Why We Need Hip Hop in Higher Education: How Do We Confront the Representation Crisis?

Dr. Venus E. Evans-WintersHigher education is experiencing a troubling “crisis of confidence.” Many of us feel the dissonance between what education claims to be and the direction in which it is headed. On one hand, higher education is tasked with preparing the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and creators. On the other, it remains mired in bureaucratic structures and colonial logics that strip learning of vitality and creativity, muffling scholars’ voices and limiting our ability to fight for educational opportunity, access, and equity. This has created a representation crisis in higher education.

Amid sweeping industry changes and recent data showing that more than 300,000 Black women are leaving—or, more accurately, being pushed out of—the labor market, this structural and political dissonance has deepened the crisis of confidence among many scholars and administrators. We are experiencing increased anxiety and diminished capacity, ability, and interest in thinking creatively and proactively in our roles. Our confidence and sense of agency are being steadily eroded and undermined.

Trained in academic professionalism, many scholars who grew up in urban America or within hip hop culture have been stripped of the very qualities that made them unique and us “us.” In the academy, we have lost our “swag” in the face of erasure and apartheid-like conditions in higher education. By “swag,” I mean a collective sense of power derived from rhythm and blues, improvisation, and a boldacious confidence to speak truth to authority without fear of punishment.

Hip Hop: The Soundtrack to Ingenuity

Recently, I (Venus) walked out of a learning space with students and colleagues present where I felt welcomed, but not familiar. Despite the visible racial diversity, I knew I was still the “other” in the room. I left the convening confident in my message, only to learn later that I had made a student—who was not from a minoritized group—“uncomfortable.” When the message came to me from someone who also did not look like me or come from where I come from, I needed a soundtrack to carry me through the complex emotions that surfaced: rage at receiving the message and disappointment in the messenger. My nervous system needed soothing. I longed for a sensory experience that could make me feel safe in my body and affirm my right to take up space in the world. There are times when I leave campus and feel the urge to expand spiritually and culturally. That is what hip hop offered my generation.

Dr. Norris ChaseYears ago, I (Norris) spoke with a Black student from Chicago who shared a simple but profound truth about how music helped him persist in college. As an engineering major, isolation, code-switching, and cultural shapeshifting were his norm. As a coping mechanism, he listened to hip hop to ground himself and to inspire him to look past the challenges of the present toward the rewards of completion. Though he struggled to fully articulate his “fly in the buttermilk” experience of navigating a culturally isolating and intellectually demanding academic environment, his story illustrates how impactful, powerful, and inspiring hip hop can be as a framework and praxis for coping, creating, and surviving hostile environments.

Hip hop has become one of America’s most significant exports and one of its most influential cultural forces. It offers a model of authentic acceptance and recognition, reminding us that hip hop can serve as an embodied framework for re-centering culture, creativity, and critical consciousness in teaching and research. In institutions of higher education, I (Venus) am Black, I am a woman, and I am also the child of blue-collar America, born to people Indigenous to the South and descended from Africa. These academies often fail, or even refuse, to see that scholars of color live with a dual awareness: we uphold the knowledge economy while also striving to express our creativity and claim education as a tool for liberation. Hip hop embodies this dualism with clarity and subversive power.

As a Black woman and a Black man with years of experience in higher education as faculty and administrators, we are accustomed to being perceived as different, or even as threats to the status quo. Feelings of not belonging, systemic marginalization, and everyday interpersonal violations (i.e. microaggressions) often leave wounds that only music can neutralize. Not just any music, but hip hop. Maybe rap. Maybe trap. In moments when our physical or intellectual presence is threatened, we do not turn to pop, neo-soul, or blues. We need a sound, a beat, a rhythm that stirs the spirit and reminds us that we are in search of a war cry—Akoben! We need a sound that insists, “It’s bigger than you.”

…I rap 'bout what I know, what I go through

What I been through, not just for no dough

Even though the rent due, what I'm into ain't for no dough

Or just no fame, everything must change, nothin' remains the same

Sick of the same ol' thang, it's bigger than bling bling

~Dead Prez, 2000

In the above lyrics/stanza, excerpted from “It’s bigger than hip hop,” replace the word rap with teach (or research or publish). During a representation crisis in higher education, many scholars of color embody the dualism of knowing that we are both interrupting knowledge apartheid and contributing to the status quo of education as cultural imperialism.

Reclaiming “Swag” as Intellectual Posture

“…But I can’t teach you my swag

You can pay for school but you can’t buy class”

~Jay-Z, 2008

The representation crisis asks us to leave our swag at the door—our connection to our communities, our imagination, and the radical possibility that knowledge production is a vehicle to collective liberation. Hip hop reminds us that our socio-political condition as the “other” in academia is not personal; we are part of, and represent, a collective of peoples, histories, and stories still unrecognized by the knowledge-class. There are those who not only find our existence unpalatable but also view the knowledge we bring as dangerous.

In these challenging times in higher education, when anyone dares to mention or acknowledge diversity, intersectionality, or race, they risk becoming disposable—materially (as faculty of color are the most likely to receive threats of violence) and economically (as Black women are being pushed out of the labor force at higher rates). 

So we ask: In the face of this representation crisis in higher education, can our swag save us? We see hip hop as spiritual and ontological armor. Just when we are tempted to give up, we are reminded that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Our music calls us back home in ways that most cannot even imagine. 

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Dr. Venus E. Evans-Winters is Director of PhD Programs and a Professor in the Department of Learning and Teaching & Department of Leadership Studies in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego. 

Dr. Norris Chase is the Director of First-Generation Commitment, LSA Undergraduate Education in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan.