Lets Be Clear: Black Culture is Bigger Than Hip Hop – Patch.com

"It's Bigger Than Hip Hop!" -Dead Prez (Revolutionary Hip Hop Group)

It was reported recently in the digital rap magazine called Hip Hop Dx that Offset, of the rap group Migos, said that Hip Hop is Black culture. I think a deeper analysis must be understood about Black culture and White domination. The system of racism and White supremacy are still in existence family. And they are still justifying Black oppression. Hell, racism and White supremacy still don't want to ante up to Black reparations!!!! But folks, we need to be clear on this fact that with the rise of White supremacy and the system of racism, our culture, Black culture, has been under attack for centuries. In the past, White domination of Black culture was depicted as being criminal, pathological, subhuman, underclass, and illegitimate. To this day, anything the White power structure refuses to respect as Black culture is made to be non-creditable, or even non-Black. But factually, Black people's culture has contributed greatly to the progress of human civilization as well as to music genres of all kinds. Despite White supremacy and the system of racism, Black culture still exists in America and in the world.

Turning 51 has help me to be crystal clear on the ongoing attacks on Black culture. But before I begin this commentary, let me give everyone some background on brother Bashir Muhammad Akinyele. Just so folks will not think I am some Johnny come-lately negro conservative Republican hatting on Hip Hop music and Hip Hop culture.

I am a proud Blackman, husband, father, community activist, and school teacher. Going on 51 years of age is moving me into elder-hood.

All my life, I have lived in the hoods of Newark and East Orange, NJ until I went to college. I did my undergraduate studies at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ and my graduate studies at Columbia University in NYC. But before I matriculated at these major universities, I spent a couple of years attending Essex County College (ECC) in Newark, NJ. It was at junior college, my Afrikan-centric Black consciousness, community activism, and passion for education were awakened in me by two Black men named Ed Riley and Dr. Lenworth Gunther.

Ed was a former Muslim member of the Nation of Islam under the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. He had spent his youth as a Boxer and businessman, but wanted to go back to school to now pursue his dream of a law degree. Ed taught me the knowledge of my Black self. Something I had never received before in my life. We quickly became the best of friends. Because of Ed, I started following the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad for a time in my life. In the Nation of Islam, you are required to drop your slave surname. As young Muslim, my name became Carlos X. After leaving the Nation of Islam in 1996, I legally change my name to the Islamic and Afrikan name of Bashir Muhammad Akinyele. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the co-founder of the Nation of Islam. This religious movement was founded on July 4, 1930. The Nation of Islam combined Islamic teachings with Black liberation theology. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan rebuilt the Nation of Islam to continue the fight for Black liberation. He believed that Al- Islam, as interpreted by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was, and, is, absolutely needed to give some push back to America's racist system to organize Black people for Black power. In 1978, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan made the decision to leave the Muslims under the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed to rebuild the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. (Imam Warith Deen was once named Wallace Muhammad. In 1975, after the Honorable Elijah Muhammad departed from the Nation of Islam, the Muhammad family elected Imam Warith Deen Mohammed as the next leader of the Nation of Islam. In three years, Imam Mohammed directed the Nation of Islam into Sunni Al-Islam. His leadership led to one of the main foundations for Al-Islam in America).

On the other end of my conscious path was Dr. Gunther. He was an Afrikan-centric Black History Professor within ECC's Afrikana Studies Institute. In the past, Dr. Gunther was famous for being a Black power student activist in his day. He helped to organize and lead social justice protests as an undergraduate student at Columbia University in the 1960's. Honestly, I took a class with Dr. Gunther trying to date a girl I met at the school. She was in his class. I registered for that class based solely on this girl. But while taking this class with Dr Gunther, and Ed constantly feeding me my consciousness with the pro-Black teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Dr. Gunther pricked my curiosity about Afrikan History and Afrikan culture. Dr. Gunther started me off reading Fredrick Douglass' autobiographical book called-the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. This book blew my young mind and my developing Afrikan-centric Black consciousness. Douglass' chapter IV on the power of the Whiteman moved me to tears. This part of his autobiography taught me about how the perpetuation of White oppression and White domination of Black people came through controlling and limiting Black people's access to education. After reading Douglass' book, I decided to become a History teacher. Frederick Douglass was a Blackman born in American slavery. He eventually escaped from slavery. During his life, he became the leading voice for the abolition of slavery in America in the 1800's. Frederick Douglass's book, the Life of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, is one of the most read slave narrative in the world.

Both Ed Riley and Dr. Gunther inspired me to be a fighter for Black people, and oppressed people, on college campuses and in the community. But they also inspired me to read books written by our master teachers of Black liberation struggle, such as Dr. John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan, Cheikh Anta Diop, Dr. Molefe Kete Asante, Asa Hilliard, Dr.Ishakamusa Barashango, Dr. John G. Jackson, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Professor George G.M. James, Dr. W. E. B Du Bois, Dr. E Franklin Frazier, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, J. A Rogers, Charles Hamilton Houston, Dr. Naim Akbar, Dr. Maulana Karenga, Imamu Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Maya Angelou, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seal, Assata Shakur, Franz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and the Last Poets, to name a few.

