Policy + Politics – Page 2

Culture Wars

In education, conflict over prioritized subject matter taught in schools illuminated larger societal issues of race, legitimacy of cultural expressions and forms of knowledge in America. With the close of the 20^th century, several questions continued to emerge: What constituted being an “American”? What does a true American look like, act like, talk like? How does history, and one’s ethnic/cultural background inform one’s place in American society? These questions were (and are) ultimately decided in the schools our children attend – spaces which may operate to reinforce societal norms, options and access to resources.

In the 1990s, an interesting series of debates occurred on this subject which were dubbed the “Culture Wars.” These “battles” took place in educational arenas: from classrooms, parent-teacher conferences and staff meetings to school board assemblies, and standardized testing planning sessions. With recognition and attempted incorporation of “minorities,” these debates centered on the question of how school systems educate in ways that relate to students of different cultural backgrounds. One could argue that these conversations were abruptly introduced, ignored and revisited continuously since the legal integration of American public schools in the closing years of the Civil Rights Movement. News articles, academic journal publications, books and even popular TV specials highlighted this phenomenon – in an attempt to answer the aforementioned questions.

This idea of “Culture Wars” is often followed up by the question, “who’s winning?” In a democracy, we all should. Yet these Culture Wars embrace less equality and inclusiveness with more combative and superiority complexes. With Culture Wars at the foundation of our children’s scholarship, this shows just how divided how nation truly is.

Eric Bain-Selbo asserts that these “Culture Wars” originally stemmed from the crucial question: How do we educate our children and young adults? (Bain-Selbo, 2003) The “we” alludes to the entirety of American society, which often is documented to operate under the assumption that citizens of the United States constitute and contribute to one uniform and united culture. This particular culture is cited to stem from America’s inception, and the popular ideals of its founders: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, going from rags to riches, equal opportunity, etc.

Henry Louis Gates addresses this assumption by highlighting what is known as the “Great Western Tradition.” This tradition includes patriotic standards, understandings and cultural guidelines in alignment with both the political and socio-economic agendas of the ruling classes in this country (Gates, 1993). This tradition reifies ideas of rationalized manifest destiny, free market capitalism and moral purity of property owners (mainly including White, often Protestant males) – in a prioritized historical narrative deemed heroic and necessary to teach in state public and private schools. From this narrative, all subjects taught are meant to prepare students in their attempts to realize the American Dream. This Dream consists of ultimate access to resources, and the power to make decisions (legislation, voting) that affect everyone moving forward.

In reality, this American Dream did not apply to the majority of peoples of color in this nation. Various ethnic groups, historically and strategically classified as races, struggled to survive and thrive in a society which placed them at odds with those of the wealthiest classes – and each other. These cultural experiences have influenced what could be considered “American” practices and expressions – holding equal weight and importance in contributions to economics, sciences, historical developments, achievements, literature, the arts, etc.

To put it simply, conservatives argued for school curricula to stay as it was, for “Great Western Traditions” to remain the standard. Students from all groups were charged to conform to this ideology, expressed in class lectures, assignments, reading materials and overall subject matter. Gates notes that these conservative public and academic figures considered multiculturalism to be “ethnic chauvinism” (Gates, pg. 174, 1993) These figures clearly contradicted themselves in accusing representatives of other ethnicities of “over-promoting” false histories, to make themselves feel “great” or “worthy of recognition:” especially since presentations of American history often completely omitted the contributions and stories of non-White males.

Those considered to “the right” countered with the multiculturalist argument: the implementation of culturally-relevant pedagogical practices. For educators and researchers of this position, it was important to create learning environments where all children saw themselves reflected in what they were being taught: their families, neighborhoods, histories, languages and forms of knowledge. From this understanding, students could be empowered to draw from these strengths to navigate American society, being productive and able to thrive in all spaces.

Pedagogical theorist, educator and author Gloria-Ladson Billings introduced the 90s to The Dream-Keepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. She tackles this idea of reversion, and the possibility of African American students needed separate spaces for education, noting that public schools are seemingly already segregated; Non-inclusiveness curriculum vs. African American children.

