Now on booktv we are going to introduce you to Johns Hopkins professor, lester spence, who is also an author. First of all professor, what you teach at Johns Hopkins . Guest i teach racial politics and urban politics. Host what are those . Ask you when you think about it racial politics, concerns or competition over scarce resources between different racial groups and can include such aspect is how different racial groups attempt to kind of define what race is and how it works and how through that definition may end up creating a dynamic where some groups have a lot of resources and some groups have fewer resources. Black politics think about racial politics is competition between different racial groups. Black politics comes for me to competition about what the black agenda should be about how we define what blackness is. Urban politics is about the competition over scarce resources within a metropolitan environment in between different metropolitan environments. Host is very black agenda . Guest some people think there is. Some people think there should be. I would say instead of a black agenda, there are black agenda is. Different sections of black communities have different desires and then some of those desires and have been articulated in a black agenda and send desires rarely if ever get articulated. If we talk about 1985 for example, it is clear that hava or hava is killing black people disproportionately. And black gay men realize this, but for reasons it is very difficult for them to get that issue placed on the black agenda. Even though they want to be a part of it. That is the way to think about how black agendas operate. Host it is 20 for dean. What if anything do you consider to be a black agenda . Guest a few days after the grand jury verdict in the Michael Brown case kind of justice is very important issue. It is one of those where you can get group unanimity and police shouldnt have the ability just to kill people willynilly and actually get away with it. Most black people would agree that jaywalking shouldnt he a crime punishable by death. Host when you hear the term was have a National Conversation on race what do you think . [laughter] that is my response. Host wide . Guest first of all, it is not race. Its not something we should be doing about. It is quote, unquote racism. Although there is a lot to be said for thinking about politics as rhetoric. We can look at president ial rhetoric over time and compare for example obamas rhetoric to Ronald Reagans rhetoric as a way to understand different governing priorities at different moments in time and general conversation doesnt make for politics as really action. So talking about race instead of racism and ends up being a two state away from the politics we should be engaged in. Host where did she go to school . Guest i grew up in michigan, small working class right outside of detroit. I went to School High School right outside of detroit. I went to undergraduate and graduate School University of michigan. Host what is your parents to . Guest my mom was safe but substitute teacher and my dad worked at the plant, working like a lot of luck folks did. Host use the word working class twice to describe your background. Guest that is a good question. Going back to our discussion about black politics, one way to think about the one of the problematic ways people think about black politics is there is a single black subject from a single black agenda. When actually there is class variants in black communities obviously men and women. There were people who are heterosexual, people who wire. That component of my identity is very important to me. It is very important in understanding detroit black politics and politics in general. It is definitely shaped the Research Questions i have attempted to answer and the shaped how to do significant that in the world. Host we invited you on booktv to talk about books. But talk about your book. Stare in the darkness the limits of hiphop and black politics is the name of the boat here first of all, what is hip hop . Guest when we talk about hiphop but we talk about is a form of Popular Culture created by not solely by, but associated with the black populations before elements are wrapping or mc dj breakdancing and in this work what im doing is talking about kind of wrapping as a vehicle to talk about hiphop politics. Theres a lot of different ways particularly once rap and hiphop become Like National things. Theres a lot of discussion in black communities and outside of them about the effects that they have on black politics in black communities. What i wanted to do was kind of address that. Host where did rath get its start and in particular, its messaging start, its political star. Host most people located in 1872 in new york city whereas the result of shifts in the way new york city is allocating resources, you got a lot of kids who dont really have a lot to do. But they end up doing was they end up using what we now think of as robert m. C. As a way to express themselves and also to the extent that you have gangs engaged in conflict with each other it becomes a means of nonviolent conflict resolution. From there, it kind of takes off. So 1979 is the first time that a rap record rappers delight and kept taking hold nationally. I remember where i was the first time i heard it. It was nothing like it was nothing like ive ever heard on the radio before. So at that moment people realize a market large enough solid rap records. But its not necessarily enough to sell it nationally were to mainstream markets. So from 1979 we moved from 1979 to grandmaster flash. We are talking about run dmc, beastie boys. Gradually more and more people are becoming