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RE-BROADCAST: “Why White Kids Love Hip Hop”
GUEST: Bakari Kitwana, author of “Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America”

While Hip Hop originated some decades ago directly out of African American eighborhoods in the South Bronx and caught fire among urban black youth, today it is a prominent part of American mainstream culture. Hip hop music is increasingly more popular with white youth in America and today we discuss the implications of that with hip hop scholar and activist Bakari Kitwana. Bakari Kitwana is author of “The Rap on Gangsta Rap: Who Run It? : Gangsta Rap and Visions of Black Violence,” and the acclaimed “The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and The Crisis in African American Culture.” His latest book is “Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America.” In it he discusses the “old racial politics” of the older generation of activists versus the “new racial politics” of American youth.

“Hip-hop is the last hope for this generation and arguably the last hope for America… The best remedy for leaving the old racial politics on the pages of history is a successful hip-hop political movement. Now, more than ever, we don’t have to buy into the old racial politics… This generation, as its cultural movement turns to politics, is creating for us all another choice.”
— Excerpted from “Why White Kids Love Hip Hop,” Chapter 6, “Coalition Building Across Race”