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  Publish Date: May 31, 2005
  Author Website: Bakari Kitwana
  Publisher: Basic Civitas Books

Bakari Kitwana “Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America” Book Review
The problem with reviewing hiphop books is that I also have to review the people reviewing them. See, a lot of those big-time-for-whatever-reason book critics try to jump into the hip-hop scene every once in a while to give their uninformed opinions and poke fun at hip-hop culture. It’s like they’re hiding behind a tree whispering about you at the country club or something.

And what’s worse, these reviewers get early copies of books for, yup, reviewing. This is often weeks to months before the rest of us have the opportunity to buy them at our local bookstores. So by the time Hip-Hop Linguistics got around to reading Bakari Kitwana’s “Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America,” it had already been dissed many times … hard.

Now if you’ve ever read anything on this site, you’ll know how we feel about the mainstream’s attempts to cover and review hip-hop music and culture. If you haven’t, well basically, it sucks. Not just because they cover only the events or material that enforces their own agendas, but also because they are obviously, almost blatantly, under informed about hip-hop. It reminds me of Damon Wayans’ prison character on In Living Color who didn’t understand what he read. He’d walk around using all these big words out of context and sounding like a fool. That’s what a lot of Kitwana’s critics sounded like.

Elitist Humor and Blatant Misunderstanding
Publisher’s Weekly’s review of Kitwana’s book started with the following sentence: “Caucasian parents anxiously seeking explanations for either the descending waistlines of their children’s trousers or the distressing contents of their iPods won’t find them in Kitwana’s repetitive, digressive and rather dated book …” It then goes on to say that “Kitwana’s belief in hip-hop’s liberatory potential belongs more to the era of an engaged Fear of a Black Planet than the bling of The Game.”

To me, these statements show an obvious attempt to criticize with no backing, except perhaps the images seen and accepted as accurate on TV. What does “distressing contents of their iPods” or “descending wastelines of trousers” have to do with hip-hop? Who is the Game and what does he have to do with this era? And there’s that damn bling word again. PB’s undoubtedly been watching a little too much MTV.

In short, I feel the majority of negative reviews of this book were based around this type of elitist humor and misunderstanding. These people’s only concept of hip-hop is the materialistic gangster images shown on television. Therefore, when Kitwana talks about real hip-hop from the perception of a person immersed in it as a worldview and lifestyle, they can’t understand. When he views it as a unifying force with real political agendas and aspirations, they can’t see. When he tells them that what they see on TV is a repackaged and represented spin off of hip-hop, they don’t believe it.

In reality, Bakari Kitwana’s “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop” was actually more of a manifesto. A call to arms among the ever-increasing hip-hop population, white and black, to push their views into this country’s political realm. Kitwana even goes as far as to point out many of the movement’s agendas. I felt that he did a great job analyzing this country’s abandonment of its youth, and the effects it could have on the future of such public policy issues as education, employment, healthcare, criminal justice and foreign policy. In addition, Kitwana’s interpretation of the conflict between old and new racial politics was amazing, and points to this country’s obvious adherence to old racist policies and views.

“Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop” also included great amounts of interesting journalistic research. From interviews with white hip-hop kids all over the country and film reviews of movies immersed in new racial politics, to analyses of the social factors behind the hip-hop movement and the holes in the statistical system that deems white kids to be the vast majority of hip-hop music consumers, Kitwana put a lot of library hours in while preparing for this book.

But what I really liked about the book was its optimism and hope for the future. Kitwana’s passion for hip-hop and almost spiritual belief in its abilities to span the boundaries of race or social standing was inspiring, even if all the haters will view it as overly hopeful or fool hearted.

Hip-Hop as a Worldview
I am one of those people, like Kitwana, who sees hip-hop as more of a system of beliefs or worldview. All my beliefs, from social, political and economic philosophies to love, inspiration and accomplishment, revolve around hip-hop and the principles it has instilled in me. Like Kitwana, I see the possibilities of hip-hop political activism and an international human rights movement. And like Kitwana, I believe the hip-hop generation needs to mobilize and make itself heard, even if it must begin on the local level. If these critics can’t make an attempt to understand or respect that, then that’s their problem.

I think everyone into hip-hop as a worldview and culture should read this book. For those of you who don’t like to read, I have included a brief outline below, which should summarize the major points of “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop.”

I. Preface – “Can culture exclusively belong to one race in the first place?”

a. The national conversation about race in this country has yet to catch up with the national reality.
b. Hip-hop as mainstream popular culture has radically altered the racial landscape … dawning a new reality of race in America.
c. Most young people who identify with hip-hop identify with more than music.
d. “Old Racial Politics” – Adherence to stark cultural differences – cultural, personal and political – between Black and white.
e. “New Racial Politics” – The effects of commerce and commercialism and a sort of fluidity between cultures.
f. The old ideas about race continue to undermine attempts to redefine the terms of race through hip-hop.

II. Introduction – Toward a New Racial Politics

a. Transcending the old racial politics is essential to discovering new strategies for working across historical divides like race, class and nationalism.
b. Many hip-hop fans are engaging in hip-hop on a deeper, cerebral level. Theirs is a constant struggle not only to absorb the art, politics and cultural roots of hip-hop but to make sense of its significance in their lives.
c. The true story of America in the post-1970s era is the tale of how we as a nation have abandoned our young:

i. Lower emphasis on educating or listening to American youth.
ii. Jobs for youth have diminished in quality and quantity.
iii. Primary government solutions have been incarceration and medication.

d. Hip-hop is the response to the reckless abandonment of young people in this country.
e. The cultural movement is making way for hip-hop’s emerging political movement, and maybe the catalyst necessary to jump-start an international human rights movement.

III. Part One – Questions

a. Do White Boys Want to Be Black?

i. This conclusion is an oversimplification.
ii. More young whites are abandoning old apprehensions about young blacks and embracing black youth culture.

IV. Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop

a. The Rise of the Global Economy and Alienation (1980s)

i. Americans, regardless of race and class, feeling uncertain.
ii. Wages continued to fall; poor got poorer, rich got richer.
iii. Longer workdays for parents meant less family time.
iv. Rise in prescription drug use for depression and anxiety.

b. Ruptures in the Popular Music Scene (1900s)

i. Whites drawn to hip-hop early were not in it for the arts alone. It was an appealing antiestablishment culture.
ii. Many whites had left-leaning tendencies or at least sympathized with black issues.
iii. Hip-hop gave youth a voice to tell the truth and exposed the ills of society, especially racism and our hypocritical government.
iv. Hip-hop was as much a political statement as an alternative music choice.

c. The Economy and White Privilege (2000 and beyond)

i. The upper-middle-class lifestyle remained unattainable for most.
ii. Rising college costs far outdistanced inflation.
iii. Government seemed more a tool of the superrich than one of, for and by the people.
iv. Some of the hardest economic changes for middle-class Americans in nearly a century.
v. Significant numbers of white youth channel this intensifying sense of alienation into a fascination with hip-hop culture and it’s escapist messages.

d. Institutionalizing Civil Rights Culture

i. Incorporation of the history of the civil rights movement into elementary and high school curriculums and college classrooms.
ii. Connecting the civil rights movement to America’s ideal of freedom and justice for all.
iii. Helped familiarize white kids with distant or unknown aspects of black culture.

e. The Impact of Black Popular Culture

i. Urban and suburban black images on television.
ii. What comes out of the corporate hip-hop industry is packaged and sold as hip-hop, but it is a distortion of hip-hop culture.

V. Identity Crisis?

a. Contains interviews with older white hip-hop kids.
b. MTV has gotten behind those artists who represent the one small fraction that degrades and humiliates black culture.

VI. Erasing Blackness

a. The rarely disputed “fact” that white suburban youth constitute hip-hop primary audience does not have a real source. Even harder to find would be a demographic study that substantiates it.
b. Soundscan based more on subjective analysis:

i. Equating income areas with race.
ii. Overhyped idea of the digital divide – that black Americans are locked out of the information superhighway.

VII. Part Two – Answers

a. Hip-hop has profound things to tell us about race, if we dare to listen.

VIII. Wankstas, Wiggers and Wannabes

a. Reviews films dealing with the new reality of race in America:

i. Black and White, Bulworth and Malibu’s Most Wanted
ii. Four issues central to the phenomenon of white kids engaging in hip-hop culture:

1. Parody
2. Appropriation
3. Generation Gap
4. Interracial Dating

IX. Fear of a Culture Bandit

a. Talks about the Source and Eminem beef as a collision between America’s old and new racial politics.
b. Eminem from socioeconomic background not vastly different than that of many black rappers, and a victim of America’s education policies.
c. Em represented new racial politics – while his attacks come straight out of the playbook of old racial politics.

X. Coalition Building Across Race

a. White, Black, Asian and Latino youth are forming alliances and coalitions crucial to the future of the republic.
b. Hip-hop politics is arguably one of the few political spaces to have emerged in the past three decades where any real potential exists for challenging prevailing public policy approaches to issues like education, criminal justice, employment, health care and foreign policy.
c. There will be no substantial hip-hop political movement that doesn’t include white hip-hop kids.
d. Hip-hop is a natural gateway to activism.
e. Bottom or local enforced leadership necessary for national success of hip-hop political campaign.