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10.26.2010

It Was All a Dream: Storytelling as Mechanism for Nation Building (original speech)

Again, thanks to everyone who attended and/or watched my closing address at the Act Six National Convention 2010! It was a great honor and privilege to be with and speak to so many young talented and passionate leaders. Three months later, the connections I made and live positive energy I felt are still in progress! I want to keep it going and maybe even take it in new directions by sharing some of my process in developing the speech.
Some of you may know that the speech I delivered that Saturday morning was written the night before in the heat of passion and inspiration. Rather than joining capture the flag out on the dimly lit college campus with the rest of the youngin's I retired to my hotel room to write. Not because I wanted to-- I'm just as big of a kid as Act Six National Director Tim Herron, but it was because I had to. I was feeling something that was so strong in me and I knew I had to respond or else the next morning was going to be me on stage delivering "an okay speech" with some admirable insights about culture that I managed to nervously stumble through, but also one of my biggest regrets. That night I felt something pulling me toward the transparency and vulnerability and away from the academic language and philosophical theory that I had planned to deliver (see below). That energy was a product of the Act Six network, not the idea, but the individuals who came together to share their hearts and be inspired. They were counting on me to capture their energy and power and summarize it using the context of my own ideas and experiences. I knew what I had written was not fit for such a job. So I got to work. I scribbled some notes about 5 leadership commandments (5 more coming soon!) and the rest just came together from there.
I am very proud of the final product but I think the process is just as important. I also think I came across some interesting ideas and facts that didn't make it into the taped speech so I hope you take away something from these notes as well. I'd appreciate any comments, questions, suggestions and of course stories!
IT WAS ALL A DREAM: Storytelling as a Mechanism for Nation Building
Whether or not you are a participant in hip-hop culture, listen to the music, or even care at all about the state of hip-hop, it’s nearly impossible to be unaware of the debate which culminated with the release of Nas’ single, “Hip-Hop is Dead.”
If you, like Nas, were born in urban American in 1965-1984, you are considered a part of the hip-hop generation. Most of you in this room are like me, born 1985 and after, and would be considered a part of what M.K. Asante Jr. calls the “post- hip-hop generation.”
Born in 1985, I feel very much caught between these two generational identities. Fortunately, I’m used to being caught in the middle. I would compare my relationship to hip-hip to my identity in general.
My father is black and my mother is white. I identify as mixed-race. Like the current president of our country, I recognize that much of America still operates on the one-drop rule of blackness, but frankly, Mr. Obama would be considered a part of the hip hop generation and naturally prescribes to a more “old school” view of racial identity. I understand the need to recognize and be proud of my blackness, but I also believe our country is on the verge of a new perspective on race identity. Like the hip-hop identity, I feel race identity is shifting as the lines between whose “in” and who’s “out” have become blurred.
Back to hip-hop; many of those who embrace the identity of the hip-hop generation are very critical of the current state of hip-hop.  Some say that rap, hip-hop’s central asset, has drifted into the shallowest pool of lyrical possibilities and that the latest version of hip-hop betrays the attitudes and ideals that framed it. But most significantly, commercialization has resulted in many young blacks who belong to the hip-hop generation feeling misrepresented by it. They no longer feel hip-hop is keeping its promise of authenticity, liberation and rebellion.
Though, they may not agree with the direction, the hip hop generation must admit that “post hip-hop” offers a fresh set of attitudes, ideas, and perspectives.
The reality is this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum and you can see a shift it in every aspect of our society from technology, to religion, careers, relationships and even sports.
Think about Lebron. And I don’t even mean all the varying perspectives on his recent “Decision.” People want to compare him to Jordan and other players from the past who have separated themselves based on pure talent, but it’s a whole different ball game these days, so to speak.  LeBron is a business man. His financial success is made possible because of those who paved the way before him, but not many of those people entered the game at his age with his mindset because what he is accomplishing was never thought possible. Whether or not it’s actually possible now, the upcoming generation of athletes, rappers and entrepreneurs from the inner-city is not thinking millions, but billions; not national, but international.
In 30 years of hip-hop, we went from young black and Latino guys mixing break beats  and rhyming along in their grandmother’s basement to 17 year-olds getting major record deals from uploading their music and gaining a respectable fan base on social networking sites like MySpace. Of course the lyrics and the fans have changed. The argument is always whose “hip hop” is better and can we even call the new stuff by the same name?