aware of it. More and more people are consuming it to the point wherein the mid90s it is actually sold and consumed nationally. And there is a moment in 1996 that ive read about with lauryn hill where the firsttime rap and hiphop is actually recognize and the grammys are basically kind of the vehicle that is more responsible for legitimating musical genres than anything else. If you get a curiously, if you then have a category for you Musical Forum at the Grammy Awards show, you can say youve arrived. So at that moment, lauryn hill hasnt just arrived. She dominates the grammys and at one point in time shes collecting one of her awards that have followed this from hiphop. I use that to talk about how we can think of politics because theres a number of different ways to think about politics. In that moment we can think about the politics involved in getting the Award Category that lauryn hill is competing for. The grammys only get so many awards zerosum resource. Were every award given there is some genre or some award that is a given. We can talk about that competition and we can say that at that moment there something that happens where space is created for black people. Like nobody would ever if we go back i remember reading the detroit free press. And i remember reading him in the early 80s talking about rap that its going to con and then be gone. Like the pet rock was with the rubiks cube or Something Like that. What that moment has is that was a moment where we finally say no, rap isnt a fad. It is here to stay. We can talk about the politics of Popular Culture the politics of music that creates the plays were lauryn hill can be up there accepting that award. But at the same time bill bourne hill is accepting that award that is the year i think around the same. That bill clinton and some quote, unquote reforming welfare and put in a number of black people in the bottom of the safety net or rather taking the safety net away from them. There are a number of in the days of police brutality. At the moment for an hill except award in just a few years from the l. A. Rebellion. So we can say on one hand weve got a space where black cultural production is valued and not the product of a certain type of politics. On the other hand we have followed this real political stuff going on that black people end up getting hurt as a result of that isnt necessarily connected. So what i want to do this kind of juxtapose the kind of rise of hiphop as a result of a certain type of politics against the real politics that ends up finding black People Holding the bag in certain way. Host is that putting rap over here and why people visit over here, whatever you want to call it . Guest there is segregation. Yes, yes there was. So one way to think about that turn that moment that lauryn hill is kind of backtracking a bit. So ended the way dave basically cornered the market. They dont create what we know ive can surround, that they come associated with what we know as gangster rap. To the extent that you can think of rap kind of crystallizing the numbers area types about s. Been incredibly aggressive, ive been incredibly pulled her. They kind of package all of those stereotypes in one rap group. And there is a moment when they first come on the market, worldly people consuming their music, the people primarily consuming their music are black people. To the extent their music is marketed to anybody, their music is marketed to black people. And then we could think about a genre of lake country we like countrywestern on the other side that they are producing music they largely market it. But the strange thing happened in the middle 90s. In the middle 90s we move from counting record sales indirectly through sampling where everybody, like one out of every were maybe two dozen people or so are asked about their preferences and those 2000 families, they are used to make claims about whether its tv ratings are record ratings. We move from that to something called soundscan, where at the point of purchase, people can actually track what record sales are. So you go when the record store and buy a print of. Whether you are the Nelson Family or not. So what happens in that moment, i ink is very weak soundscan is the thing that starts to track record sales. Nwa and that the number one. Write wakes this group that no one wouldve imagined ever been number one because they do this being only black people listen to because they are so vulgar so violent comments that are et cetera, they end up going to the top of the charts. So at that moment, people realize my god rap and hiphop are not just a black thing. They are a thing we all consume. Next thing you know not quite the next thing you know but that realization makes it possible probably a decade plus later for snoop doggy dogg to appear selling chrysler cars. There is a fabricated moment to music. One of the things that happens in the mid90s and something that lauryn hill takes advantage of if it is recognized that our musical taste a lot more diverse than what we think and rap and hiphop ends up being kind of the musical genre that is at the forefront of the movement. Host in your book stare in the darkness, you talk about neoliberalism. How does that tie in . Guest neoliberalism is basically an ideology that argues that everything, every aspect of human life should be judged according to the standard of the market. Kind of like an advanced form of capitalism. What it ends up doing incident that kind of like a common sense by which a range of institutions, in and outside of the government operate. What that does the political effect is that if it makes it incredibly difficult to contest growing wealth inequality and then within