Hip Hop Activism

Hip hop activism is a term coined by the hip hop intellectual and journalist Harry Allen. It is meant to describe an activist movement of the post- baby boomer generation.

The hip hop generation was defined in The Hip- Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture as African Americans born between 1965 and 1984. This group is situated between the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the assassination of Malcolm X on one end and hip hop's explosion during the 1970s and 1980s. But the hip-hop generation can be more loosely defined to include minorities born between 1965 and 1984 who have grown up within a culture of hip hop music, dance, fashion and art.

Some of the issues of social justice the movement addresses are minority and immigration rights, educational access, prison reform and transportation policy. In recent years California's Proposition 187 and Proposition 21 have also been a focus of hip hop activism. The movement also addresses a broad range of social change practices like youth organizing and development, cultural work, and intercultural exchanges.

Read more about Hip Hop Activism:  Evolution and Context, California Propositions 187 and 21

Famous quotes containing the words hip and/or hop:

    He’s a man who shoots from the hip. And a man who’s hip when he shoots.
    Jeremy Larner, U.S. screenwriter. Banquet master of ceremonies (Pat Harrington, Jr.)

    I have tried being surreal, but my frogs hop right back into their realistic ponds.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)