Wanting to be a part of the hip-hop culture is something that I can personally relate to. I've pretty much lived in the suburbs all of my life. However, my church/school was located in Northeast Philadelphia. Although that is still quite suburbian, a good amount of my classmates were from more inner parts of the city. Because of that, I was able to experience more diversity than I would if I went to school where I live in Bucks County. Most of the kids that were from the city were a part of this hip-hop culture. Well, they at least walked and talked the part of it. Some of them were black, but most of them weren't. Three or four of these students just happened to be the cutest and most popular boys in our grade, and that seemed to be the case in other grades as well. So starting in 6th grade, it seemed as though my entire school tried to transform into being part of the hip-hop culture.

Throughout junior high and the beginning of high school things just intensified. Rap was everyone's music of choice. All of the boys wore their baggy jeans, diamond earrings, and chain necklaces. The girls wore big hoop earrings and scrunched their hair to make it curly (or just crunchy). And everyone who was anyone had a pair of Timberland boots. On the weekends my group of friends hung out at the Palace roller skating rink, where the truly hip-hop kids hung out. I remember trying so hard to "play it cool" to fit in with them because they were like...celebrities to me. This trend, I guess you could call it, stuck around all through high school. My close friends and I phased out of it just as we entered into high school, but there was certainly a huge majority of my classmates that remained as part of the hip-hop culture.

Okay, so it looks like I went off on a tangent. Woops! I guess I needed to fully remember what those days were like to get where I'm going. When I think back, I can honestly say that the main thing that led to this desire to fit in to the hip-hop culture was the fact that it was part of the counter-culture (although I didn't realize that at the time). As a blonde haired, blue eyed, Christian white girl from the suburbs, it made me feel less like a goodie-two-shoes and more like a cool, rebellious teen. And the more I was in on the popular clothes and music, the more empowered I felt. It was almost like there was a competition between everyone as to who could be the most genuinely hip-hop. It's so weird to come to that realization, but that's really how it was.

Looking back on my particular group of friends and social environment, mostly all of us where white. There were maybe 5 black kids in my grade at school, and even less when we would go to the hip-hop Mecca - Palace roller skating rink. It really was as though the hip-hop culture was transformed into a white institution, at least where I was coming from. But at the same time, there was that knowledge that what we were wearing and listening to was certainly derived from the black community.

I agree with Kitwana that my group of white friends did not want to be black. We didn't have anything against black people - they were in fact the people that we were trying to emulate. But the hip-hop culture (the one that I grew up in, at least) did seem to promote whiteness. Like I said earlier, there were not many black people to counter this, so the hip-hop trend was actually more of a "white" thing.

Okay, so I failed miserably at providing an image or video to analyze. But I really wanted to give my two cents since I've "been there," sort of. One last thing. I few months ago I ran into the cutest, most popular boy from junior high that I mentioned earlier. He looked completely different. His attire was straight out of a Gap ad. I couldn't believe that our "king" of the hip-hop culture from junior high and high school made such a transformation! But then we started talked, and I realized that although his clothes were different, the way he talked and acted was definitely still hip-hoppish. I can't really explain how or why, but it was. I find that interesting because it kind of shows that the hip-hop culture doesn't just lie in what a person dresses like or the music they listen to. It's kind of a whole demeanor or lifestyle. And once again, I think that that comes back to the feeling of empowerment that comes with the hip-hop culture.