant parts of the study concisely. ⁹ The list of references is considerable, and it signifies the deep analysis performed by the author. Despite some formatting drawbacks, the article is a great source of learning about the historical and social peculiarities of hip-hop culture and Afro-German activism.

Morgan, Marcyliena, and Dionne Bennett. “Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form.” Daedalus 140, no. 2 (2011): pp.176-196.

The article by Morgan and Bennett focuses on the artistic side of hip-hop rather than historical peculiarities. The paper begins with a compelling introduction in which the authors provide several creative definitions of hip-hop.¹⁰ Immediately after that, there is another interesting fact that captures the audience’s attention and encourages them to continue reading. The authors remark that in 2009, hip-hop music represented fifty percent of the “top-ten global digital songs.”¹¹ The article is written creatively, and its language is easy to comprehend. However, the authors also pay sufficient attention to references and scholarly facts. Speaking about the debate on hip-hop culture and art, the Morgan and Bennett quote a famous political theorist who said that young people are developing into “organic intellectuals.”¹² One of the few negative factors noticed about the source is its formatting. There are no subheadings that would divide the article into logical parts and present to the readers the elements the authors want to discuss.

A prominent place in Morgan’s and Bennett’s study belongs to the scholarly analysis of hip-hop. As the author’s remark, there is a “growing body of scholarship” on hip-hop.¹³ Morgan and Bennett analyze the scholarly interest in hip-hop culture by specialists in diverse spheres, which allows the readers to see the scope of the issue and evaluate its significance.¹⁴ Thus, the authors mention the investigation of hip-hop in politics, feminism studies, philosophy, sociology, and other spheres. An advantageous feature of the article is that the authors analyze the subject not only from the positive point of view but also from the negative one. Morgan and Bennett discuss the difficulties of the movement’s adaptation in different countries. It is noted that in Japan, young people who wanted to demonstrate hip-hop culture resorted to “intensive tanning” and “the use of hair chemicals to grow Afros and dreadlocks.”¹⁵ By providing such descriptions, the authors make it easier to imagine the situation around hip-hop in different countries. Another significant issue is the discussion of hip-hop’s assistance in young people’s “education and socialization.”¹⁶ What is also important, the authors mention the significance of hip-hop culture in various spheres of social life.¹⁷

The article’s conclusion is no less compelling than the introduction. Morgan and Bennett emphasize how popular the movement has become and reiterate the reasons for such popularity.¹⁸ The list of references is comprehensive and includes many sources published recently before the article, as well as some older sources used for analysis. Despite some formatting limitations, the article by Morgan and Bennett is a valuable and compelling source of information about the development of hip-hop and its impact.

Footnotes

1. Fatima El -Tayeb, “‘If You Can’t Pronounce My Name, You Can Just Call Me Pride’: Afro-German Activism, Gender, and Hip Hop”, Gender & History 15, no. 3 (2003): 460.
2. Ibid., 460-461.
3. Ibid., 464.
4. Ibid., 464.
5. Ibid., 465.
6. Ibid., 466-467.
7. Ibid., 469.
8. Ibid., 470.
9. Ibid., 480-482.
10. Marcyliena Morgan and Dionne Bennett, “Hip-Hop & the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form”, Daedalus 140, no. 2 (2011): 176.
11. Ibid., 176.
12. Ibid., 177-178.
13. Ibid., 179.
14. Ibid., 179.
15. Ibid., 180.
16. Ibid., 186.
17. Ibid., 187-189.
18. Ibid., 191-192.