THEORY & PRAXIS
Despite the current social inequalities and hostile classroom environments, students must develop their academic skills... Culturally relevant teachers utilize students' culture as a vehicle for learning...Beyond those individual characteristics of academic achievement and cultural competence, students must develop a broader sociopolitical consciousness that allows them to critique the cultural norms, values, mores, and institutions that produce and maintain social inequities.
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow...The students--- no longer docile listeners--- are now critical co-investigators... Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality...Education as the practice of freedom--- as opposed to education as the practice of domination
Women’s and girls’ roles in hip-hop
extend beyond participation and into the realm of shaping how people involved in hip-hop culture engage their social, economic, political, and educational realities...Despite this work, the devaluation of the importance of women and girls to hip-hop, both historically and contemporarily, prevails...the devaluation of women’s and girls’ engagement with hip-hop can contribute to the marginalization of girls in classrooms and community-based education initiatives and programs...Uncovering these herstories, combating sexism and misogyny within and outside of hip-hop, addressing specific issues confronting the hip- hop
generation, and establishing and investing in girl empowerment initiatives form the substantive core of the praxis of hip-hop feminism.
If any real efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community's needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. In order to include Black women, both movements must distance themselves from earlier approaches in which experiences are relevant only when they are related to certain clearly identifiable causes (for example, the oppression of Blacks is significant when based on race, of women when based on gender.