She's Mad Real by Oneka LaBennett

Author:Oneka LaBennett [LaBennett, Oneka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Discrimination
ISBN: 9780814753125
Google: 9O-gBwAAQBAJ
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2011-07-25T02:53:36+00:00

Transnational Negotiations and Alliances

Considering music, television, and fashion, we find that these realms are principal arenas through which youth witness racial, ethnic, and gender representations as they assert particular identities. Take, for example, Tracy, a fifteen-year-old who was born in Trinidad but who moved to Brooklyn when she was just eleven months old. Tracy, whose mother is a social worker and whose father is a hospital cook, says her Trindadian family teasingly calls her a “Yankee” because they perceive her to be very American. Yet, Tracy prides herself on her vast knowledge of West Indian musical artists who are not well known in the United States. Her favorites include, to name a few, Sizzla, Spragga Benz, Vybz Kartel, Marshall Montana, Bernard Collins, and my personal favorite, the Trinidadian Soca singer Oneka. Surprisingly, Tracy said, “You’ll only catch me listening to reggae or old R&B. I don’t like rap at all. Everything [in rap] is mad cursing.” Here, Tracy is being critical of the musical genre dominant not only among Black youth but also arguably among all youth in America (a 2000 article in the New York Times titled “Guarding the Borders of the Hip-Hop Nation” reported that 70 percent of all hip-hop CDs are purchased by White youth). In a fascinating contradiction that we will address shortly, Tracy criticizes profanity in rap music but turns the other cheek to the violent masculinity promoted by dancehall artists such as Vybz Kartel.9 Tracy, like other teens, allied herself with West Indian artists and musical genres when she wished to assert a West Indian identity. Here, not wishing to confirm her family’s “Yankee” label, Tracy disassociated herself from American music.

Whether girls allied themselves with West Indian or African American musicians also had to do with factors such as seeking parental approval; parents often saw American hip-hop as a corruptive influence because of its violent and sexually explicit lyrics. Girls’ identity assertions and consumption choices were also motivated by looking to distance themselves from the negative stereotypes I mentioned earlier. Still, youth who privately professed their preferences for West Indian artists and claimed West Indian authenticity by downloading obscure artists or getting relatives to bring back the latest West Indian CDs contradicted such assertions when they were among African American peers. Often, such youth sang along with and knew all of the words when their African American counterparts played the latest chart-topping hip-hop song. Therefore, West Indian youths’ choices and identifications were contradictory and contingent on a whole host of factors.

Unlike BCM, where children and youth engaged in play-labor, the Flat-bush YMCA was strictly a site of play. Music could always be heard at the YMCA, and the television in the lounge was often on. The cheerleaders’ use of music in their practice sessions enabled me to contextualize songs within the ethnographic space of the YMCA. The YMCA girls negotiated contradictory gender politics in relation to popular female hip-hop artists such as Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown. On the one hand, they admonished Kim

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