scholarly journals ‘Mic Check. Can You Hear Me?’ Suheir Hammad and the Politics of Spoken Word Poetry

1970 ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Theri Alyce Pickens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Transportation Security ◽  
Transportation Security Administration ◽  
Historical Relationship

“Mic check? One-two. One-two. Can you hear me?” asks spoken-word artist and poet Suheir Hammad onstage (Lathan, 2007). Make no mistake about this question; it is not part of the sound check, nor is it part of a rehearsal. This is her poem. The audience can obviously hear her, but the question is not as straightforward as it appears. Here, Hammad blends the art of emcee-ing (one of the four main elements of hip-hop culture), with the typical language of a sound check and her experience of being racially profiled in, presumably, an American airport. In this vein, “mic” is not only short for microphone, but also the name of the United States’ Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer, named “Mike”, who searches her bags. The question, “Can you hear me?”, is directed not only at the audience, but also at “Mike”. Hammad’s double speak continues throughout the poem, “Mic Check”, where she mobilizes the language of hip-hop to promulgate a stringent critique of the links between the United States’ historical relationship to imperialism and racial profiling targeted toward Arabs and those who supposedly appear Arab.

scholarly journals THE INFLUENCE AND THE ADVANTAGE OF AMERICAN HIP HOP TO THE RISING ASIAN RAPPERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Mayza Nisrin Abielah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The World

Cultural imperialism aims at how dominant culture affects other cultures to gain control of certain cultures and create the view that their dominant culture is the center for all countries in the world, which will create uniformity around the world. Therefore, this study will discuss how Asian rappers are influenced by American hip hop culture and how they benefitted from their careers’ success. The theory used in this study is cultural imperialism by John Tomlinson to see the influence of cultural imperialism in American hip hop culture to Asian rappers. The method used in this study is qualitative research by Creswell. The result shows that America’s cultural imperialism influences Asian Rappers by adopting its culture, language, and style of American hip hop. However, its influence is not harmful since the Asian rappers use this to gain more recognition from people, especially in Western, and to be accepted in representing Asian immigrants in the United States.

THE INFLUENCE AND THE ADVANTAGE OF AMERICAN HIP HOP TO THE RISING ASIAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Mayza Nisrin Abielah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The World

Cultural imperialism aims at how dominant culture affects other cultures to gain control of certain cultures and create the view that their dominant culture is the center for all countries in the world, which will create uniformity around the world. Therefore, this study will discuss how Asian rappers are influenced by American hip hop culture and how they benefitted from their careers’ success. The theory used in this study is cultural imperialism by John Tomlinson to see the influence of cultural imperialism in American hip hop culture to Asian rappers. The method used in this study is qualitative research by Creswell. The result shows that America’s cultural imperialism influences Asian Rappers by adopting its culture, language, and style of American hip hop. However, its influence is not harmful since the Asian rappers use this to gain more recognition from people, especially in Western, and to be accepted in representing Asian immigrants in the United States.

scholarly journals Book Review: Hip Hop around the World: An Encyclopedia

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Brent D. Singleton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The World

This encyclopedia consists of over 450 A–Z entries focusing on “Artists,” “Concepts,” “Countries,” and “Styles,” as well as finer aspects of cultures within the international hip hop scene. The work is not entirely unique in all of its content. For instance, Rigg’s St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture (St. James, 2018) focuses on the United States and makes a cursory foray into the international hip hop sphere. However, the work under review appears to be the only encyclopedia dedicated to highlighting interrelations and unique threads within hip hop globally, albeit with copious US coverage.

Racialization through Enforcement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Chacón ◽  
Susan Bibler Coutin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
National Origin ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Judicial Decisions

Immigration law and enforcement choices have enhanced the salience of Latino racial identity in the United States. Yet, to date, courts and administrative agencies have proven remarkably reluctant to confront head on the role of race in immigration enforcement practices. Courts improperly conflate legal nationality and ‘national origin’, thereby cloaking in legality impermissible profiling based on national origin. Courts also maintain the primacy of purported security concerns over the equal protection concerns raised by racial profiling in routine immigration enforcement activities. This, in turn, promotes racially motivated policing practices, reifying both racial distinctions and racial discrimination. Drawing on textual analysis of judicial decisions as well as on interviews with immigrants and immigrant justice organization staff in California, this chapter illustrates how courts contribute to racialized immigration enforcement practices, and explores how those practices affect individual immigrants’ articulation of racial identity and their perceptions of race and racial hierarchy in their communities.

scholarly journals THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE USA LEGISLATION ON THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM AFTER 11 SEPTEMBER 2001

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Андрей Ефремов ◽  
Andrey Efremov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Maritime Transportation ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Patriot Act ◽  
Transportation Security ◽  
Mandatory Requirement ◽  
The Usa

