For White Folks Who Teach Hip-Hop—and the Rest of Ya’ll, Too: Interrogating the Positionality of Hip-Hop Educators and Researchers

ABSTRACT

Historically, across U.S. education systems, traditional teaching strategies and school curricular practices have been anchored in Western views and Eurocentric frameworks that position whiteness as the center of legitimate knowledge and, as a result, other knowledge as peripheral and insignificant. In this article, we offer practical considerations for educators and researchers who seek to disrupt systems of oppression through the implementation of hip-hop based education. As an extension of culturally relevant pedagogy, we contend that the critical implementation of hip-hop based education must include an interrogation of educator and researcher positionality as it relates to hip-hop culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Edmund Adjapong

Edmund Adjapong, a native of the Bronx, NY, is an associate professor in the Educational Studies Department at Seton Hall University. Dr. Adjapong, a former middle school science educator, is also a faculty fellow at the Institute of Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Adjapong is a STEM and Urban Education advocate whose work and research address issues of race, class, inequities in education, and misperceptions of urban youth. His current focus is on how to incorporate youth culture into educational spaces, specifically on utilizing hip-hop culture and sensibilities as an approach to teaching and learning.

Kelly R. Allen

Kelly R. Allen is an assistant professor of Curriculum Studies at Augusta University. Informed by her time as a high school social studies teacher, her research explores the influence of race and racism in the implementation of hip-hop education.