After graduating from ECC and Seton Hall, I met my future wife Natasha. I fell in love with her. We dated for three years until we married in 1997. Presently, I have been married to this beautiful and intelligent Black woman for 23 years. Together, we have three Black boys. But our oldest is hard to consider a boy now. He is 19 years old. He is a freshman at Rutgers University's Newark Campus.

My wife and I still live and work in the Black community. However, in the past I have worked in the Hip Hop industry in the 1990s. Ed, a brilliant business minded entrepreneur, believed that Black people should create their own media to control our narrative. Something we often talked about as undergraduate students. Eventually, because of the mutual love for Black culture, politics, entertainment, Hip Hop music, and Hip Hop culture; Ed and I created a national Hip Hop magazine for Black college students called the College Entertainment Revue Magazine (C.E.R). Some of our writers and editors were people like Allan S. Gordon and Marcus Reeves. After serving tenure with the C.E.R, both Gordon and Reeves went on to become respected editors with Hip Hop magazines like the Source, Vibe, and Rap Page magazines. We struggled to establish our magazine. But we were successful at attracting talented young Hip Hop journalists from around the country. This was era that Hip Hop became the dominant force in America and in the world. At this time, Hip Hop was rooted in Black people's cultural traditions. A variety of acts, such as Rakim, KRS-1, Public Enemy, N.W.A, The DOC, EPMD, A Tribe Called Quest, Pete Rock and C L Smooth, Gangstarr, BlackMoon, Smif-N-Wessun, Leaders of the New School, Busta Rhymes, Mainsource, Nas, Naughty By Nature, the Artifacts, Chanel Live, Lords of the Underground, Arrested Development, Redman, Salt-and-Peppa, Monie Love, Queen Latifah, Brand Nubians, X-Clan, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Wu Tang Clan, Biggie Smalls, and Tupac Shahur, came on the scene reflecting the creative soul of Hip Hop music and true Hip Hop culture.

My introduction into Hip Hop music and Hip Hop culture came at an early age. I got involved in Hip Hop music and Hip Hop culture after hearing Sugar Hill Gang's Rappers Delight and Kurtis Blow's The Breaks in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I became hooked to Hip Hop before the commercialization of Hip Hop music and Hip Hop culture. Back then, Black people controlled and defined Hip Hop. The OG's, or the founders, of Hip Hop defined it as the following: peace, love, unity, and having fun in the late 1970s in the Bronx borough of New York City. This all would change by the late 1990's and early 2000's. White folks, with the help of some Black folks, will eventually take Hip Hop out of the hands of Black people's cultural traditions and into the hands of opportunists and culture vultures. I will get to this later in my commentary, but first some more history on myself.

I have been a student and community activist for over 30 years fighting for social justice and Black liberation. I have been a history and Black studies teacher for 25 years, and currently I am at Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ. I have been teaching at Weequahic for 17 years.

At Weequahic, I have helped my students understand how to decipher the facts from falsehood in my history classes. Also, I have help build a foundation for Afrikan-centric Black consciousness in the school. Before I got to Weequahic, our school did not offer any classes in Black studies. However, our former Principal, Mr. Ron Stone, and our former Vice Principal, Mr. Ras J. Baraka (who is now the current Mayor of Newark, NJ), established Black History courses for our students in the early 2000s. They both held the belief that it was absolutely necessary for our students to know Afrikan history and Afrikan culture right alongside World and American History. Without any hesitation, they asked me to teach the Black History classes at Weequahic, which I did, and still do, effectively. But outside the Black History classes, I started adding some Afrikan-centric Black consciousness to the burgeoning Black cultural awareness taking place with the students. These pro-Black learning strategies and programs were promoted each day by the administrators and teachers. While we as a school were practicing cultural relevance with our students, I would meet and greet all our Weequahic students by saying Hotep. At first it was a struggle. Because of the lack of Afrikan-centric Black consciousness in our schools, communities, religious centers, and neighborhoods; many of our students were not rooted in their own cultural traditions. Many of the students at Weequahic would use the n-word liberally, and many other negative and derogatory words to say to one another, all the time. But every day, I would consistently challenge our students with the word Hotep all around the school. Using Hotep, tapped into our student's curiosity about their own understanding of Black culture. They wanted to know more about their history and their culture. They began to understand that their memories of Afrikan-centric Black culture were buried in their psyche due to the destruction of Black pride and Black liberation movements by the racist White power structure. They began to see that being Black was more than using the n-word, sagging pants, throwing up gang signs, calling women the b-word, and Hip Hop. Embracing our own Afrikan-centric Black culture ignited in our students a respect for themselves, inspired them to want to receive an education, and to achieve high academic standards. After 17 years of consistently using Afrikan-centric Black cultural consciousness, now the entire school uses Hotep to greet one another each day without me saying it to the students. This word Hotep is an ancient Afrikan word for peace!!! It comes out of the Medu Neter in Kemet (Egypt), Afrika. White people call it the hieroglyphics. Hotep is the oldest word for peace in human history!!! The Afrikan word Hotep predates the Hebrew word shalom and the Arabic word Salaam for peace. I am currently gearing up for an educational tour to Kemet (Egypt) in Afrika to deepened my effectiveness of teaching world history, American history, Afrikan history, Afrikan religions, and culture in my classroom to my students.

