08 Fri Jan 2016
Posted in History of Electronic, History of Rock and Roll, Music
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—As we’ve previously featured Kendrick Lamar, it was notable that David Bowie mentioned listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar’s music. Blackstar is a good record. We recommend it. Pick up a copy at your local music store and turn it up loud.
Messina
“Blackstar” by David Bowie
“Lazarus” by David Bowie
“Dollar Days” by David Bowie
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[27 JAN 2016]
09 Tue Jun 2015
Posted in Education, History of Hip Hop, Music
Tags
Alright, Best New Chicano Literature 1989, Brian Mooney, High Tech High School, Kendrick Lamar, New York Times, The Bluest Eye, To Pimp a Butterfly, Toni Morrison
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—The written word is not limited to academic journals nor books. Even the lumpenproletariat, like intellectuals, have things of import to say. The written word also comes in the forms of spoken word, prose, rhymes, raps, and songs. And the written word does not need to be decades old to be a valuable tool for teaching in the classroom. Recognising these facts, teacher and poetry club organiser, Brian Mooney (29) at High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey was able to draw connections between the currently relevant and the historically relevant. Mooney used Kendrick Lamar‘s chart-topping, yet sociopolitically conscious, album, To Pimp a Butterfly, in his classroom with inspired, and inspiring, results. Your author similarly recalls another progressive English teacher who responded to the resistance of a stubborn young mind by giving him a copy of Best New Chicano Literature 1989. Sometimes very important seeds are planted in unexpected ways.
—Messina
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SONG LYRICS—(9 JUN 2015) While some institutions are hellbent on burying rap music and hip-hop culture there are some that embrace it wholeheartedly as a means of connecting with the youth.
Kendrick Lamar made headlines recently when he visited High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey for what turned out to be a touching and heartfelt exchange between students, teachers, and a rap superstar.
Teacher and poetry club organizer Brian Mooney, 29, was struggling to convey some of the meanings in Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest Eye, so he decided to implement a different tactic using Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly to help initiate dialogue about Black culture in America — playing edited excerpts of the album for students via an old literary lens trick called “hip-hop ed” the Columbia University grad picked up in his own studies, reports The New York Times.
To Pimp A Butterfly, if you remember, dropped like a perfect bomb earlier this year disrupting the hip-hop landscape for the better, and is a definitely a pro move to pair its narrative of a young, sometimes angry, black man on the rise with the racial tensions of Toni Morrison’s classic The Bluest Eye, consistently on primary educational ban lists for its contentious racial and socio political themes.
The essays and poems that came out of it went viral and Kendrick Lamar’s manager sent out a message to Mooney to arrange a visit. Students responded warmly to the idea and instead of Lamar performing for them, they performed for him, including spoken word essays, raps and a spirited dance routine. There was also a Q&A where students asked Lamar about the making of the album.
Kendrick ended the assembly by performing “Alright,” but the highlight was the students and Kendrick’s response to them. He noted several times that their analysis of To Pimp a Butterfly was more than he expected especially from individuals as young as they are. His genuine shock and appreciation along with Mooney’s willingness to incorporate present modals into the curriculum is a good sign for the future, a message to teachers and rappers alike.
Learn more at SONG LYRICS.
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“Alright” by Kendrick Lamar
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[En sanctuarium, Wednesday, June 10, 2015.]
13 Wed May 2015
Posted in Microeconomic Analysis, urban economics
Tags
Amanda Cox, Baltimore, Center on Poverty & Inequality (Stanford Univ.), Chicano, Claire Cain Miller, Contra Costa County, David Leonhardt, Equality of Opportunity Project, Hillary Clinton, housing vouchers, Jeb Bush, Julián Castro (HUD), Kendrick Lamar, Lawrence Katz, Moving to Opportunity, New York Times, Obama administration, Raj Chetty, To Pimp a Butterfly
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—A new study [1] featured in the New York Times last week provides evidence confirming beneficial socioeconomic outcomes resulting from children moving out of ghettos and into neighbourhoods with less concentration of poverty.
