DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c3-216789
title: The cultural war against black intellectualism: Fighting for and dying over knowledge, dope, and hip hop in pursuit of black liberation

description: "The Cultural War Against Black Intellectualism: Fighting for and Dying Over Knowledge, Dope, and Hip Hop in Pursuit of Black Liberation" examines the political, social, and cultural ways that Black Intellectualism has been systematically targeted in America since the 1960s, and the methods in which this assault continues to manifest contemporarily within popular culture.  Since the 1960s, Black intellectual thought and activism have been the driving force in the Black liberation struggle for human rights.  American institutionalized racism and the system’s aggressive resistance to Black liberation have historically targeted Black intellectual thought on several fronts including: legislation forbidding the literacy of Blacks, faulty scientific research regarding Black intelligence, federal programs to squelch Black resistance, and grossly stereotypical media depictions of Black people.  These factors have collaboratively aided the rewriting, downplaying and negation of Black intellectual contributions.    The Black Power Movement of the 1960s gave rise to the emergence of the Black Public Intellectual, led to the institutionalization of the Black Academic and inspired a renewed surge of Black intellectualism surrounding the introduction of hip hop scholarship in the 1990s.  This project will focus on the ways these shifts in Black intellectualism have manifested culturally, since the 1960s, in film, television, music, and sports significantly shaping American popular cultural aesthetics to date. ❧ The concept of the “Cultural War against Black Intellectualism,” speaks to a systematic and organized resistance toward the presence, acceptance, celebration and normalization of Black intellectualism.  In what ways has popular culture been an extension of this assault on Black intellectualism?  How has popular culture both provided a framework and been utilized as a powerful tool in keeping images, ideas, and representations of Black intellectualism marginal in existence, consideration, and viability?  Why does it matter, and what is at stake in the interrogation of such issues? Upon historical scrutiny, I argue that Black liberation and Black social mobility, by virtue of the assault they have undergone within the American system, have operated as one of (if not the) greatest perceived threats to the “American way.”  ❧ Today these assaults continue, waged in covert ways, in the court of cultural public opinion, where mediated images disperse a daily barrage of ideologies and cultural representations.  Though the methods and strategies have changed over time, many of these detrimental messages ironically and unfortunately remain the same.  The question, why has the intellectual development of Black people been so specifically targeted, feared and systematically repressed by America’s institutions, begs inquiry.  In many ways, the acknowledgement and embrace of Black intellectualism by Blacks and by America as a whole, operates as the “final frontier” of Black liberation. ❧ From the 1960s through the 2000s the energy that Blacks channeled into their fight against the racism of America’s status quo saw Black intellectualism and Black consciousness, which operated, as part and parcel of Black liberation struggle, undergo several iterations transforming with each changing decade.  The interest of this project is in drawing historical and cultural connections across the narrative of Black Intellectualism by exploring historical and cultural factors that signaled and marked these shifts, as well as the ways these shifts eventually led to a renewed surge of energy surrounding Black intellectualism, the Black Scholar, and its newly formed ties to the study of hip hop culture.  To contextualize this discussion, a forty-year time period, from roughly 1965 to 2005, will receive interrogation, by posing the overarching question, "What were Black people, and most specifically Black youth, fighting for and dying over?"  The question will be applied in three parts to three historically designated time periods: Part I. 1960s -1970s:  Fighting For and Dying over “Knowledge,” Part II. 1980s:  Fighting For and Dying over “Dope,” and Part III. 1990s: Fighting For and Dying over “Hip Hop.”