Jack & Jill Politics

Just caught this on Hip Hop Music (which is a great blog, btw). I’m pretty sure most of the people in the original, now-infamous Clinton Blogger Lunch photo have dreamed (or perhaps never even thought to dream) of being featured on the homepage of a blog devoted to hip hop. Well, dreams sometimes do come true…Be careful what you wish for though!

Update: just about all of the major political bloggers in this photo and some who aren’t have been great about responding and opening up to dialogue (whether on their blogs, on others’ blogs or behind the scenes) with minority bloggers. Though it’s been challenging, it’s good and I think some consciousness has been raised for some people (both white and non-white). It’s a healthy discussion of how black/brown blogs and other progressive blogs can grow our audience to folks who might be interested in our messages but haven’t found us yet.

Hip Hop and politics have always gone together. Like peanut butter and chocolate. Like dead and prez (the music act). Like Grandmaster and Flash.

I think some of the best suggestions that have come out of the recent brouhaha have to do with modeling the success of BlogHer and the Black Blogger panels at SXSW. Maybe a stronger focus at the next Yearly Kos on dialogue. Maybe working on stronger black and brown blog rings. Plug more into the hip hop and music blogs which also btw, blog on socio-political issues. (You know how we do — being black, you can’t avoid the politics that impacts your daily life directly.) Getting advice from supportive big-traffic bloggers on what progressive minority bloggers are doing well and hey, maybe what we could do better or more often.

Cuz our audience is out there. They are waiting for us. At places like the National Hip Hip Political Convention. The last one in 2004 received some MSM and big blog play. The 2006 NHHPC landed with more of a whisper in the blogosphere. More of a shrug and a Huh? Who?

Why is that? Should we be more on our game in blogging on this kind of signature event that happened in July or is that AlterNet’s job? 4000 young brothers and sisters interested in positive change using the political system — that’s something we need to dig beyond hip hop blog coverage. Here’s why (Big ups to Alternet and its followup story today – emphasis mine):

“There’s no difference to me,” says Salaam, who equates Grandmaster Flash’s classic “The Message” with the works of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. “Within hip hop, we’re talking about the same things the older people talk about.”

“There is a generational divide, but it’s not the primary problem,” agrees Troy Nkrumah. A lawyer under 30, he assists political prisoners and radical youth organizations in Las Vegas, after doing similar work in the San Francisco Bay area. From Nkrumah’s perspective, it is the political timidity of established black leaders that has led to the current generational tensions. “The civil rights folks got into comfortable positions,” said Nkrumah. “In their minds, they thought they were still down with the movement, but they resisted the radicalism of the young.”

If the cutoff date for the hip-hop generation is a birthday in 1964, then a majority of black people now belong to it, Nkrumah told me. “Hip hop grows every year,” he continues. “Until it dies out, it will grow. Hip hop is not just music, dancing, graffiti — it’s activism.“

Angela Woodson, the 36-year-old co-chair of the Newark convention, presents a starker view of the youth cultural scene. “There are three worlds of hip hop. There’s the corporate world, the political world — and the stupid world.“

Because ultimately this need for change in this country — it’s bigger than you, it’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than the progressive blogosphere and it’s definitely bigger than hip hop.