(https://www.gofundme.com/f/education-tour-of-ancient-kemet-egypt?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet) (www.kemetnu.com/egypt_tour.htm)

I often help my best friends Ed Riley and Jonathan Alston produce and co-host a political Hip Hop radio show called All Politics Are Local on Rutgers University's Newark campus radio called WRNU. (You can tune in every Friday from 6:00pm to 9:00 pm eastern standard time on www. wrnu.org) (allpoliticsrlocal.com) They are carrying on the spirit of the C.E.R on radio now.

With all that being said, can't no one tell me any more about Hip Hop music, Hip Hop culture, rap, Black culture, the system of racism, White supremacy, unity without uniformity, transectionalism, capitalism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, Pan-Afrikanism, politics, Black electoral politics, reparations, oppression, Black nationalism, revolutionary Black nationalism, Afrikan-centricity, and Black liberation. I have lived, analyzed, and debated all these things in all of my adult life!!!!!!!!

I believe we must know that there is a distinction between Hip Hop Culture and Black culture. Hip Hop has its own culture, which sometimes borrows aspects of Black culture. But unfortunately, now that Hip Hop music and Hip Hop culture have been co-opted by White supremacy and racism; White, and Black capitalist opportunists, continuously market western civilization's pathology disguised as Black culture out to the world. What the world will fail to realize is the bigger and broader side of Hip Hop culture; which is real Black culture. It is that Black culture, whose struggles against natural earth in Afrika, gave rise to the world's first civilizations and religions in the world. Black culture is forcing humanity to recognize Afrika as the birthplace of humanity. It is that Black culture, whose struggles against the slave dungeons, the middle passage, the auction blocks, slavery, police brutality, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and racial oppression; is forcing America, and the world, to be more accountable to democracy, civil rights, human rights, fairness, and justice for all. It is that same Black culture, whose struggles against White supremacy, the system of racism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, Black to Black violence, and Black self- hatred; is forcing Black people to unite and fight for Black power. But it is that same Black culture, whose struggles for, and against, successful, and unsuccessful Black homes, Black marriages, Black families, Black neighborhoods, Black men, Black women, Black youth, Black drug use, Black alcoholism, and Black joblessness; is creating beautiful music and beautiful art and beautiful culture that speaks, raps, plays, writes poems, dances, cries, and sings about Black life to America and Black life to the world. The entire world is drumming to the beat of Black culture. Unfortunately, some of our people, and the power structure, constantly disses Black culture to point that Black culture is white washed or intentionally made non-existent.

Black culture is the drumbeat of the planet earth. Our Black culture has influenced mother Afrika, America, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, slaves songs, gospel, blues, ragtime, Jazz, R&B, rock music, country music, House Music, Hip Hop, Hip Hop culture, athletics, philosophy, science, language, mathematics, hair styles, clothing styles, medicine, nation-building, civilizations, architecture, democracy, communism, theology, religion, Judaism, Christianity, Al-Islam, socialism, civil-rights, human rights, liberation movements of all groups, and the world. But if look into Black culture, it has its own traditions separated from America and world. Many people don't want to understand this, because they don't want to understand these things about Black people and Black culture. Some of these people would rather write Black culture off as someone's else culture, or give credit to a music genre altogether in this contemporary world. But Black culture is the dominant culture of the world. This is why some of these people, who are hell bent on discrediting Black people and their culture, want to be Black, but don't want to live Black. This is why we need to stop limiting Black culture down to Hip Hop, Hip Hop culture, or music in general. Black culture is bigger than music and dance and wearing a hat backwards and sagging pants and cursing and drugs use and calling women the b-word and using the n-word.

Black culture is the life blood of humanity. Black culture is the basis for revolutionary change in society. Black culture is the foundation for Black liberation. We need to be clear on that family.

Hotep!!!!!

Bashir Muhammad Akinyele

-History Teacher

-Black Studies Teacher

-Chair of Weequahic High School's Black History Month Committee

-Community Activist

-Co-Host and Co-Producer of the All Politics Are Local radio show, the number #1 political Hip Hop radio show in America

-Commentary writer

Note: Spelling Afrika with a k is not a typo. Using the k in Afrika is the Kiswahili way of writing Africa. Kiswahili is a Pan -Afrikan language. It is spoken in many countries in Afrika.

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Lets Be Clear: Black Culture is Bigger Than Hip Hop - Patch.com