Furthermore, educators and its administration need to come to a point where they they can stop denying absence of color. “I don’t see race,” is no longer acceptable. You have to see race and culture in order to understand what it is that individual students need. To acknowledge race is a simple means of acknowledging the social, racial, and political hurdles to which one is subjected, and should be only regarded as such, never to use against one. To tackle these Culture Wars, we need cultural acceptance and cultural literacy. Independent of religion or spirituality, (as they are intensely controversial) the simple inclusion of African American history, life, and expression would be a great start in ending the culture wars we witness in education. The public school system needs to create as less dissonance as possible for its minority and unassimilated students.

Ultimately, these “wars” are still waged and fought today. Observations in public school (and even higher academic) environments still reveal the need for greater cultural resources that reflect students’ various experiences. Many educators are still forced to strictly “teach from The Curriculum:” the items mandated by both state and educational officials, preoccupied with standardized testing results. At the same time, a greater number of educators (including many who started these debates in the late 80s/early 90s) have provided solutions. These solutions have manifested in program development strategies, new textbooks, grassroots organizational efforts, and teachers simply “sneaking cultural knowledge in” for their students.

My initial investigations about this make me want to read further on this topic, and draw potential connections to educational practices today.

—Kweku Vassall & Revisited by Tysheira Scribner

Works Cited

Bain-Selbo, Eric. (2003). Mediating the Culture Wars. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Binder, A. J. (2000). Why Do Some Curricular Challenges Work While Others Do Not? The Case of Three Afrocentric Challenges. Sociology of Education, 73(2), 69-91.
(PDF for viewing in our OMEKA entry for this article – very informative)

Gates, Henry Louis. (1993). Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Graff, Gerald. (1992). Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1994). The dreamkeepers : successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco :Jossey-Bass Publishers,

Whatchu Talkin’ ‘Bout?: The Ebonics Debate

In 1996, the Oakland, California School Board decided that it wanted to treat African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) as a separate language and teach standard English to inner-city youth as a sort of English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. The response was swift, harsh, and largely misdirected. Critics of the measure said that such a practice would prove divisive and make those labeled as speaking Ebonics feel inferior to those who were lauded for speaking Standard English. There was also a sect of misunderstood ire from people who actually thought that Ebonics would be taught in the Oakland School District alongside standard English in what could be termed as a translation program, in which the AAVE would be translated to standard English. The arguments for and against the classification of Ebonics rested on the tenets of whether or not AAVE was an actual dialect of English, or instead a distinct language akin to a completely foreign language. Most linguists would agree that AAVE is a dialect of Standard English in a way that French Creole is a dialect of French—in that there are many commonalities between the two languages, so communication between speakers of AAVE and speakers of Standard English can easily communicate. It is just the minor nuances of the language that may require explanation. After facing the initial backlash, the Oakland School Board reassessed and recalibrated their approach to the whole issue. The school board reassured the public that their aim was not to teach Ebonics, but to rather educate teachers about the language differences and dialects with which the students entered the classroom and then teaching students to translate those differences into Standard English. Most opponents said that they simply wanted the equality of access that would presumably come along with the learning and usage of Standard English. However, it is important to note that the counterclaims argued that discrimination would still be present even if Standard English was adopted by those in question.

Do You Speak American? The Ebonics Debate

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Black-Asian Relations in the 1990s

In the wake of the recent murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, Asian Americans have joined in solidarity with African Americans to confront race-based police brutality. The group #Asians4BlackLives has mobilized Asian allies – and on December 14, 2014 it supported the “ The Blackout Collective” to occupy the Oakland Police Department.

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This act of solidarity against the police is profound given the historical tensions between Asians and African Americans in the US, especially in California. For the cross-racial animosity during the 1992 LA uprising, following the non-indictment of the police officers that brutally beat Rodney King, remains a seminal moment of division between the two groups. Media footage of the media-dubbed “riots” showcases African Americans looting and destroying businesses in LA’s Koreatown, with Asian shop owners taking up arms when the L.A.P.D did not respond to their calls for help. TV screens were saturated with images of African Americans breaking shop windows and setting stores ablaze, while Koreans shot their pistols and rifles in self-defense.

Without adequate historical context, news outlets exacerbated longstanding misunderstandings between the two groups. Far from being the result of inherent cross-racial biases or prejudices, the violence between African and Korean Americans during the uprising was rooted in the construction of the “model minority” stereotype, a direct result of immigration policy that created competition between peoples of color.

