High School Hip Hop and Politics
Recently, The Rap Sessions Tour came to Oakland Unity High School, in Oakland, CA. The panel has appeared at universities ranging from Harvard to Stanford and we were the first high school they addressed, which was pretty cool. The topic was Hip Hop and the 2008 Presidential Election. The participants tend to vary and for this one performer/activist M-1 of dead prez, political organizer Angela Woodson, professor Dr. Dawn-Elissa Fischer, activist Rosa Clemente, and performer Rico Pabon (whose wife, Ms. Ramos, works at our school) sat in on the discussion while author Bakari Kitwana moderated. The audience was predominately seniors, nearly all of whom were African American or Latino. Topic-wise, everything from sexism to voting was covered. After the panel discussion, a question and answer session took place, which included an impromptu performance by one of our students. Below are student reflections on the panel. The overwhelming response was positive and as a teacher I’m super glad that we were able to make this happen. In the teachers’ defense, as you read the feedback, some students made it sound like this was the first time they ever got to talk about sexism in pop culture or were given inspirational words. That’s certainly not the case, but as long as they responded to someone, it’s good! Hopefully we can do this again next year.
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