This may seem to be an obvious assertion. However, previously, Congress’ antipoverty experiment entitled Moving to Opportunity (c. 1990s) had given vouchers to help poor families move to neighbourhoods with less concentration of poverty and had “awarded them on a random basis, so researchers could study the effects.” [2] Unfortunately, due to methodological limitations, that study yielded “deeply disappointing” results. “Parents who received the vouchers did not seem to earn more in later years than otherwise similar adults, and children did not seem to do better in school. The program’s apparent failure has haunted social scientists and policy makers, making poverty seem all the more intractable.” [3]
Fortunately, the new study published by Dr. Raj Chetty (b. 1979) and Dr. Nathaniel Hendren was able to analyse “more recent, richer data”. “In addition to studying the outcomes of more than five million children who moved, Mr. Chetty and Mr. Hendren revisited the subjects of the Moving to Opportunity experiment.” [4] Dr. Chetty and Dr. Hendren also worked with one of the original researchers of the earlier study, Dr. Lawrence Katz (b. 1959). They “concluded that children who moved before they were teenagers did indeed benefit economically”:
“In both studies, the younger children were when they moved, the better they did. Children were less likely to become single parents when they grew up and were more likely to go to college and to earn more. The original research was not able to follow the economic outcomes of younger children because not enough time had passed, Mr. Katz said.” [5]
These important, econometrically rigorous, findings argue for new approaches to housing policy. Julian Castro (b. 1974), the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “said he was excited by the new data” because HUD had “been planning to reallocate funding so that some people moving to higher-cost neighborhoods would receive larger vouchers. Currently, the value of vouchers tends to be constant across a metropolitan area.” [6]
But simply moving some families out of ghettos will not solve the problem of poverty. “For all the benefits that moves can bring, they are not a solution to poverty, said people who have seen the new paper as well as the researchers.” [7] As working-class Compton, California-native Kendrick Lamar raps on “Momma,” from his first number one album, To Pimp a Butterfly, about his rags-to-riches experiences:
“I can attempt to enlighten you without frightenin’ you
If you resist, I’ll back off; go catch a flight or two
But if you pick destiny over rest in peace
Than be an advocate; go tell your homies, especially
To come back home”
HUD Secretary Julian Castro, of Chicano heritage, agrees with Dr. Chetty and Dr. Hendren: “‘We can’t walk away from them,’ Mr. Castro, the housing secretary said. ‘We need a two-pronged approach.'” [8] Relevantly, on “Mortal Man”, Kendrick Lamar (whose sociopolitically conscious lyrics seem to be underappreciated by commercial radio, despite a clear hunger on the streets for such articulation of ghetto life) recites confessional prose:
“I didn’t wanna self destruct
The evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers
Until I came home
But that didn’t stop survivor’s guilt
Going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned
Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was
But while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city, I was entering a new one
A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination
Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned
The word was respect
Just because you wore a different gang colour than mines
Doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a black man
Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets
If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us”
All those of us who make it up out of the ghetto must not just contribute to white flight, black flight, or brown flight. We need to get on up out of the ghetto, only to go back home and help our loved ones trapped by the capitalist mode of production, which depends upon a redundant population to repress labour and increase capital’s rate of exploitation of the proletariat.
—Messina
***
THE NEW YORK TIMES—In the wake of the Los Angeles riots more than 20 years ago, Congress created an anti-poverty experiment called Moving to Opportunity. It gave vouchers to help poor families move to better neighborhoods and awarded them on a random basis, so researchers could study the effects.
The results were deeply disappointing. Parents who received the vouchers did not seem to earn more in later years than otherwise similar adults, and children did not seem to do better in school. The program’s apparent failure has haunted social scientists and policy makers, making poverty seem all the more intractable.
Now, however, a large new study is about to overturn the findings of Moving to Opportunity. Based on the earnings records of millions of families that moved with children, it finds that poor children who grow up in some cities and towns have sharply better odds of escaping poverty than similar poor children elsewhere.
The feelings heard across Baltimore’s recent protests — of being trapped in poverty — seem to be backed up by the new data. Among the nation’s 100 largest counties, the one where children face the worst odds of escaping poverty is the city of Baltimore, the study found.
Learn more at THE NEW YORK TIMES.
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[1] Chetty, Raj, and Nathaniel Hendren. 2015. “The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility: Childhood Exposure Effects and County-Level Estimates”, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/files/nbhds_paper.pdf
A summarised six-page version of the full 143-page Chetty and Hendren (2015) study is available here.
[2] David Leonhardt, Amanda Cox, and Claire Cain Miller, “Change of Address Offers Pathway Out of Poverty: Study Finds Surprises on Upward Mobility,” The New York Times, May 4, 2015, accessed May 11, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility-shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?_r=0 .
[3] Ibid., 2
[4] Ibid., 3
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 4
[7] Ibid., 5
[8] Ibid., 5
