MOMENTS WITH YOUTH  

Beyond Beats and Rhymes:
Looking For Leadership

Mark Krueger

A couple weeks ago I attended a screening of a documentary movie titled: HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. The event was well attended. In the Milwaukee audience were university professors, youth workers, agency administrators, and youth from programs in our community including, Running Rebels and Urban Underground, two youth groups engaged in community building (civic engagement) activities in Milwaukee. The movie was directed by Byron Hurt and featured known artists Mos Def, Busta Rhymes, Nelly, and others.

The intent was to raise questions about the messages and meanings of hip hop. Like many people, the director, an African American athlete who grew up on rap and hip hop, was concerned about the sexist, misogynistic, violent, homophobic, materialistic messages that the music was conveying to African American youth. The film would be followed by a panel/audience discussion (by coincidence CNN devoted two hours of prime time discussion to the same topic the next week).

We saw the uncut version of the documentary. I’ve been around, but I must say I was shocked at what the male youth (boys really) and musicians were saying and doing, to women and themselves in particular with their self demeaning behavior. It was far more extreme than I thought. Worse yet, they didn’t even seem to know that rather than look tough and cool, they really looked insecure and crude to the rest of the world outside of their little circle. A circle we all knew was very difficult to break free from, the pressures to “be tough” in the hood these days being perhaps greater than ever. The survival of many youth is dependent upon their ability to conform to these hip hop “norms.” Breaking free, which is something that many youth dream of, takes an almost heroic act. I admire no one more that the youth who have the strength to move out of these cycles of self-destruction.

As I watched the performers spew their hate and anger for the establishment, themselves, women, gays, and whites, I tried to remind myself that all generations of youth go through something like this. The goal is to shock adults. We did it with rock and roll, free love, etc. Yet this still seemed excessive. The glorification of violence and the disrespect for women and gays really got to me. The only purpose in the music and videos, it seemed, was to demean others, and for young men, who were basically frightened and insecure, to appear mean, tough, and macho.

Some in the audience thought it was funny. I was in the group that did not. We saw this form of commercial hip hop and rap as undermining and weakening a whole generation of African American youth. What could be a beautiful, poetic, powerful art form was being used to exploit, for the sake of profit, youth. Most of the rappers in the documentary and videos (we were told)  drove rented cars and wore rented jewelry. Further, they were singing what the producers (mostly wealthy, white, men at the head of record companies and radio distributions) told them to sing. It was like they were slaves all over again to commercialism and the market. And victimization, sexism, violence, and death were hot.

One commentator used an analogy to cowboy movies. Violence, racism, homophobia, and sexism have been part of American society forever, he argued. Indeed it is pervasive throughout the U.S., as it is in much of the rest of the world. Commentators on CNN built on this argument the following week. But as I sat there that night I asked myself, does that mean we should continue? Is this the example from white culture that you want to emulate? Same thing for materialism, I thought. Just because mainstream American culture is so materialistic and empty, does that mean you want to claim it as your right and create a symbol of happiness by showing all that expensive “bling (jewelry, gold chains, etc),” clothes, and cars? What does that get you —  stuff, but not happiness? “Make love not war,” was our cry. There were problems with this, of course, but at least the message one of love not hate, and inclusiveness, not division.

Maybe I was missing something I told myself as two people next to me seemed to agree with the commentator. Maybe there was some hidden or subliminal message here aimed at telling us all to wake up and fight for change? But if the intent was to stir people to positive action, a subliminal message would only work it if it did more good than bad, in my opinion, and this one clearly did more bad, at least the way I saw it. It shocked, and stirred negative reaction. It did not attempt to propose an avenue for change, or maybe it did.

What struck me about midway through the film, as I am sure it has struck many others, is that these young men do not have any leaders. We had Malcolm X, MLK, and Bobby Kennedy during civil rights, each with a different approach but all working for change. The rappers in this documentary appeared to have no purposeful agenda other than to shock, demean, and make money. They were in the face of society with nothing to back it up other than self-abuse.

