Kyle Mays, who teaches at the African American Studies Department and the Native American Center at UCLA, says Hip Hop “builds solidarity between the two communities,” which share a complex history of slavery, displacement and state violence. Mays is author of the book, Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in North America.Water rights and climate change are connected with larger political empowerment issues. “We need to somehow deal with the issue of returning land to native peoples,” said Mays, who is of Black and Native American ancestry.
Politicians ignore at their peril the power of popular culture and its people-moving practitioners.
Facial masks and Black Lives Matter murals are part of the ever-changing panorama that shapes our perceptions of hierarchy, just as tall buildings do.
Privatization of health care is why some of the wealthiest countries have proved unable to respond rapidly to the pandemic.
The Brits practiced a nonjudicial form of Jim Crow against non-white immigrants from their colonial empire.
We as Black people must keep pushing, organizing, and demanding a Black agenda centered on reparations.
