As the ongoing
debate over misogyny and Hip-Hop rages on Rap Sessions, a 10-city speaking tour,
will launch in March to examine the role Hip-Hop plays in influencing relationships
between young women and men.The
Rap Sessions speaking tour will Kick of at Purdue University on March 5 and concludes
at the University of California in April.Panelists
include Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal, Hip-Hop journalist Joan Morgan
(When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist),
filmmaker Byron Hurt (director of Beyond Beats and Rhymes) and professor
Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, director of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt
University.Rap
Sessions will focus on the stereotypical representations of women and men in the
Hip-Hop generation. Additionally,
strategies will be developed to help ensure that Hip-Hop’s emerging political
movement is inclusive of an empowering agenda for women. "For too
long the Hip-Hop community has failed to set forth a national agenda for women,"
moderator and Hip-Hop activist Bakari Kitwana said. “The goal of these gatherings
is to jump start a national discussion that asks young people, the Hip-Hop industry
and our policy makers to assume responsibility for their complicity in making
Hip-Hop synonymous with misogyny and homophobia." Rap Sessions was
launched in 2005. Its first national tour which brought townhall-style meetings
focused on race and Hip-Hop to 15 cities across the country. The
forums were designed to jump-start crucial local debate and connect local Hip-Hop
communities to national Hip-Hop arts/activists networks. For more information,
log on to www.rapsessions.org.
