Free It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation by M.K. Asante Jr Page B

pursuit of happiness”—was how many of the issues that the civil rights/Black power generation struggled against are still prevalent today and must be faced by us.
    “We don’t even have to make a new list,” a student remarked. “We still don’t have those things—still.”
    “Okay, so do we have decent housing?” I posed.
    A chorus of “nos,” “nopes,” and “uh-uhns” fluttered back.
    “What about health care? We got it? Y’all got it?”
    “Nah.”
    “What about police brutality—is that still happening?”
    “Man, I got beat up by the cops yesterday on my own block for no damn reason. See,” one student shouted as he pulled up his shirt to reveal a combination of dark smudges—all too familiar marks of the beast.
    For the students who thought the Panthers’ goals were utopian, we summoned the words of Emma Goldman who told us that “every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.” For the students who believed the demands of housing and health care were unrealistic and too radical, we checked out the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
    Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control
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    Human rights should never—must never!—be perceived as too lofty or radical. This occurs, however, because of the incessant onslaught from systems that don’t recognize oppressed people as people, generating a sense of undeserving-ness of even basic human rights. Forty years after the Ten Point Program, much has changed and yet, sadly, too much has stayed the same. It was Malcolm X who advised,
    Policies change, and programs change, according to time. But the objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving theobjectives but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality—by any means necessary
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    Indeed, polices have changed. Programs, too. From Vietnam → Iraq; Nixon → Bush; ghetto → ghetto; and oppressed → oppressed, the freedom that previous generations fought for still eludes many. The post-hip-hop generation may be closer to freedom than my father’s generation, but being close to freedom ain’t freedom. Just as one cannot be half-pregnant, half-free is not a reality, either. To recognize this is not a matter of political orientation. Radical, moderate, or conservative, it’s obvious that the status quo, as far as the majority of young Blacks is concerned, is dysfunctional. If this strange place, where the lives of Black children are stunted before they ever start and where ignorance is celebrated, is not dysfunctional, then what is?

     
    “But today, it comes at us from all angles. Plus, we ain’t unified,” one keen student observed. On one hand, nothing says “let’s unifyagainst this bullshit” like screaming fire hoses, rabid police dogs, and WHITES ONLY signs. However—
    “There’s definitely the necessary criteria for unity, though,” someone called out. “The question is what agenda are we unifying around?” I paused, panning the sea of sepia-colored pupils that formed my class.
    One of them stutter-stated: “The … first thing is the schools. How many of y’all went to a school in Baltimore city?” he asked. Hands flung skyward. “Okay, so y’all know that our schools are horrible. We’re not even supposed to be here—in college—given where we came from. We need textbooks, working bathrooms. The basics.”
    Another student called out, “What about these Black-people-hating redneck cops from the country who come in and beat the shit out