Introduction: Teaching for Critical Consciousness at the Intersection of Critical Media Literacy and Hip Hop Education

Abstract

In the 1970s, Hip Hop emerged as a form of cultural expression that belied overly optimistic master narratives about racial and class progress being espoused in light of civil rights legislation and other social and political gains enabled by the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Freedom Struggle (Rose, 1994). The vast array of Hip Hop’s cultural features gave its producers a variety of means or modalities to practice intellectual, embodied, and spiritual behaviors and dispositions to disrupt this narrative and to develop counternarratives. As outlined by Chang (2005), Hip Hop culture is comprised of at least four key tenets; emceeing (the oral traditions of Hip Hop), dj’ing (the instrumental traditions of Hip Hop), breakin’ (sometimes called b-boyin’/b-girlin’; the kinesthetic/aesthetic traditions of Hip Hop), and graffiti (the visual art traditions of Hip Hop). “Knowledge of self” is often considered to be the fifth tenet of Hip Hop, where the other four elements come together help cultural producers and consumers develop a critical view of one’s self, their communities, and the larger sociopolitical context (Chang, 2005; Love, 2013). In this