Nearly 30 years before the uprising, the U.S. opened its borders to East and South Asians after a longstanding population quota against these groups. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act let Asians and their families into the United States with the stipulation that these new immigrants had to be educated professionals. They were not from their home country’s working class, nor were they disenfranchised refugees. The aim of the Act was to stimulate the U.S. economy while providing first-world opportunities to these new migrants. Unlike the European immigrants who came before, these new immigrants had financially promising skill sets from the start. As Vijay Prashad points out in his book The Karma of Brown Folk, this new minority class was designed to provide solutions for American issues – racial and economic – not compound its problems. Therefore the Asians of ‘65 were not just a new group of minority immigrants, but would become new and model class of minorities – formally educated, economically independent, well behaved, and family oriented.

That the “model minority” class of immigrants began its construction at the height of the African American struggles for desegregation – the same year of the Civil Rights Voting Act and assassination of Malcolm X – is symbolic of the divisions that were bound to arise between people of color in the United States. One group was given open opportunity and another was struggling for that same opportunity — and interacted in very close quarters. Because of a language barrier, as was the case with new Koreans, many new Asian immigrants in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s were unable to get jobs in their preferred fields of science and engineering (see the film, Clash of Colors). Instead, they established businesses in what were affordable areas to them, but where many white Americans refused to set up shop – impoverished and predominately African American. However, with little to no knowledge of U.S. race relations, in the words of Prashad in his book Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Relations and the Myth of Cultural Purity: “they were unaware of the political powder keg they were about to ignite” (155).

African American resistance to these new Asian businesses was strong. Many Koreans worked in black areas, but resided elsewhere. Their language barrier was seen as a refusal to learn the language of the community. As a result, African Americans saw that they did not integrate or support the communities that they served – all while many African Americans were not financially able to own businesses their own communities because of structural poverty. Black New York newspaper The Amsterdam News ran headlines that warned African Americans of “Korean Invasion” and Spike Lee dramatized black and Korean tensions in his 1989 film, Do the Right Thing. In 1990, the Black Nationalist lead “Flatbush Boycott” ran a campaign against Korean shop owners in Brooklyn. On the West Coast, the LA Sentinel ran similarly discriminatory headlines in the late ’80s and in 1991 Ice Cube released the song “Black Korea” in which he rapped a startling premonition: “Every time I wanna go get a fuckin brew/I gotta go down to the store with the two/oriental one-penny countin motherfuckers…So don’t follow me, up an down your market/Or your little chop suey ass’ll be a target/of the nationwide boycott/ Juice with the people, that’s what the boy got/So pay respect to the black fist/or we’ll burn your store, down to a crisp.” Black/Korean tensions on the West Coast came to a head when, just 13 days before the Rodney King beating, 15 year old African American teenager Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by 51 year old Korean shop owner Joon Ja Du who accused the young girl of stealing orange juice. In this context, the violence between Asians and blacks during the 1992 uprising seemed inevitable. However, it is important to remember that the problem between African Americans and Koreans at that time was not solely one of attitude or stereotype but, in Prashad’s words, “a fundamental flaw in the social relations between people” (116). There have been political forces that created these divisions. After all, a “model minority” class of color implies that there was and is a class of color that needs a model to follow.

Black-Asian relations in the 1990s were not all tense, however. Indeed, a recent NPR report found that during the final days of the “riots,” Koreans in L.A. began to make concerted efforts to reconcile with the African American community it served.

With the expansion of the 1965 Immigration Act in 1990, came more opportunity for productive cross-racial and cross-cultural exchange. For example, in The Tao of Wu, Wu Tang Clan member RZA recounts the long afternoons he spent watching Ku Fu Movies at the $2 Asian theatres in New York (47). His time immersed in Asian cinema had a direct impact on his creative aesthetic and spiritual philosophy.

In turn, music producer Sophia Chang recalls that she shied away from her Asian heritage until she signed a Kung Fu loving hip hop tro named Fu-Shnickens and later met Wu Tang. She writes: “I was a second-generation Korean Canadian who lost her language and ate cheeseburgers while the rest of the family feasted on kalbi and banchan. In 1992, my racial and cultural denial was alive and kicking. It wasn’t until I met Wu-Tang that…my belated ‘Asian Renaissance’ started”. Eddie Huang, too, has used hip-hop to help negotiate his place in the United States as a child of Chinese immigrants. His memoir Fresh off the Boat (now a television show) recounts the impact of 1990s hip-hop as he navigated assimilation and oftentimes devastating home life. It is no wonder that he is good friends, now, with Ta-Nehisi Coates. And as early as 1991 director Mira Nair released Mississippi Masala, a film that dramatized a complex love affair between the daughter of African-Indian immigrants who run a liquor store and a young Southern black man with his own carpet cleaning company.