The article is devoted to development of the USA legislation on the fight against terrorism. The author considered the objectives and tasks of the state in a particular historical period; analyzed the laws passed by the USA Congress aimed at combating home and international terrorism; identifies the main directions of the state policy of the USA in the field of counter-terrorism. The article covers the events after 11 September 2001 to the present. The author gives a brief overview of the events of 11 September 2001, discusses the Patriot Act and other laws, aimed at combating terrorism. The Patriot Act allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to intercept telephone, verbally and electronic communications relating to terrorism, computer and mail fraud; introduces special measures to combat money-laundering; expands immigration rules, in particular, mandatory requirement of detention of persons suspected of terrorism appeared; reveals the procedure of multilateral cooperation to combat terrorism, strengthening measures to investigate terrorist crimes; established rewards for information on terrorism; introduces the procedure of identification of DNA of persons charged for committing terrorist crimes or any violent crime; introduced the concept of domestic terrorism and Federal crimes of terrorism, the prohibition on harboring terrorists and material support; there is a new crime — terrorist and other acts of violence against public transportation systems. The law abolished for the statute of limitations for crimes of terrorist orientation. In 2002 5 laws wer adopted: “Homeland Security Act of 2002”, “Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002”, “Aviation and Transportation Security Act“, “Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002”, “Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002”. The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act was adopted in 2006. This law restricted the financial assistance to the Palestinian national authority; Haqqani Network Terrorist Designation Act of 2012 included the Haqqani Network in the list of international terrorist organizations; the political act of refusal of admission to the United States representative to the United Nations, because he was accused of the occupation of the espionage or terrorist activities against the United States and poses a threat to the national security interests of the United States.

Producing Diaspora

2018 ◽  
pp. 160-184
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Appert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Music ◽  
Material Gain ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Musical Elements ◽  
Verbal Performance

This chapter shows how palimpsestic practices of hip hop genre produce diasporic connections. It describes how hip hop practices of layering and sampling delink indigenous musical elements from traditional communicative norms to rework them in hip hop, where they signify rootedness and locality in ways consistent with hip hop practice in the United States. It demonstrates that this process relies on applications of hip hop time (musical meter) as being fundamentally different from indigenous music, whose local appeal is contrasted with hip hop’s global intelligibility. It outlines how hip hop concepts of flow free verbal performance from lyrical referentiality to render it a musical element. It argues that these practices of hip hop genre, in their delinking of sound and speech, reshape understandings of the relationship between commercialism and referentiality, and suggests that voice therefore should be understood to encompass artists’ agency in pursuing material gain in the face of socioeconomic struggle.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Stephen Lovell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Rhetoric ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Mass

The introduction considers the place of the spoken word in Russian history, presenting a pre-history of rhetoric and oratory in Russia before the 1860s. Examples are drawn from sermons, literature, theatre, and the universities, as well as from the political practice of Russia’s rulers. The introduction goes on to explain the significance of public speaking in Russia’s ‘stenographic age’, highlighting the challenges of modern mass politics and communications. It further offers comparisons between Russian political culture and the political culture of Britain, Germany, and the United States, paying particular attention to the place of oratory in the political imagination. It concludes by outlining the structure and rationale of the book.

Conclusion

Build ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Mark Katz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Funding Cuts ◽  
Trump Administration

The conclusion considers the value of the partnership between hip hop and diplomacy. Hip hop diplomacy has value in convening groups unlikely to collaborate otherwise; it can be a source of validation for hip hop artists and their communities; and it can generate a favorable view of the United States and good will towards its citizens. Such positive outcomes, however, are not automatic and require that programs be conducted with respect, humility, self-awareness and a willingness to collaborate with local partners. Although the State Department faced severe funding cuts in the first years of the Trump administration, hip hop diplomacy has remained well-funded, although its future is uncertain. Specific anecdotes and case studies come from Next Level programs in Bangladesh, El Salvador, and Morocco.

Operating in a Zone of Ambiguity: Tensions and Risks

Build ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 81-108
Author(s):  
Mark Katz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
Collaborative Interactions ◽  
The Asymmetry

This chapter explores the central tensions that animate hip hop diplomacy. One tension is between art and diplomacy, particularly in their distinctive approaches to process and views on outcomes. A second tensions arises because of the asymmetry of power between the United States and the countries that hip hop diplomacy programs visit. This chapter posits that hip hop diplomacy (and cultural diplomacy in general) operates in a zone of ambiguity, a state in which palpable, inescapable tensions and uncertainties hang over one’s every action. Specific examples come from hip hop diplomacy initiatives in El Salvador, India, Morocco, Senegal, and Zimbabwe. The chapter ends by offering guidelines for respectful, collaborative interactions in cultural diplomacy and cultural exchange programs.

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