{"id":48546,"date":"2016-08-02T20:13:52","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T20:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48546"},"modified":"2017-05-18T01:00:31","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T01:00:31","slug":"where-hip-hop-fits-in-cubas-anti-racist-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48546","title":{"rendered":"Where Hip Hop Fits in Cuba’s Anti-Racist Curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where Hip Hop Fits in Cuba’s Anti-Racist Curriculum<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/a>
\n2016-08-01<\/p>\n

Erik Gleibermann<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The country\u2019s education leaders confront deep-seated discrimination in the classroom through rap.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was sitting with the Afrocentric rapstress Magia L\u00f3pez Cabrera<\/a> in her modest Havana<\/a> walk-up in June when Cuba\u2019s<\/a> prominent black-history scholar Tom\u00e1s Fern\u00e1ndez Robaina<\/a> showed up for a caf\u00e9 con leche<\/a>. Her tiny living room was filled with African folk art and images of women with 1970s-style Afros. It felt like the Cuban equivalent of Cornel West<\/a> dropping in on Queen Latifah<\/a>. Two nights later at an anniversary celebration for L\u00f3pez\u2019s rap-duo Obsesi\u00f3n<\/a>, Fern\u00e1ndez Robaina sat discussing racial profiling in the U.S. with Roberto Zurbano Torres<\/a>, widely known in the U.S. for his writing on Cuban racial issues.<\/p>\n

Since arriving in Havana several weeks before to investigate Cuba\u2019s work to eliminate racism, I had discovered a collaborative, tight-knit movement that\u2019s gone largely unpublicized in the U.S., including in its six-time-zone, decentralized academic world. In Havana, community artists like Lopez, academics like Fern\u00e1ndez, and members of the National Ministry of Education are collectively exploring how to integrate Afro-Cuban history and related gender concerns into the primary-through-university school system. It\u2019s hard to imagine a U.S. parallel, such as Secretary of Education John King<\/a> officially asking teachers to teach students a song like \u201cLe Llaman Puta\u201d (They Call Her Whore)\u2014L\u00f3pez\u2019s critique of how Afro-Cuban women are driven into prostitution\u2014to fulfill the Common Core<\/a> standards.<\/p>\n

Efforts to combat racism in Cuba\u2014which is widely believed to be majority nonwhite\u2014through education have emerged quietly over the last several years. The National Ministry of Education officially leads the way through the Aponte Commission<\/a>, where Fern\u00e1ndez has served, exploring how to remove traces of racially denigrating language and imagery from, and include more Afro-Cuban history in, school textbooks. But the bold efforts are coming from below. A few semi-independent universities in Havana, and regional centers like Matanzas<\/a>, Santiago de Cuba<\/a>, and Camag\u00fcey<\/a>, are taking the initiative, along with grassroots educators and activists involved in a hip-hop movement spearheaded by Obsesi\u00f3n…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The country\u2019s education leaders confront deep-seated discrimination in the classroom through rap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,24,2895,21,8,26,394],"tags":[673,24675,2540,24674,1392,24676,6001,21129],"class_list":["post-48546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-arts","category-campus-life","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","tag-cuba","tag-erik-gleibermann","tag-hip-hop","tag-magia-lopez-cabrera","tag-music","tag-obsesion","tag-the-atlantic","tag-tomas-fernandez-robaina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53959,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48546\/revisions\/53959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}