The Olympic sabotage fiasco has eroded the credibility of serious hip-hop artists and academics

The Olympic sabotage fiasco has discredited serious hip-hop artists and academics

By A.D. Carson

In August, Australian Rachel Gunn (aka “Rae Gunn”) performed a breakdancing routine at the Olympics that drew more ridicule than mastery of the competitive form breakdancing is better known for. Ironically, while she may have become the most famous hip-hop artist in the world at that moment, it’s a travesty that hurts real hip-hop artists and reinforces harmful stereotypes about black artistry.

Hip hop culture, which inherently includes elements of breaking, graffiti art, DJing, and MCing (rap), has spread worldwide since its origins among black artists in the early 1970s. Since then, hip hop has received public acclaim and academic attention, but it has also received criticism heavily influenced by covert and overt racism.

The undue attention given to Gunn’s poor performance has been marked by anti-black sentiment, a systematic disdain for black people and black culture that has been likened to minstrel shows. In addition to degrading the Olympic Games and mocking hip-hop culture, news of the debacle has further fueled this anti-black sentiment that has been weaponized against hip-hop and other black arts for decades.

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I know all too well how this happens because I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve been a hip-hop artist my whole life. In 2017, I published my doctoral dissertation, “The Rap Album: Accepting My Master: Rhyme and the Rhetoric of Revolution, It spread quickly. Much of this attention felt like genuine interest in the work, but some of it was circulated among people who held both Black arts and Black studies in contempt. A second wave of attention from similar observers came when I was hired in 2017 for an academic position at the University of Virginia specializing in hip hop. (Given hip hop’s global reach, it’s surprising that it took until that time for the university to establish my then-role as assistant professor of hip hop. I am now an associate professor in the field.)

What I learned is that unfortunately, racist cultural assumptions about hip-hop lead audiences to discount the art and scholarship of hip-hop. False assumptions about rap and rappers lead audiences to believe that hip-hop and academic achievement are mutually exclusive. This makes the novelty of earning a PhD in rap difficult to separate from long-standing negative stereotypes. These stereotypes are not the product of deliberate exclusion, but are fueled by those who say such an event “cannot happen.” There is also a history of hijacking black culture and music. Institutions such as universities and record companies colonize music. Their “discoveries” and “research” provide expertise and become a means to make money through a process of whiteness that takes control of culture and its products away from black people. William E. Ketchum III, Rolling Stone This comment about the online songwriting school Pendulum Ink Academy highlights a tension I feel: “On the one hand, if academia is meant to reflect what’s going on in the real world, hip hop should be a part of it. But on the other hand, when these predominantly white spaces incorporate hip hop into their work, often the essence of hip hop gets lost.”

Gunn is also a scholar of breaking, and much of the coverage of her has emphasized her academic background, which has portrayed her abilities (or lack thereof) as novelty and given critics ammunition to attack hip-hop. and Academia. Widespread attention may open up future publications and media appearances, but it may also unintentionally cast a negative light on serious and valuable academic exploration of hip hop cultural forms. This association with attention for scholars like her is why I did not want to pursue a PhD and become a “hip hop scholar” – I wanted to avoid the term seeming to describe the subset of scholars who unconditionally colonize the culture and seek to become its most vocal and visible authorities.

Noah McGee of The Root noted that some scholars have excused Gunn’s performance with language that casts hip-hop artists (like me) as subjects, thoughtless, and eternally problematic. McGee noted the reaction from the black community: “Some said, if she’s so educated in her art, why go out and do something stupid?” My research, and that of others, reveals serious and similar doubts about the academic world’s sanctioning and telling of a white narrative of American history. It’s easy to see Gunn’s performance being used as a weapon against other hip-hop artists. Critics have used Gunn’s performance to belittle the art form of hip-hop breaking. Though mockery abounded, her ridiculous routine, which earned her no points from any of the Olympic judges, was promoted to the world as an example of what hip-hop can offer.

Of course, Gunn has a right to love hip-hop and study its culture — hip-hop has historically been about breaking down boundaries, not creating them — but her performance was so bad that it’s almost comical to try to explain the debacle around her in hip-hop terms. Judged on that basis alone, she will never be a global hip-hop example.

Some of her fellow Olympic breakers have been more tolerant of the controversial performance. Victor Montalvo, a US Olympic breaker who won a bronze medal, said of the attention, “any publicity is good publicity” and that “it’s a good thing” because the performance’s popularity has drawn attention to the rest of the breaking world. I don’t think so. A conversation about black arts and hip-hop culture is being focused on this white Australian woman. Instead, news reports would have been better focused on “there were b-girls in Perth, regional Victoria and rural Brisbane who might have qualified but couldn’t afford to travel to Sydney for the tryouts.”

In 2017, I was worried about the backlash that headlines about my research might provoke, and for good reason. It’s natural to question a PhD from an American university making hip-hop music, or teaching hip-hop at a university founded by a racist president. My research prepared me to answer those questions head-on, rather than shirking responsibility for potentially mocking an entire culture. I liken the brutality of this exploitation of black culture to American addiction. The rapid attention to cancer seems to prove it’s a global phenomenon, and perhaps a symptom of a broader crisis.

For 50 years, hip-hop artists have accepted the expectation to “show and prove.” The only way to prove knowledge, skill, and mastery is to show it. If it’s cool, it’s cool. If it’s not, it’s not cool. As a scholar who is a hip-hop artist, I fully anticipate people’s questions and strive to let my performance speak for me, rather than relying on my academic credentials. FYI, Rachel Gunn’s viral dance routine says a lot about her dancing.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views of the author are not necessarily those of Scientific American.