One question I ask when given a chance to be a part of a dramatic shift is always, what elements are we responsible for preserving?
To me the answer is simple: imagination and a mechanism for storytelling that gives voice to the voiceless. Hip-hop is special because like its predecessors within the American tradition, from negro spirituals, to gospel, jazz, blues, bebop and rock n’ roll, it gives voice to disenfranchised people.
Philosopher/social critic A. Shahid Stover takes a more radical view, stating that “Hip hop culture when resolutely cultivated, potentially serves as a redemptive artistic and intellectual vantage point from which the socio-politically oppressed, the culturally marginalized… the globally dispossessed, the racially outcast… the wretched of the earth… can critically engage an oppressive society.”
It’s hard to argue that hip hop itself is not plagued with the same tools of oppression found in the larger society, such as homophobia, materialism, and misogyny. In hip hop scholar Michael Eric Dyson’s opinion, “People are right to demand that criticism, to demand that responsibility, but not to be unfairly critical… sometimes people demand too much of hip hop.” Part of the reason, he believes, is the success of hip hop.
By way of globalization and localization, hip hop has traveled far from its birthplace of late 1970’s Bronx New York and can now be found in its many forms everywhere from Oakland, California to South Africa and Israel-Palestine.  National Geographic recognizes hip hop as “the world’s favorite youth culture” in which “just about every country on the planet seems to have developed its own local rap scene.”
In my opinion, though MC’ing, DJ’ing, B-boying/girling, and graffiti writing are respectable in their own right, my main concern is not the preservation of specific elements of hip-hop, but rather what they represents. These days we have krumping, jerking, spoken word, and school-age kids broadcasting their own youtube videos.  Are these not signs that the next generation is engaging in exploration, challenge and discovery—acts that will result in a revelation of contemporary truths that will help define us, and in turn, the world?
The late Martinician writer, Frantz, Fanon once said, “each generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover their destiny and either fulfill or betray it.”
As I mentioned before, I’m no stranger to obscurity, but when I became a part of the first cadre of Act Six scholars at Whitworth; the first college to implement the program, it may have been my first experience with a collective journey into murky waters.
Armed with Acts Chapter 6 as our weapon of manifest destiny, my 9 peers and I entered the Act Six campus eager to engage as leaders and “agents of change.”
We were all from urban Tacoma and grew up with at least some Christian influence, but we were a relatively diverse group and the foundations of our identity were tied to an eclectic array of sources.
Immediately our relationship to the Act Six story and our mission at Whitworth College became a major influence on all of our senses of self. We were both connected and divided based on our interpretations of how the story related to our call to leadership within the context of the Whitworth campus. Though empowered by the vision and those who endowed us with the call, many times we felt silenced and oppressed by the dominant culture on our campus. A few of us were more angry and rebellious when it came to expressing our discontent and demand for change. We didn’t always agree on the best way to engage in and/or tell the Act Six story at Whitworth.
Eventually, we began to reconcile our individual stories and to write our own Act Six story, together. Like the Bible stories we were taught in Sunday school, but were never taught to explore growing up, our stories were sometimes confusing and filled with uncertainty, sometimes tinged with a laughable innocence and certainly not always pretty.
Michael Eric Dyson claims, “If you listen to hip-hop, if you listen to some rappers, if you listen to the culture in general, you’re going to hear some of the most prophetic and articulate expressions, the anger and outrage that bourgeois Negroes should and do still possess, but often fail to manufacture or marshal.
Whether hip hop as we know it is the cultural context of the future or not, we cannot know, but the stories must continue to be told with the same creativity, fire and rebellion.
In the last verse of “Hip Hop is Dead” Nas says,
“Went from turntables to mp3s
From "Beat Street" to commercials on Mickey D's
From gold cables to Jacobs
From plain facials to Botox and face lifts”
His lyrics are of course nostalgic, but what can we read between the lines?
As a “founding-scholar” of Act Six I never dreamed of hearing the statement, “Act Six is dead” but one day I may have to say it. I may have to play the role like Nas has, as an OG in the game, reminding the next generation that culture does not survive on its own. We must continue to find creative ways to tell our own stories, as well as know the stories of our ancestors.  Only storytelling and creativity can sustain this nation that we all are a part of, care about, and are responsible for preserving.
(August 2010)

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