communities, within black communities, latino communities in general, it makes the entrepreneur where the central figure. If you are not able to be entrepreneurial, if youre not able to get your hustle on if you are not able to succeed in the world you end up being condemned. So i mentioned that welfare move in talking about lauryn hill. I talk about how around the same time more and hell win the award bill clinton basically repeals the reforms. The consequence of wealth into quality of between winners and losers without welfare for example, they lose incredibly bad. What neoliberalism does is it helps explain away why those people lose. And it ends up making it okay that theyre losing. It ends up making their condition their fault. So what i wanted to do in stare in the darkness is talk about how that dynamic impacts politics through black Popular Culture. Host what is the image or images the front of this book . Guest in my spare time like i have any i am the serious amateur photographer. What i did four years ago was i took a picture every day like a 365 project. I took that picture on february 1st 2010 and that is chris clayton. Hes the best on the planet. I was showing the folks at the university of Minnesota Press potential issues i shop for the cover. The first was a graffiti piece of obama that i saw on the way back for the nokia roll on the red line metro. This packet was i shot ap box someone who performs a local beatbox artist in baltimore. That was the third choice. I was actually my third choice because some of your viewers might know, how they are not the same type of genre at all. Because you at the house music dj, i will put it in here but we will see. Thats the one they end up choosing. Theres a pretty good shot at scott and mike wright in the middle of catching the groove. Host are their hiphop artists out there today who are political in their music . Guest yeah, yeah. Host message to . Guest like Immortal Technique, explicitly political somebody like chuck d. And hes been in a decade but he still performs the work. Hes explicitly political. There are individuals come a local artist out of saint louis hes been involved in the mike brown incident on the ground. Hes been explicitly political. Host when eminem raps. Guest i find myself i found myself peeling my response back because theres a way to talk, different ways to talk about what it is and isnt. Host can a white guy be hiphop . Guest yeah, yeah i think so. A shout out to detroit, particularly from detroit. Postcode does eminem have a message . Guest i think what he is really, really good at is giving voice to a particular type of white workingclass experience. Now, if you think about politics, talk about zerosum research. If you do find politics as the competition over scarce resources. Very rarely do we see white workingclass youth with a voice. So when he talked about issues Like Mental Health from a very specific type of white workingclass male dave, i say hes engaging in politics and that we can understand his work is expressing the politics. No one answered the question you ask him and the first thing i thought of was people had left leaning politics or nationalist politics. But theres a number of different ways to articulate politics. So eminem isnt like a political mc like ted zero or another Immortal Technique. Eminem has politics. Host what about lil wayne . Does the above message . Guest does little wayne have a message . He tells a story. They gad it is a very different type of political story. It is a story that ends at reproducing the neoliberal turn i talk about in this book. So in the book one of the things i do is i look at like 400 somewhere between 40500 different lyrics. So one of the argument about rap thats a pretty early on is that rap is something black people used to contest reality or critique the political dynamic that signs black People Holding back in social indicators. What i actually found was that more often than not particularly with the rap that talks about real life, they actually reproduce the neoliberal turn. They actually kind of boundaries on cheaper neural activity. They kind of valorize wealth inequality as opposed to critique unit. When i made a decision at the beginning between people like Immortal Technique or ted poe and check beats another wrappers, i was making a distinction between people who critique that move from people who kind of go with the flow so to speak. I think about lil wayne as somebody who goes with the flow. Host is that something you disagree with . Guest with politics is something i disagree with. It is what it is. Host somebody picks up this book. What are two things they are going to like . Guest they are going to learn about neoliberalism. Although i think it is very difficult to talk about black politics without talking about neoliberalism and addressinaddressin g wealth inequality, churches and the growth of prosperity gospel or the increasing degree to which black mayors in cities like you truly are forced to use austerity policies to kind of rain in increase spending and how the citys work. You learn about neoliberalism through hiphop enough book. But what you also learn is what i try to do is take the scales that i learned as a political scientist and actually apply them to like really critical questions using Popular Culture. So what youve also learn to a certain extent is how political scientists assess questions. You know to the extent you think that rap has an effect on attitudes, like how would you go about testing . If you think for example watching rap videos has an influence on you, how would you go about testing that . Thats the other
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