The Hip Hop Wars

I really am very delighted to be here um for a number of reasons. Um, it's really exciting to talk to other Brown alum, to talk to so such a wide range of the intersections of of the Brown community, which I think we need to do more of and be in sort of as much conversation about

these types of issues together as much as we can because it's it's a particularly fascinating contradiction that we live in um where we talk constantly about the notion of being a multi-racial society and having transcended a variety of matters related to inequality. Although we haven't transcended anything about class, but when it comes to race, we're, you know,

we're very open about that. And yet we find ourselves exchanging ideas virtually very rarely in the same space, very rarely about some of the tough subjects um and certainly um not uh sufficiently enough about the things that we share crossraially. Now, let me just explain what I mean by that. We we talk about

larger issues. to say if this were a healthcare talk, we could all be in here and talk about health care. But to talk about race or about gender in a mixed multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi multi-orientation community is a much harder thing to pull off because what we actually share on those subjects is popular culture more than anything else.

We don't actually share lived experience nearly as much as we think we do across race. We all have friends of different backgrounds. Don't have that thought. I know I've heard it, said it. We all, you know, I have a friend who, that's not what I mean. I have three friends who, that's not what I mean. 11 friends, I

can keep counting. It doesn't change my point. Which is to say that we exchange the most cultural knowledge about race through popular culture. We think we know each other through it. So, when a friend or colleague of mine the other day says, "Oh, can I call you shorty?" [Laughter] I'm like, "I'm 5'8. Probably not a good