The impact of black culture and thought on Asian-Americans and vice versa cannot be underestimated. As #Asians4BlackLives makes clear, important alliances are imminent. —Rebecca Kumar

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41 Shots…and Many Shots Later: The Police killing of Amadou Diallo and its Aftermath

On February 4, 1999, four NYPD officers gunned down Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old Guinean immigrant, just outside his apartment complex in the Bronx. Diallo was shot at 41 times; 19 bullets struck him directly. The four officers-Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Kenneth Boss, and Edward McMellon–were charged with second-degree murder and acquitted.

The events surrounding Diallo’s death incited outrage in the community, for it raised already boiling concerns regarding police brutality, racial profiling, and the criminalization of black men. That night, the officers began to trail Diallo, who was then approaching his home, believing that he matched the description of an at-large rapist. After the police identified themselves, Diallo began to run towards his home, and reportedly withdrew his wallet from his jacket pocket. Then, the four officers, at Carroll’s signal, opened fire, supposedly mistaking Diallo’s wallet for a gun. Despite the officer’s fatal assumptions, Diallo was innocent and unarmed. He had no previous criminal record.

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In many ways, the shooting of Amadou Diallo harks back to the brutal beating of Rodney King. A couple details of King and Diallo’s cases are strikingly and hauntingly similar. Like with King, the violation of Diallo’s person, and subsequent snatching of his life, resultedfrom unfair suspicion and racial bias. Also, both trials were moved to cities outside the one in which the crimes took place. In both cases, this was decided under the guise that saturated publicity proved unconducive to a fair trial. Both changes of venue were to more suburban, affluent areas (in Diallo’s case, Albany, NY, and in King’s, Simi Valley), areas from which the jury members were drawn. These details, among countless others, comprise a complex, tightly woven thread linking the majority cases of police brutality that both predate the 90s and extend into the 21st-century.

Diallo’s death also preludes many of the incidents of police brutality and racial profiling in minority communities today. It is eerily coincidental that this shooting took place at the end of the 90s and kick-started a series of conversations and policies addressing boiling concerns of police brutality, racial profiling, and the criminalization of black men. Many people, from constituents to politicians, urged law enforcement to examine police training policies that informed racial bias by their very design. At the time, outrage was expressed, notably from Diallo’s mom, Kadi Diallo, over depictions of her son via mainstream media. The sweet, peaceful family man and budding business owner, as family and friends alike knew him, had been reduced to an “African street peddler.” Similar methods of character assassination and distortion are evident in the cases of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown,and Tamir Rice–sadly, among many, many other unarmed black boys, men, women, and girls senselessly killed by police.

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With regards to policy, Diallo’s death, as well as an incident where Ol’ Dirty Bastard of Wu-Tang Clan was fired at by cops who supposedly mistook his phone for a gun, led to the disbandment of the Street Crime Unit in 2002. Unfortunately, police officers no longer need to be disguised to unnecessarily apprehend black women and men. And sadly, these same killings are occurring in 2015 at a seemingly exacerbated rate.

Diallo’s death resulted in an impressive outpouring of artistic tributes and responses. Dwayne Rodgers, an independent artist living in Brooklyn at the time, took the widely circulated photo of Diallo’s casket during the funeral procession. At the time, he was also working on a photo series addressing incidents of police brutality. Musically, from Wyclef Jean’s “Diallo” to Lauryn Hill’s “I Find it Hard to Say (Rebel) to Erykah Badu’s “A.D. 2000”, many artists expressed both intense rage and gut-wrenching grief over Diallo’s senseless death. With the prevalence of social media today, responses to police brutality come from every corner of the world. Musically, there are responses (e.g. Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”), but many have also taken to the internet to purge their personal grief, sadness, and anger, and to rally around movements with goals of eradicating police brutality (e.g. Black Lives Matter). —Keith Freeman

Works Cited

[The title of the entry is a spin on the title of Beth Roy’s book, 41 Shots…and Counting: What Amadou Diallo’s Story Teaches Us About Policing, Race, and Justice.]

Naomi. “The Amadou Diallo Shooting.” Online video clip. YouTube. Youtube, 22 Apr. 2006. Web. 12 November 2015.

Susman, Tina. “Before Ferguson: Deaths of other black men at hands of police.” Los Angeles Times. 13 August 2014. Web. 12 November 2015.

The term “African-American”

In the year 1903, the great black intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois presented the idea of “double consciousness” in his book entitled The Souls of Black Folk. He was simply referring to the belief that blacks living in America saw themselves in two different aspects. These aspects were both African and American. Although the term “Negro” was still used during the time of Du Bois, his concept of double consciousness way able to provide foundation elements to the term that later became known as “African-American”. Throughout history there have been many terms to describe groups of people. For the black people born and raised in the United States, this has definitely been true. From slave, nigger, negro, to black, these particular words have all been used to describe a particular race. Fast-forward to the year 1988, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a news conference encouraging the use of the term African-American. This particular term to define a certain race would go on and cause much debate and controversy throughout the 90s, even to the present day.

Jesse Jackson’s decision to use the term African-American spoke to a large group of people, but at the same time gained a lot of disapproval. The 90s were very important as it relates to the image of blacks being promoted to the world. Coming up with the “correct” term to call entire race was not easy due to individual personal beliefs. The idea of moving away from the term “Black” seemed to take the political approach and get rid of an entire history. This definitely did not sit well with people who considered themselves black and as a collective people throughout the diaspora with a shared struggle. On the other hand the term African-American was found best suitable for some because of the belief that the United States had made progressive steps since the Civil Rights Movement to consider a marginalized race citizens. While there were debates about what term to use, one of the most important things was exactly how a race was being treated by “its” country.

The 90s witnessed everything from the popularity of the Cosby Show to a resurgence of Black Nationalism beliefs. Both aspects represented the many different people that made up a race. The term African-American eventually became nationally recognized in 1997 by the United States government. Although the term was recognized by the government did not mean that everyone was on board. The same government that had recognized the term was the same government that was still plagued with different aspects of discrimination. Overall, the term African-American is still debatable and there has been individuals pushing for the idea of just being considered American in more recent times. Only time will tell if the term African-American will be around in the future or become a thing in the past like previous terms used to describe a race of people. – Andy Reid

Gang Wars and Peace Truces in Early 90s Media: From NY and LA to Little Rock

“What’s crackin cuz?”

“What’s poppin blood?”

Depending on your location, situation, and ability to understand gang-related terminology, your answer to these questions could determine if you lived or died on certain streets in the 1990s. During that decade, a language that many outsiders interpreted as young urban slang came to signify real insider knowledge, especially at a time when urban youth increasingly defined themselves by street cred, street cred by street violence, and street violence by gang violence, which in turn, became mass mediated gang wars.

From Los Angeles to Little Rock, gang activity experienced a surge across the United States in the early 1990s. This is particularly true of the Southern region. According to a 2010 government History of Street Gangs in the United States, “the southern region led the nation in the number of new gang cities, a 32 percent increase” from the 1970s through the 1990s. By 1998, the South had more states reporting gang problems than any other region in the nation. In fact at the time, this made the South look like it was catching up with the West, Midwest, and Northeast in terms of gang activity.

One HBO documentary from 1994 attempted to capture this spike in southern gang activity as it was felt in Little Rock, Arkansas, of all places. Director Mark Levin’s footage of Hoover Folk, Crip, and Blood gang member initiation rituals, ceremonies, and their groups’ deadly impact on children in a small city shocked the nation. Levin tracked this impact by following Steve Nawojczyk, the Pulaski County coroner at the time (and still-active community leader for inner city youth), to portray a sad state of affairs for Little Rock, and by extension, a narrative of decline for small cities in the South that were similarly affected by gang violence.

What’s interesting about this documentary is how it leads with a largely white, racially and sexually integrated set of Chicago’s Hoover Folk, showing its teenage members sitting in public parks around Little Rock, listening and singing along to Tupac, while later “beating in” a young woman who wants to be initiated. The priorities laid out in this sequence of events are clear: young white kids are being influenced by rap music, and they’re doing violence to one of their white female peers.