Fortunately most of the youth and the panelists agreed with the filmmaker, who said that he had become very concerned about what it was doing to the “black” community. A couple of young African American men who were working on their Ph.D.s and a professor along with a woman who ran a shelter for battered women gave the youth a clear and powerful message that this kind of music and commercialism was hurting them. And, the youth for the most part agreed. Several stood up and said they wanted to be known for who they were, not as part of a culture of destruction. These young men and women were proud, thoughtful, and creative. The snickering stopped because the mood of the crowd was that this was not cool. I left feeling better, more hopeful, and ready to discuss the documentary in my class.

Two days later I went to a movie called the Factory Girl, which was the story of Edie Sedgwick, a woman who Andy Warhol made famous for “fifteen minutes” in New York, who died of an overdose after he stopped exploiting her and she was left, abandoned by her wealthy family, to fend for herself out of the street. It struck me that our generation, while involved in a movement for change and civil rights, had also turned its back to some of the same kind of sexism, and exploitation for profit — something which remains widespread today in the media and over the internet.

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When I got home there was an e-mail from my friend Norman Powell. Ralph Kelly the first president of our national child and youth care association had died at age 69. He had been ill for a while, but it was still a shock. Ralph, an African American, from the New York association of workers, had been our role model, the first child and youth care worker to lead us toward a multicultural effort to improve the quality of care for youth, and gain respect for people who worked with them. He was the man who led us through the early (and in many ways most difficult) stage of professional development. He had harnessed the energy and racial, geographical, cultural, and social differences, and got us to work together. The leader of the caravan of vans that carried us across the country to meet in hotel rooms where we slept in closets and anywhere else we could to pile as many people as possible into one room. We were poor, broke, child and youth care workers who found each other in our cause to improve care for kids. And he was the one with the maturity, experience, and sense of self-command and leadership to rein us in and keep us on task. Later he went on to reform the juvenile justice system in Kentucky while completing his Ph.D. He will be missed. (Here is a recent online bio of Ralph.)

I called Norman the next morning and we talked about Ralph, helped each other grieve. Norman, also an African American, was the second President. For many of us he was the model of how we wanted to be seen as workers. Having served in the Peace Corp before working as a child and youth care worker and then going on to get his PhD at American University, Norman was and is “the professional worker.”

It was good to reconnect. We talked for some time about the past and present, his family, my family, etc. At one point I told him about the documentary on Hip Hop. We were in agreement about the need for leadership. “They need it more than ever today,” he said. As usual we talked a little about the good old days. Like most generations, of course, we thought the leaders of our age were better.

As we talked I was reminded of a conversation I had with Doug Magnuson, a professor in the University of Victoria School of Child and Youth Care (considered by many a leader in the generation following the one Norman and I were part of), who said he wished he had been part of our generation of child and youth care leaders: the ones who started it all in the 1960s and 1970s. It was flattering to think that I was part of that group, but to be honest I think the best leaders and leadership styles are still evolving.

When the conversation shifted to politics, Norman and I both agreed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would bring youth into the forefront during of the next presidential election. Hillary had been involved with the U.S. national association in the early days when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. Her work with the Children’s Defense Fund had been an important part of drawing awareness to issues with youth at risk in the U.S. And Barack Obama, what a positive role model he would be. Maybe like Martin and Bobby Kennedy they would bring youth and civil rights and inclusiveness back into the discussion.

When Norman and I began the conversation I was nostalgic and sad about Ralph. Afterwards I was energized by my discussion with my “ol’ buddy,” and went through the day thinking maybe more young people today would find the purpose in child and youth care that we had found, and make it something better. The youth and leaders at the Hip Hop discussion, “the civic minded, capacity building running rebels and urban under-grounders,” were good examples in my opinion of what we can look forward to. In the meantime, maybe those of us who have been around for a while should work harder at mentoring and recruiting the next batch of world changers in child and youth care. My sense is that they are all around us in droves, and just need a little nudge.

So long Ralph. Thanks. You’re the first. Keep the faith, bro.