Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Bakari Kitwana, author and co-founder of the National Hip-Hop Poltical Convention

Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wangsters, Wiggers, and Wanabees, The New Reality of Race in America

Bakari Kitwana is the co-founder of the first ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention and the author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture.  The former executive editor of The Source, Kitwana has been acknowledged as an expert on hip-hop politics by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, The O'Reilly Factor and other leading news outlets, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Savoy, The Nation, the Village Voice, Black Book and other publications. Kitwana also writes a column on hip-hop and youth culture called "Do the Knowledge" for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and is a consultant on hip-hop for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The author of The Rap on Gangsta Rap (Third World Press, 1994), he's been a visiting scholar in the political science department at Kent State University and has lectured on hip-hop at colleges and universities across the country for the last decade, including Harvard University, New York University, Columbia University and Standford University. His new book Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America (Basic Books, June 2005) is about race and hip-hop culture. Kitwana holds Masters degrees in English and Education from the University of Rochester.