This sequence follows a familiar pattern, one well-known among the American black community—a pattern where young white kids are portrayed in the media as being corrupted by the influence of black American communities where “all the trouble started.” The documentary participates in this narrative by telling the story of a slightly older black men who came up in the Crip and Blood scene of Los Angeles, but later moved to Little Rock in the 1980s, where the documentary suggests the man becomes a major kingpin of that city’s 1990s gang scene.

Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock is unique in its mass mediated portrayal of gang violence affecting white urban youth in a small city, but its subtle portrayal of the American black community as the root of such violence is all-too-familiar. Throughout the early 1990s, movies, television, music and documentaries engaged in a systemic pattern of portraying gang-related crime, gang violence, and gang wars in ways that made that violence look peculiar to American black communities, especially black youth in the inner cities of Los Angeles and New York City. We can see such depictions most readily in movies like Boyz in the Hood (1991) and New Jack City (1991), which show young black men struggling to survive gang violence within their predominantly black neighborhoods in Los Angeles and New York City, respectively.

Then on television and again in 1991, national and international audiences witnessed the initial filming and eventual fallout from the Rodney King beatings in the form of the LA Uprising, whose television news coverage repeated the same systemic pattern of negatively portraying black communities as hotbeds of criminal and gang-related activity. Filtered through an implicit bias about violence on the West Coast—which we also see iterated in the Little Rock documentary when Levin focuses on the city’s supposed kingpin from LA—this event took place in Los Angeles, where the violent video images of white LAPD officers viciously beating the young black King within an inch of his life were broadcast and looped on national news networks for over a year between 1991 and 1992.

Perhaps one day, we will regard this “beat-in” as the horrific act of gang violence it actually was.

But what isn’t often remembered in mainstream accounts of the LA Uprising (an event formerly called the “LA Riots”), which directly followed the acquittal of the white LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, is that it was directly preceded by the Watts Truce between Crip and Blood gangs in 1992. Gangs such as the Crips and Bloods had been around for your years before the decision to call the 1992 truce, and issues of police brutality and racism was not the only thing that led to the truce. Active and non-active gang members on both side had realized how much destruction they had caused on their own neighborhoods. For a short period of time, there seemed to be some end to the madness that was brewing between two rival gangs. Entertainers such as Snoop Dogg and football legend Jim Brown were both vocal about keeping the peace. Here, we see black entertainers (mostly rappers and activists), highlight the possibilities of representing black people in a more positive light.

And yet just days after this small armistice and positive media coverage, the LA Riots, or what many now consider the LA Uprising, began after the white police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted of their crimes. From television news coverage of looting to beatings in the street, the Uprising had people around the nation tuned into the their TVs to see what was going on in LA. And although Watts Truce was still fresh, there was resurgence of violence between the groups because of the LA Riots. Both gangs used the time of chaos to attack each other which ultimately destroyed what many had hoped would end the violence between the two.

However, while short-lived and a little too early, the Watts Truce sent a powerful message, not only to white Americans, but also to black Americans, that change was possible if mortal enemies united against much larger common enemies, such as police brutality and racist media coverage. In Black Looks (1994), bell hooks explains why such racially biased mediations exist by calling attention to their (mostly white) American mainstream audience, which has an implicit, complicit, perverse, and voyeuristic desire to observe representations of black men’s bodies being assaulted by “white racist violence, black on black violence, the violence of overwork, and the violence of addiction and disease” (34). Indeed, it should come as little surprise that both movies and television—two forms of media that are most often made with that mainstream, mostly white audience at the time—reinforce these stereotypes.

So from New York to LA to Little Rock, the 90s were a unique period in the history of representation of black culture in the United States. Indeed, the LA gang peace treaty and the LA Uprising were critical events in that history: one that, if we listen only to 90s media, is simply a story of gang wars and occasional peace treaties that largely affected African American communities. However, if we listen more closely, particularly to the voices of those communities, we might, sometime in the future, begin to hear how to avoid repeating mistakes of the past.

One of those voices comes from West Coast rapper Kam, who might have said it best in his 1993 song “Peace Treaty.”

— Andy Reid and Joshua Ryan Jackson

Works Cited

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End P, 1992.